As you are probably aware, there is constant rumouring to be found foretelling some top secret Mario game or another. The rumours with the best legs still live on in Nintendo folklore with Mario 3D for Super Nintendo and Mario and Luigi for GameCube (a game that emerged as the Luigi-less Mario Sunshine) lodged in the collective consciousness of Nintendo fans.

However, one rumoured game, a Mario and Luigi outing for Nintendo 64, was indeed in development, news that will come as a painful reminder that being a dedicated fan of something can be 'a bit rubbish'. In an interview with Level3 Magazine in Sweden Mario godfather Shigeru Miyamoto outlined this as one of his lost projects.

"Super Mario 128 was just one of many experimental games we had. Suddenly, everybody started talking about it. I'm in the all-too easy habit of starting a project only to later on not do much of it. There is a great deal of unfinished work on my desk. I worked on a prototype for the Nintendo 64 game with Mario and Luigi in it for some time."

What a bastard! Miyamoto casually mentions that he made the game of our dreams, then just gave it up because he's "in the habit" of doing such things! SPOnG now finds itself wondering what other gems are littering the floor of this callous and evil man's office. A great big Dolphin development kit with a massive 2D Metroid game he was supposed to look at but got sidetracked, perhaps a DD64 with the true successor to Super Mario World, now with a coffee stain down its side...

We didn't realise Miyamoto was a horrible evil man capable of such things. "Hmm... Shall I finish off that Mario and Luigi game or just sit around playing my stupid banjo and and do a bit of gardening instead...?" Interestingly, we quizzed Miyamoto on his activities outside of MAKING THE GAMES WE WANT TO PLAY last year. When asked about his working life during our exclusive one-on-one, Miyamoto told us "well these days, I don稚 really stick to the company timeframe. I kind of wander in when I want. But going home, I知 always one of the last people. Always one of the stragglers. There are a lot of projects I知 involved in so I値l wander around and check on the progress of those. I値l read reports, sit down in meetings to find out how games are progressing. And if there痴 one project I知 really focused on, maybe that値l be the one that takes up the majority of my day. I値l also spend a lot of time in our testing department to see how actual gameplay is progressing. And of course, perhaps a third of the day is taken up with emails. I like email because within the company I can send mail to perhaps ten guys at once on a project and then look at their responses."

Yeah, thanks a bunch. No wonder Super Mario Sunshine was so rubbish! You can catch the rest of the SPOnG Miyamoto interview here. You'll get even more annoyed when you see what happens on Sundays...