In a somewhat surprising move, legendary creator Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was directly responsible for the creation of new Yoshi and Star Fox games for the Nintendo Switch 2.
In the latest issue of Famitsu magazine, there is a gigantic interview dedicated to Miyamoto’s career with new insights into his philosophy on games. We already covered his comments about video game remakes, but his statement about the existence of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and Star Fox being a direct result of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie are shocking for longtime Nintendo fans. In the past, the company never created games in response to outside media, though it seems times really are changing for The Big N.
Talking about why Star Fox was rebooted for Switch 2, Miyamoto said, “I don’t decide everything about the lineup, but we did discuss that ‘we have an idea to include Fox in the script for the movie (‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’), so we definitely want a new Star Fox game.” The first part refers to writing the film’s script, of which Miyamoto is not directly involved. When Illumination decided on putting Fox McCloud into the mix, that then sparked Nintendo to create the remake as a means of cross promotion.
Miyamoto than elaborates, “It was decided early on that Yoshi would appear in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, so we decided to make a Yoshi game, and that’s how development of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book began.” I do find it interesting that neither game is closely tied to how the characters appeared in the films, meaning Nintendo is still keeping a certain amount of distance between portrayals of its characters. At the same time, the games can influence what Illumination is doing with its characters, too.
“We started working on the first Mario movie (The Super Mario Bros. Movie) and Princess Peach: Showtime! around the same time,” Miyamoto explains, “and we talked about things like, ‘If we have this game, shouldn’t Peach be more energetic in the movie too?’” That explains a lot about why Peach is so active across the two Mario films. Following Super Mario Odyssey’s ending, Nintendo changed Peach’s entire persona from damsel in distress to active protagonist, which was then reflected in the first film. Going forward, it seems she won’t return to her old role, which is a good sign for spinoffs and new gameplay wrinkles.
Later in the interview, Miyamoto notes that things are still taken on a case-by-case basis. While it’s very obvious that the upcoming Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake was put into production ahead of next year’s live-action film, it doesn’t mean new entries in different series will always be spurred on by cross-promotion campaigns. Still, if F-Zero gets a revival because it winds up in the third Mario film, I’m all for this.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
