Super Mario Sunshine Nearly Featured A Wearable Yoshi Head For Mario
Over the course of the "Super Mario" franchise, the mustachioed plumber has gotten himself involved in just about every kingdom quest and amateur sport imaginable. Still, hands down, one of the most jarring and divisive Mario adventures came in the form of the GameCube iteration of the iconic series, "Super Mario Sunshine." Like "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker" and "Metroid Prime," two other GameCube exclusives from the same time period, "Super Mario Sunshine" was a decidedly fresh take on its main character and his flagship series.
The game saw Mario team up with F.L.U.D.D., a backpack-equipped cleaning device that allowed our hero to spruce up the defiled lands of Isle Delfino and also offered new options for travel and gameplay. Still, as out of left field as the new direction for the series was, the game could have been even stranger — a concept was proposed to let Mario use a Yoshi head as a power-up for his tropical adventures.
The wearable Yoshi head would have spat water from its mouth
According to Did You Know Gaming, there were a number of elements that were changed or left out completely over the course of the rushed development of "Super Mario Sunshine." One of these ideas was to let Mario use an equipable Yoshi head that would have shot water out of its mouth.
Apparently, the team at Nintendo liked the idea so much that they tried to incorporate it many times into the game but ultimately decided to leave it out. Even stranger, as the video reveals, there was also a plan to have the water in "Super Mario Sunshine" shoot directly out of Mario's mouth instead.
As unsettling as both of these strange additions sound, it's easy to see how almost any idea might sound bizarre when it was first proposed, only for it to later grow on gamers. Take the aforementioned "Metroid Prime" and "The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker." Surely the new directions that those games took their respective franchises initially looked and sounded questionable to a lot of fans.
While "Super Mario Sunshine" isn't as fondly remembered as those titles, it did land itself a second life for a new generation of gamers when it was included in the "Super Mario 3D All-Stars" collection from Nintendo. Unfortunately, there's no word on if or when the collection will be coming back after its initial limited-run release.