Mario’s Creator Takes You On A Guided Tour Of Super Nintendo World
Not all of us will be able to experience Super Nintendo World when it opens soon in Universal Studios Japan. But the next best thing is to be given a thorough tour of the area from Shigeru Miyamoto himself! Nintendo uploaded a new video this morning where the creator of the Mushroom Kingdom showed off its real-world counterpart in all its glory.
The first thing Miyamoto revealed is that you enter Super Nintendo World through a horizontal warp pipe, and since the innards of a warp pipe had never been figured out before, there was a lot of discussion within Nintendo about this element alone. They decided on a pattern of streaking lights across the walls, which couldn’t have been THAT hard.
The warp pipe puts guests in the lobby of Peach’s castle, where they’re greeted by paintings on the walls that change depending on the angle you view them from (Bowser Jr. pokes his head out of one, for example).
As Miyamoto stands in the main area, you notice he’s wearing a strange wristwatch with “M” on it. It’s not a personal accessory, it’s a Power-Up Band — something all guests will be given before entering. You can use the Power-Up Band to interact with various props in the area, and transfer its data to your smartphone. For an example, Miyamoto hits a question-mark block with the band and gets the expected “pa-linggg” sound. He then reveals he’s now earned that coin on the app (and I love that his screen name is “Miyahon,” as in the way he was credited on early Nintendo games).
With the Power-Up Bands, you can play the entire area as a real-world video game. Nearly every decoration in the park is interactive to some degree. Miyamoto showed off a POW Block that would only send a shell up a pipe if you timed it a specific way. It took him several tries, but he got the shell up the pipe, toppled the Koopa and won the digital points. “[The Power-Up Bands] even work like amiibo, so you can use them after you return home,” Miyamoto said. It’s unclear what he means by that.
There are many more secrets revealed in the video below. Super Nintendo World opens February 4, 2021 in Japan.