Super Mario Bros. Wonder is right: Nintendo's series has always been about secrets

What's Super Mario Bros. Wonder about? Reader, I could not be more excited. "In terms of the concept for creating a new Mario, we came up with the concept of mystery and secrets," director Shiro Mouri told Tom Phillips recently.

Secrets! "The first Super Mario game was full of secrets and mystery," Mouri added. "As we were developing more and more side-scrolling Mario games, the challenge became that these kinds of secrets and surprises were more and more normalised to players. So I thought it'd be important to create a side-scrolling Mario that really fit the day and age that we live in now."

This is wonderful stuff, because it's true that Mario has always been about secrets. And it's true that as the games have progressed, players have come to expect those secrets. So how Super Mario Bros. Wonder can meet and defy those expectations is something I cannot wait to see. But for the time being, I'm happy to just remember, and think back to the time when those original secrets and surprises were new. Come join me.

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