Features// Nintendo at E3 2005 – Hands-on with Revolution and exclusive Miyamoto insight

So on to what we can see, touch, understand. Games for present consoles and perhaps most pertinently, games for current consoles that have gone AWOL of late. The biggest game Nintendo has been sitting on without question, for the past five years no less, is Mario 128. The true successor to the universally adored Mario 64, this was always the GameCube's killer app. And it's been a complete no show at three successive E3s since it was originally promised. Nintendo fans will remember an excited Shigeru Miyamoto announcing at the end of Nintendo's conference two years ago, "Now I'm going to show you a new game. From a character you will all recognize…" The crowd was in freeze-frame expectation. This is it. New Mario. Real Mario. At last. "It's a character you all know and love, one that's been close to my heart for many years." With Wind Waker already a known entity, there was no doubt that Mario 128 was about to be fully exposed, sating the frustrations of Mario 64 fans so let down by the inadequacies of the under par and rushed Mario Sunshine. We were shown Pac-Man Vs. We were not impressed.

So E3 2005 had to be Mario 128's coming out party. It wasn't. The game was ignored like a ginger-haired stepson. And the reason why was something of a mystery, especially given that in November of last year, Miyamoto-san went on record to underline the game was still inproduction for GameCube.

You might wonder why we didn't see Mario 128. You might also want to know what the game, well, what the game [I]is.[/I] We were lucky enough to be able to ask at source. Speaking exclusively to SPOnG this afternoon at E3 2005, Shigeru Miyamoto explained the no show of Mario, announcing news that will shock, please and bewilder in equal measure every Nintendo fan.

"There is no Mario 128 for GameCube in production anymore," we were told during our audience. The next Mario game will now appear on the Nintendo Revolution around the time the machine launches." This seemed strange to us, given the Miyamoto-san had gone on record to underline the title as a GameCube offering as recently as November of last year. "Did I really say that?" Miyamoto-san laughed, with the glee the man exudes - no doubt one of the keys to his massive popularity. We explained that that was the case, and asked what the new game comprised. Was it a reworking of existing code. "Yes. Our new Mario game did begin its life on the GameCube but has been moved to Revolution and will now be a game for our new machine. There will be no Mario 128 for GameCube." We asked if the code used had been ported from one platform to another. "Yes, the code has been ported, but of course optimized and radically enhanced." He continued, "We were developing for two platforms in tandem for a while. The decision was taken last year to go with the Revolution game."

SPOnG will be publishing a complete, world exclusive interview with the great man from Nintendo as the E3 dust settles. For answers to questions you didn't even realize you wanted to know, check back then and in the meantime, let us know what you think about this piece in the forum below.