Super Mario 128 - History - Resurfacing

Resurfacing

On December 10, 2002, IGN reported that according to an interview in Japan's Weekly Playboy magazine Miyamoto had confirmed the continuing development of Super Mario 128.

Rumors later surfaced that Nintendo did not show Super Mario 128 at E3 2003 because the game was very innovative and Nintendo did not want other developers stealing the ideas from the game. However, Miyamoto later confirmed in an interview with Nintendo Official Magazine UK that Super Mario 128 was still in development and that the development team had planned to take the Mario series in a new direction.

In 2003, Nintendo's George Harrison stated in an interview with CNN Money that Super Mario 128 may not appear on GameCube at all.

It was thought that Nintendo would unveil the title at E3 2004. Miyamoto again confirmed the existence of Super Mario 128 in an interview during February 2004, but the game failed to surface. Some believed this was due to the announcements of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and the Nintendo DS, both revealed at the 2004 show. GameSpy asked Miyamoto about the game after E3:

It's moving along secretly like a submarine under the water. When developing, we often look at the different hardware and run different experiments on it and try out different ideas. There have been a number of different experiment ideas that we have been running on the GameCube. There are some that we have run on DS, and there are other ideas, too. At this point I just don't know if we will see that game on one system or another. It is still hard for me to make that decision. I am the only director on that game right now. I have the programmers making different experiments, and when I see the results, we will make the final decision. —Shigeru Miyamoto

IGN later in the year got a similar response. Miyamoto again asserted Super Mario 128's experimental nature.

In 2005, at the GDC, Nintendo's VP of Marketing, Reggie Fils-Aime, stated that Super Mario 128 would be shown at E3 2005. This was the point where most people thought that the game would finally surface.

However, for the third year in a row, the game once again failed to surface during E3. During a GameSpot video interview at E3, Reggie Fils-Aime stated, "I can only show what Mr. Miyamoto gives me to show." When a reporter asked if it exists, he responded, "I've seen bits and pieces."

In an interview with Miyamoto that year, a Wired News reporter confirmed that Super Mario 128 would not be produced for the GameCube, but rather that it had been definitively moved to the Wii (then code-named Revolution).

In September 2005, Shigeru Miyamoto gave his least ambiguous comments regarding Super Mario 128. Questioned as to the status of the game by a Japanese radio station, he revealed that Mario would have a new character by his side and reiterated that the game would appear on the Wii with a different name. Interestingly, he also mentioned that Super Mario 128 played a large role in the conception of the Wii (then known as Revolution), like Super Mario 64 did for the Nintendo 64. He went as far to say that the Wii was based around "this new type of game". It was later confirmed that Super Mario Galaxy (the first Mario platform game for the Wii) was not Super Mario 128 when Miyamoto stated at E3 2007 that Super Mario Galaxy was "created by the team that made Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, and development began as soon as that title was finished," (2005) while Super Mario 128 has been in development since at least 2000, when the technology demo was first shown. In 2006, Shigeru Miyamoto finally confirmed that the project was no more, and that bits and pieces of the concept had evolved into the Wii title Super Mario Galaxy.