The Wonderful 101 director Hideki Kamiya has revealed to VideoGamer that the game was originally going to feature a cast of all-star Nintendo characters and other famous extras. Kamiya says that he received an order from Minami asking him to create a game idea that was littered with classic Nintendo characters and that’s how the project got started.

“Originally, I got an order from the president of Platinum Games, Tatsuya Minami, asking me to create a game idea that had an all-star cast of Nintendo characters plus characters from other games and that’s how the project started.”

“When you try and incorporate many characters with high popularity, there are fans who like certain characters more than others. I thought how I could satisfy everyone and make everyone happy and I came up with the idea of why not having everyone displayed in the game at the same time. That’s where the idea was born.”