Mario Inc: A prelude
In 1990, the Chicago, IL based Midways Studios had been growing rapidly. When they were joined By Ted Culkin. A native of the area, who had recently been turned down for a job at Disney. It was here that he eventually rose through the ranks. To the point that by 1992, he was responsible for helping many games become famous under the status as a Second Party Developer for Nintendo.
In 1991, Ted also joined by husband and wife team Henry and Martha Banks. Henry had been born in Belen, New Mexico and met Martha, a native of Altoona, Pennsylvania, at the Methodist Church they were attending while in college. The two eventually married and applied for a job at Activision. But they were not chosen.
However, Ted saw their designs for several video game characters they created. So Crawford hired the couple to join him in 1995.
At this time, Ted began to see potential in their ideas. Plus, they all noticed the success of Rare's Donkey Kong Country. Whose creators, Chris and tim Stamper, had meet with Ted in 1992 when Crawford attended E3 that year. The trio chose to try and do the same thing Rare did, and try to get their own hands on a Nintendo property they could reimagine.
In the end, the trio decided on doing a Mario game. When shown the ideas they had developed, Miyamoto was impressed, and placed his new protégée, Yoshiaki Koizumi, to guide them. Initially, then team considered a western RPG similar to Rare's Project Dream. However, the group decided to instead make a Zelda-esque 2D platformer.
The end game was eventually forced to go the the N64. Where it became Super Mario Inc in 1998. Here, Ted decided to use this as a chance to both make a tag-team platformer, as well as a chance for Ted to change everything he felt was wrong about Super Mario 64. Which was highly well received, and detailed below.
In 1997, they were also joined by Matthew Grisham. Who had been rejected for a job at Warner Bros. Animation. Crawford also liked his ideas, and recommended Grisham fuse his ideas for episodes of Animaniacs he had written. The end result was Midway's breadwinner series.... Space Wolves.
