In the latest issue of Game Informer, Super Mario Odyssey Director Kenta Motokura revealed why Nintendo decided to ditch the lives system and replacing it with the loss of coins. Motokura stated..
“We thought about how a lives system would work in this kind of broad, exploration-focused game. In this sort of game, there would be a lot of different restart points. We decided not to use the lives system because it was not an element that was absolutely necessary. We also thought that it would affect some users’ desire to play because, while users who are good at the game would rarely see the (game over) screen that comes up when Mario runs out of lives, inexperienced users would probably end up seeing it frequently.”
Motokura added losing coins isn’t exactly the same as losing lives. However, “we believe that it does function as a new type of penalty.”
Super Mario Odyssey will release on October 27 exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.
