Super Mario 3D Land

This page details one or more prototype versions of Super Mario 3D Land.

General DifferencesLots of differences to cover in general. Level DifferencesThe levels that changed quite a lot. Audio DifferencesSuper Mario 3D Galaxy or Ocarina of Time 3D Land? Unused GraphicsThere's a lot of them.

Title & Banner Differences#

Proto	Final
SuperMario SuperMarioMay 26 2011 13 50 23	SUPER MARIO 3D LAND SUPER MARIO 3D LAND

The application banner, icon and text seen on the home menu were changed, with the demo including the aforementioned build date. The banner and icon are placeholders, and originate from the 3DS' CTR SDK. Additionally, the title ID was changed from 000400000F7FFF00 to 0004000000054000 for the North American release.

Glitches#

Escape 1-2#

At the area with the halfpoint flag, if you have the Tanooki Suit, you can wall jump and get high enough to escape the level's bounds and enter a walkable area. Unfortunately, there's nothing much of interest outside of the level, as walking too far away from the camera will result in the player's death. This was fixed by adding an invisible barrier at the top of the level.

Corner Clipping#

By standing in just the right position on certain corners and edges, Mario will clip into the corner, and will rapidly switch between his "falling" and "standing" animations. This was fixed by adding a little more collision data to most corners, causing Mario to be pushed out slightly from corners, and to fall off of certain edges instead of clipping into them.

Unrestricted Held Item Recall#

When using transportation boxes (2-1 and 3-3 in the demo), you can still make use of the reserve item on the touch screen. It will pop out wherever Mario is at the time, which means the item can be lost if the platform under the block disappears. This was fixed by not allowing the player to recall a held item while using a transportation box.

Double Jump#

If Mario rolls or crouches off the edge of a platform and presses a jump button in mid-air, he can jump in mid-air. However, no height will be gained if the Circle Pad is being pressed in any direction when a jump button is pressed.

Early World List Data#

The Proto contains an early version of the level list for the world map, with a slightly different structure. Unlike the final version, the proto does not yet contain any special worlds, and each level has an extra name, which could possibly indicate that level names were planned in a similar way to the successor 3D World. It could also just be for development purposes, as most of the level names are just the same as the map file names to be loaded.

Unused Levels#

Unused Level Models#

To do: Restore the removed ObjectData so that the early levels can be played in the E3 demo Add model names Add comparisons Also, think about moving this to its own page, if needed.

There are three models correlating to early versions of level 7-2. There are simple textures, showing its primitive state. There are also two models of an early 8-5, both of which are the same, of a different styled starting platform on which Mario spawns. These 2 files, unlike any others have a .szs.r17737 and .szs.r17747 file extension.

World 7-2#

The level layout itself is already almost identical to the final version, except that a connecting bridge is missing between the seesaw platform and the checkpoint spot, which could indicate that this platform was originally slightly longer.

World 8-5#

The platform looked more like the ones from W8-1, only with a (slightly off) green-orange color theme. The final uses a grey stone color to match the canyon instead.

Test Stages#

A total of two unused stages are present, both of which seem to be missing their "design" files (contains light and shading properties). A majority of the objects present in these stages do not exist in the ObjectData folder, so these just won't load.

SpTestLava03Stage#

An early version of S1-5, seemingly a work in progress, as there is no 3D model for the environment, but contains many ground objects that make for a rough level blockout.

Upon entering the level, you can see a coin and some lava effects. The clock is set to 50 seconds and Mario will die after 50 seconds of falling due to the clock.

Looking in the level file, it contains Fire Bars, Boomerang Bros, (a lot of) ground parts, moving platforms, clocks, a castle Skybox, and the Fire Bubble object. There is also an early Bowser fight with a different setup than the final version, including a simple P-Switch instead of the big Bowser Switch.

TestIwasaSpBalanceTruck02Stage#

Watch on YouTube

This is an early version of S5-3, probably originally made to test the controllable green platforms.