Mario and friends have never looked better than in the trailer for The Super Mario Bros Movie. Nintendo and Illumination have clearly spent an incredible amount of time and effort refining each character to update their look while remaining true to the original games. The movie’s take on the Mushroom Kingdom is no slouch either, bursting with so much color and life it makes us wish we could explore it with a controller in hand.
Of course, Mario has a very long history, and one enterprising creator has decided to travel back in time to 1996 to imagine the movie as it might have looked if it were rendered on the classic Nintendo 64 console. This means going back to the Super Mario 64 character models which first brought Mario to life via real-time 3D polygons. The result is… well, check it out for yourself:
We love the attention to detail here, especially using the Mario Kart 64 version of Rainbow Road in the closing moments of the trailer.
The movie itself is guaranteed to be full of Easter Eggs and references to the plumber’s epic video game history, which stretches all the way back to his debut in Donkey Kong 41 years ago in 1981.
Despite some justified lingering skepticism about Chris Pratt’s lead performance, the hype machine is in full swing. Nintendo has managed to keep Mario relevant and popular for five decades now, in the process making him one of the most recognizable fictional characters on the planet.
After The Super Mario Bros. Movie, may he leap, bound and somersault to brand new heights of popularity.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie will hit theaters on Apr 7, 2023.