Is Super Mario RPG Making a Comeback? Let’s Find Out!

Before the Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi series, Super Mario RPG was the very first game to kick off the role-playing trend in the Mario saga.

Launched in 1996 in Japan and the US, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was the last Mario game to be released for the SNES. Published by Nintendo and developed by Square, under the guidance of directors Chihiro Fujioka and Yoshihiko Maekawa, the game was a complete novelty, being the first of the Mario saga to step into role-playing game territory. Square’s influence and style, in fact, pervade Super Mario RPG’s look and gameplay.

The game’s story is centered around our hero Mario and his friends as they seek to defeat the Smithy Gang led by Smithy, a robotic blacksmith from an alternate dimension with aspirations of world domination. To achieve his plan, the villain steals seven pieces of the Star Road, which got scattered across Mario’s world following the crash of Exor, a giant alien sword.

The player, in the role of Mario, embarks on a journey to find all the seven Star Pieces in order to rebuild the Star Road, the pathway that can grant people’s wishes. To do so, the protagonist will need the help of his precious party members: Mallow, Geno, Bowser and Princess Toadstool.

MinnMax interview with Chihiro Fujioka: will there be a Super Mario RPG follow-up?

About two weeks ago, director Fujioka expressed the desire to make a sequel to Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, to the excitement of many fans of the SNES game. The statement came from an interview the director gave to YouTube channel MinnMax.

Chihiro Fujioka is a professional in the video game industry. Starting the ’80s, he took on the role of video game designer, a role that saw him as director, storywriter, composer and producer. Fujioka also founded the development team AlphaDream after working on Super Mario RPG: his team has been primarily involved with the Mario & Luigi saga.

During the online encounter, interviewer Ben Hanson touched on various topics regarding Chihiro Fujioka’s career at Square. Among other things, Fujioka expressed his attachment to Super Mario RPG, and hinted at the possibility of a follow-up game after the first installment. The director said how thrilled he is at the thought of creating it, and that, despite being involved with countless other games in his career, a Super Mario role-playing game would definitely be his final effort.

Fujioka also added that Mario & Luigi is certainly a great series, but he’d prefer working on a new RPG Mario game in which the player can only control Mario himself. But when Hanson tried to get a little more information out of Fujioka, the director refrained from revealing the secrets behind this mysterious project.

In the meantime, we hope that Chihiro Fujioka’s idea will turn into reality one day, because a new Super Mario RPG installment would undoubtedly be a blast to play on next-gen consoles.