December 16, 2009
P-Wing
Drew discovers the answer to a nagging 17 year-old question:
Destructoid didn’t note it, but the article also answered how the P-Wing, this item for baby players with clumsy little starfish hands got its name, but the interview did. Nintendo veteran Toshihiko Nakago is explaining the physics of flying in Super Mario Bros. 3 — which, by the way, involves a raccoon tail and ears, just like we now use today — and how normally Mario would need to get a good running start before he could take off.
I’m not sure who came up with the name, but we all referred to this as “the runway.” So at that point, we looked again at the maps and completely reworked the levels so that Mario would have places where he could take off from. In the end, we made it so that if you got an item called the P-Wing, which was the Koopa Paratroopa’s wing, you could fly through the whole level.
So there you go. The item — a wing with an otherwise mysterious “P” on it — comes from the Paratroopa enemy, hence the initial. The Koopa Paratroopa — a winged turtle whose name is a pretty obvious pun on paratrooper — has been airborne ever since the original Super Mario Bros., and it’s his wing that makes the P-Wing-powered Mario so ready for flight… even though he’s still flying with raccoon parts.
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There’s nothing worse than a nagging seventeen-year-old.
Actually, I am quite happy to have this answer. The dismissive “P is for Power” that I always got from my gaming elders was distinctly unsatisfying.