The Super Mario franchise has featured a lot of different sports entries over the years, from national pastimes like baseball and soccer to sports played by individuals like golf and tennis. Mario has even managed to find his way to the grandest sporting stage of them all, the Olympics. Nintendo’s favorite plumber is a terrific athlete and has played virtually every sport imaginable, except for one – football. As it turns out, though, there was a time a Mario football game was actually in development, but it unfortunately never came to be. Honestly, it’s probably for the best considering what was developed in its place.
Retro Studios is well-known for helping revive some of Nintendo’s more dormant franchises, like Metroid and Donkey Kong Country, but that wasn’t always the case. The early days of the studios were a mix of canceled projects, underwhelming developments, and poor management. One of Retro’s many canceled projects at the time was a Mario football game. While details about the game are scarce, it seems as though Nintendo wasn’t satisfied with the project’s development. Rather than having Retro continue work on the Mario football game, Nintendo wanted a more mature, realistic football game, something more in line with the Madden series.
From there, Retro scrapped development on Mario football and turned its focus to the more realistic, NFL Retro Football. The project actually looked pretty impressive compared to other football games of the time. Retro had the license to use actual NFL teams, the graphics and animations looked great for a GameCube title, and there was even rumored to be a create-a-player mode featured in the game. Ultimately, much like Mario football, NFL Retro Football was ultimately canceled, but for very good reason. Rather than spreading itself out thin, working on multiple games, Retro diverted all of its attention to the development of Metroid Prime.
Mario Football Was Ultimately Canceled For Metroid Prime
Nintendo was displeased with how Retro was handling development of many of its upcoming GameCube games after pouring money into the studio. The working environment was supposedly chaotic and many different games were behind their development schedule. This led to a visit from one of Nintendo’s brightest minds, Shigeru Miyamoto in 2000 to check in on things. While he was disappointed with many of their games, he was impressed with a sci-fi action-adventure game Retro had been working on staring three female protagonists. This led Miyamoto to suggest Retro should convert the game into a Metroid title. He also told the studio they needed to be a one-game company. Nintendo then granted Retro the license to develop Metroid Prime and the studio canceled all of its other games to solely focus on the project.
It’s disappointing to think of what could’ve been, but it’s hard to say Retro made the wrong decision. The studio was in dire straights and Metroid Prime was the lifeline that kept its head above water. From there, the rest is history. Retro went on to turn the Metroid Prime series into one of Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed, then eventually revived the Donkey Kong Country series as well. Considering Retro’s past, it’s somewhat ironic that it is now developing Metroid Prime 4 after Nintendo was displeased with how the game was being developed by another studio. It’s a shame fans will never get to know what could’ve been with Super Mario Football, but maybe someday Retro will revisit the cancelled project, because it seems like an idea with a lot of potential.
Sources: Unseen 64, Polygon
