After nearly 14 years since the arrival of Super Mario 64, Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed that Luigi was indeed set to be in the game.

In a recent “Iwata Asks” interview segment, Miyamoto talked about Luigi’s appearance, and why it ultimately was left on the cutting room floor.

Iwata: Ever since Mario Bros., you’ve had your heart set on making a multiplayer Mario game. You’ve tried each time, but it’s never quite come together… Even with Mario 64, it started with Mario and Luigi running around together, didn’t it?

Miyamoto: That’s right. The screen was split and they went into the castle separately. When they meet in the corridor, I was incredibly happy! (laughs) Then there was also the mode where the camera is fixed and we see Mario running away, steadily getting smaller and smaller.

Iwata: Yes, that’s right.

Miyamoto: That was a remnant of an experiment we did where Mario and Luigi would run away from each other but you could still see them both. But we were unable to pull it off…

Iwata: The idea of having multiplayer mode in Mario is one you’ve worked on for many years. How were you finally able to realize it this time round?

Miyamoto: We owe it all to Wii’s processing power. The CPU is much faster than anything we’ve worked with before, its graphical capabilities are advanced and it has a large amount of memory.

Iwata: So your longstanding dream has finally been realized on Wii.

Miyamoto: Yes, it has.

It’s unbelievable that gamers such as myself spent years trying to figure out if the rumor that Luigi was an unlockable in the game was actually true. And although it was a lie, it probably stemmed from the truth that he was supposed to appear.  And while it’s cool that he actually had a shot at making it into the game in a multiplayer element, it’s still confusing as to why he never appears at all. Luckily, we have the DS remake to make up for that.

(Image Credit Nintendo Power)

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