Early drafts of the 1993 Super Mario movie show a very different story

The original 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. movie certainly has its fans, but it’s not exactly the movie gamers were hoping for. The movie has achieved cult status decades after its initial release, but it’s clear that Nintendo and pretty much everyone involved want to keep this film as a distant memory.

While the upcoming Super Mario Bros. animated movie will no doubt be leagues better than the 1993 outing, it turns out the live-action adaptation could have been considerable different from what made it into the final cut. Thanks to various drafts discovered by CBR, we now have a glimpse at just how different the film could have been.

Rather than go through painstaking detail on each and every aspect that would be different, you can see a round-up of the finer points below.

• Mario and Luigi discover a ruby locket inside a pipe, which Luigi recognizes from a dream
• Koopa arrives on Earth, magically disguised as a human
• Mario and Luigi end up in a frog-themed diner with a large pipe in a back room
• Mario and Luigi get sucked in and spit out into the Mushroom Kingdom
• Mario and Luigi meet a 3-foot tall Toad, a thief sentenced to death via Piranha Plants
• Koopa’s massive flying warship is showcased
• Koopa is gearing up for a wedding that will grant him lordship over the Mushroom Kingdom
• ‘Hildy’ will be Koopa’s bride, who eats magic chocolates and turns into a female Koopa
• Koopa murdered the entire royal family, except for the missing king and princess
• Hildy is the child princess hidden away from Koopa twenty years earlier
• a prophecy foretold the kingdom will be saved by warriors carrying the locket
• Goombas, Koopa Troopers, Thwomps, Bob-Ombs, the Hammer Brothers appear
• the Super Leaf would have appeared as well

There’s a lot more detail and information to sift through with these discarded scripts, and if you’d like to get the full breakdown, you can find it here.