To this day, Super Mario RPG sounds like a miracle. Square turned Super Mario into an RPG? You mean Nintendo actually shared its rights with another studio, and let them develop the game? Sure, recent games like Mario + Rabbids and projects like the upcoming Super Mario movie by Minions studio Illumination show that Nintendo is more willing to share nowadays. But in fact, Super Mario RPG probably paved the way for such collaborations. But how did it even happen?

An interview with Super Mario RPG's director Chihiro Fujioka sheds some light on the creation of the game. From way back in 1995, this interview finds its way to us via translator site shmuplations. In it, Fujioka shares the challenges of meeting Nintendo's standards, nailing the "Mario" look, and developing worlds in isometric 3D.

First off, Fujioka begins by talking about the genesis of the game. Apparently pitching the idea was easy. "During a business meeting with Nintendo, the topic came up of us working on something together. Nintendo has Mario, and Square has RPGs… well, why not simply stick the two together?"

The harder thing ended up being getting past phase one. The art in particular took a lot of time to nail down. Fujioka said that "Nintendo has a certain style they like. It was the kind of thing where you think you’d get it perfect, only to realize, “oh, wait, this is wrong…” The back-and-forth between Square and Nintendo, deciding what exactly a Mario game looks like, took up a lot of the pre-development time.

So what did they decide was the best way to make an RPG world a "Mario" world? Isometric 3D. It was still a fairly new thing at the time, so it's humorous to look back and read Fujioka's comments on the style. The concern back then was that, while isometric 3D added depth to the aesthetic, it made controlling the game difficult. Square's groundbreaking workaround for that was to allow Mario to move in all 8 directions. How novel!

Action was a big part of the development team's mission statement. Isometric 3D gave Mario the freedom to move and jump about the world, but how were they going to translate that to battles? Fujioka admits that RPGs can be rather static, saying, "In RPGs, there’s usually a lot of waiting. The majority of the time is probably spent not pressing any buttons. But pressing buttons, the controls themselves… that’s a huge part of the fun." So to shake that up, they added the now-beloved battle system. Since this interview was leading up to the game's release, Fujioka actually plays it coy when talking about it. "...we’ve added some elements which allow a moment of action in the gameplay: in other words, a moment of greater Mario-ness."

The interview goes into greater detail, and even includes comments from Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself. It's definitely worth a read. If nothing else, maybe a show of renewed interest in Super Mario RPG will inspire them to make another one!