What toggleable options would you add in a Mario (or Mario-adjacent) series?

winstein

winstein

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Recently in an interview for Super Mario Bros. Wonder, there is this excerpt that the developers opted to remove character collision in a significant way, only leaving few ways for player interaction (riding Yoshi, reviving ghost characters):
Mouri explains that collision was initially part of the game but that changed during development, stating "When we took the leap of faith and removed collision, we realized that it removes a lot of the stress. For example, when you have a narrow platform that you to jump to, when somebody is there they just get in the way."
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This decision didn't sit well with some players, who believe that the characters being able to interact added a lot to previous platformers that such a move is seen as a downgrade. Some have taken a more compromising stance that it should be a toggleable option.

The last sentence is the thing that pique my interest in a discussion. See, we may find certain things that aren't as perfect as they seem, so preferred it if they can be changed to our liking. Usually as a benefit, the thing that we like should instead be relegated to being a toggleable option. Whether it be a gameplay function, an accessibility one, or even something rooted in design. We'll see how many options we have come up with, and whether they can all be presented as options before it got to complicated to manage.

For starters, here are some options to start with, for a Super Mario game:
  • Music toggle/volume adjust
  • Sound toggle/volume adjust
  • Button mapping
  • Character voices toggle/volume adjust (one for each player)
  • Player character collision (like in the quote)

What option(s) would you give a Mario (or Mario-adjacent) game?

Thank you for reading.
 
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They should let you turn off the bing bing wahoos.

(In all seriousness, volume options for music, sound effects, voices, etc. All should be able to be adjusted separately while also having an option for a singular volume adjust option for those who don't wanna fine tune all the noises individually)
 
The lack of sound adjustment is absolutely an accessibility issue and it's so baffling how many games, especially console titles, lack such a basic and rudimentary feature, always being there in PC games since the very start. Nintendo games are notoriously bad at this; even Super Smash Bros. with its sound adjustment system requires you to fiddle through endless menus just to access it when you can't even adjust the sound midmatch in a pause menu which is...like...the most practical place to put a sound options setting on? Mario Kart even at one point HAD sound options AND an option to toggle speedometer in Mario Kart 64 but those are long gone because fuck (Mario Kart these days doesn't even HAVE a speedometer leaving players to guess how fast they are actually going and they can't do precise comparisons). Don't even get me started on button remapping, an option not available until the Switch times and even so, Nintendo has addressed it in the most bone-headed fucking convoluted manner that you swore that none of the developers ever played a non Nintendo game in their entire life.

Nintendo games for some reason ALWAYS have these bullshit nonsense caveats every time they add a welcomed accessibility feature (hence why some detractors call them "Nintendo moves"). One of the primest examples is that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe gives you the option for smart steering but it's on by default and you have to manually toggle the bloody thing off every single time you boot up the game. I also remember a Pokemon game hiding a crucial game option under some fucking NPC that the game doesn't really make clear about, I forgot exactly what it was. I also remember the times the Super Guide block merely just appearing locked you out of getting a perfect save file permanently.

An increase of advanced toggleable features should be promoted in more games. Modern games have been doing the sorts lately, such as the plethora of options in Sonic Frontiers or the huge swaths of difficulty options in Forza or accessibility in the Last of Us. A game I've played extensively, The Sims 4, has an extreme amount of toggle-able options that it's very easy to miss them all but their addition, which may be overwhelming at first, is hugely welcomed by practically everyone.
 
Ray Trace said:
An increase of advanced toggleable features should be promoted in more games. Modern games have been doing the sorts lately, such as the plethora of options in Sonic Frontiers or the huge swaths of difficulty options in Forza or accessibility in the Last of Us. A game I've played extensively, The Sims 4, has an extreme amount of toggle-able options that it's very easy to miss them all but their addition, which may be overwhelming at first, is hugely welcomed by practically everyone.
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Yeah sometimes I wonder why Nintendo is reluctant to add the simplest stuff that just generally make a game better. I play Forza and the all the options are dizzying but organized, then you look at Mario Kart and the settings are like almost empty. Just because a game is simpler doesn't mean the options should be simpler.
 
It's very weird that almost every licensed GBA game I played had sound mixing options where you can decrease the volume of either to any degree you want, including muting them, but Mario games don't have that.

Fucking SpongeBob SquarePants: Supersponge should not be one-upping Nintendo's Mario games with such a basic feature lmao

Like in TTYD and SPM, I get SFX-only footage for videos by... deleting the music files from the filesystem. A very not-user-friendly method, and it doesn't even work on every game. Why Nintendo doesn't add this feature I have no idea.
 
Mario & Luigi games would benefit from a colorblind option, and it changes Luigi to a mintier green like in the art of the older games. :p

Also these games seriously need a more robust control remapping, not this miserable clunky ass stuff they're currently doing.
 
Oh boy, I saw this and got pretty excited. So here are a few things I can mention regarding certain Super Mario games. I feel it's really important because a lot of Nintendo's older Super Mario games aren't that accessible. I'm mainly talking about Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World, which most people can agree are part of the Super Mario series. Being that I might want to become a game developer one day, I find coming back to these old games a bit frustrating. Aside from how barely easy it is to play them in the modern day, especially legally, playing these games, back-to-back gives me some painful muscle memory. Worse yet, the better versions of these games have screen crunch and worse audio. Super Mario Bros. has no ability to save the game and has that weird power-up function where Small Mario becomes Super Mario by touching a Fire Flower. Super Mario World removes third-tier power-ups acting as a third hit for Mario and can only let you save at ghost houses, castles, and fortresses. On a minor note, Luigi is limited to being in multiplayer modes of these games. I know he was a recolor sue in these early games, but hey.

The reason I'm bringing those old games up is that it would be so nice if these games actually gave you some options to play the way you want to play. If purists want to play these original games as they were intended, Nintendo can include a mode in the game that toggles many of the original features. Also, emulated rereleases can help players see what the original game was like with its weird glitches. Likewise, (and I'm very surprised that this wasn't mentioned) the ability to turn off lives and the time limit could also help those that want a casual experience. After playing the fan-made Super Mario 64 Plus and seeing how Sonic 3 A.I.R handled options (I haven't played the latter), it makes me yearn for Nintendo to remake these games for the modern era. This might be more of a hopeless wish for Nintendo to pull a Sonic Origins and just remake the old Super Mario games, but my idea very much came from those fan-made ports/hacks of SM64 and Sonic 3.
 
I always appreciate when games have the option to turn off/minimize HUD elements to what's absolutely essential. It makes things look neater, and is useful for things like screenshots.
 
Like others said,.the option to control volume of music, voice,.and sfx.

One thing I wanna say I like as a new edition to Mario games and should be a standard for all games, is the "if you're stuck on a level we'll let you godmode it so you're not missing out on content"
 
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