The Mario Strikers series is getting rebooted this year with Mario Strikers: Battle League, which makes this the perfect opportunity to go revisit some of the older titles and see what secrets they might have held. Case in point: the original Super Mario Strikers for the GameCube, which has been rifled through by Twitter user @Dogon_McBanana — and found to have a number of unused models and characters.
Was digging through the game's files on a whim, and evidently the final build of Super Mario Strikers on Gamecube just has an entire team's worth of generic Mario style humans and a whole bunch of other unused stuff that I've never seen anybody talk about?? (thread) pic.twitter.com/Lty9Jp4zDH
— Dogon McBanana (@Dogon_McBanana) February 25, 2022
Yes, it appears the title was going to have a host of Mario-looking humans as sidekicks. DK would have fellow Kongs, Luigi would have a team of Luigi lookalikes, and so on. Besides this, there’s also the 3D render of a Dull Bones from Paper Mario and Security Team Pinatas reminiscent of the mob Pinatas from the same series, along with a cameraman Pinata and a cameraman Shy Guy.
We can only speculate as to why this content didn’t make it in, though ‘brand integrity’ might’ve played a roll — seeing fellow humans alongside Mario & co. might’ve been off-putting to some, and injecting ideas from Paper Mario into the wider universe might’ve seemed recursive. PM is notorious for having to deal with the issue of brand integrity from the opposite end in recent years, mandated to use only characters and species from the core Super Mario series as opposed to anything new or inventive. In the end though we have no concrete evidence one way or another, and maybe the dev team simply decided it would be simpler to implement the sidekicks that did end up making it into the game.
Mario Strikers: Battle League releases on June 10th. Check out our pre-order guide to view a list of available retailers.
Via: GoNintendo
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
