Did You Know Gaming's latest look at Mario explores the strange history of a pair of games that died before they could truly live — the pricey Phillips CD-i travelogue Mario Takes America and the volleyball/wrestling/game show mash-up Super Mario Spikers.
Part six begins with a look at how technical limitations affected earlier Super Mario games, giving birth to the Goombas and keeping Yoshi out of the picture until the Super Nintendo came around, but it wasn't tech that killed Mario Takes America for the Philips CD-i.
Canadian developer CIGAM spent a ton of money of the title, which would have featured Mario and friends superimposed over video and photo footage of American cities and landmarks. They took boat rides, rented helicopters and basically traversed the country gathering material for the game. Following poor sales of three other Nintendo-based CD-i games, the infamous Legend of Zelda spin-offs, Mario Takes America was canceled, effectively killing CIGAM in the process.
Super Mario Spikers was to be a simple volleyball game from Next Level Games, the makers of the successful Super Mario Strikers series of soccer titles, but then development went a bit crazy. Next Level brought elements of a canceled WWE wrestling game into the mix, creating a title that was ultimately too violent for Nintendo's tastes.
The video wraps with a look at the recently-released Captain Toad Treasure Tracker. Did you know it was first pitched as a Legend of Zelda game? Well, you do now anyway.