Super Mario 128

Super Mario 128 was a series of experimental projects by Nintendo that was originally conceived as a sequel to Super Mario 64. Despite being shown as a Spaceworld 2000 tech demo, the projects were never released as a game by that title, confusing some Nintendo fans. It also has no developmental relation to Super Mario Sunshine, as Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed in an E3 2003 interview. Rather, the projects' features were dispersed into later Nintendo games.

The tech demo was referenced in a Super Smash Bros. Melee event match of the same name, in which the player must defeat 128 tiny Marios, 5 appearing on the stage at a time.

History
Shigeru Miyamoto first mentioned the name "Super Mario 128" in a January 1997 Nintendo Power interview, while alluding to the development conundrum of whether to keep using cutting-edge technologies in every new Mario game.

To demonstrate such technologies of the Nintendo GameCube, a Super Mario 128 tech demo was shown at Spaceworld 2000, featuring 128 AI-controlled Marios on-screen simultaneously. Other notable features included rapid generation and sphere walking.

During his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference 2007, Miyamoto clarified that elements of Super Mario 128 had been reused in later Nintendo games. He specifically drew attention to the use of group AI in Pikmin, and sphere walking in Super Mario Galaxy.

So when people ask me what happened to [Mario 128], I'm always at a loss as to how to answer it, because most of you have already played it&mdash;but you played it in a game called Pikmin. This game featured one element of Mario 128 that allowed a large number of characters to operate independently and as a group&mdash;it's advanced AI. But of course if I was to tell you all that this is what happened to Mario 128, you'd all be pretty angry.

So you'll be experiencing another element of Mario 128 fairly soon. In Super Mario Galaxy, you'll be playing on numerous spherical stages, and this was one of the experiments we were conducting at the time of Mario 128.

A similar sphere walking technology was previously used in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, in which the Iron Boots allow Link to walk on magnetic surfaces in defiance of gravity.