Super Mario RPG remake was made by a long-time Dragon Quest support dev

The remake of Super Mario RPG is out next week, and it turns out the developer behind it is no stranger to Square Enix properties.

Social media users recently noticed that a copyright notice attached to eShop pre-orders of the game, which is out next week, has confirmed that Japanese developer ArtePiazza is the team behind the upcoming RPG (thanks, VGC). For those of you that haven’t heard of the studio before, it’s been working with Square Enix on the Dragon Quest series all the way back to Dragon Quest 3, where it worked on the CG design and scenario. It’s also ported a number of the Dragon Quest games to various platforms, and is responsible for the 2D mode in Dragon Quest 11.

Watch on YouTube

VGC also noted that Twitter user Mondo_Mega shared more details about the game, though it seems that those details have now been deleted. Ayako Moriwaki, who works for Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development, apparently serves as director on the Switch version. Moriwaki’s most recent role was as assistant director on Pikmin 4, and she also worked on Yoshi’s Crafted World and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Square Enix itself was supposedly not that involved in the project, with it mostly supervising the game.

VG247’s own Alex got to go hands-on with the game in a recent preview, where he wrote, “even in Mario RPG’s early hours, I can see that this is the same game – just made anew, reborn with a beautiful HD presentation. Don’t get me wrong – there are changes that we’ll need to dissect at review, and in the weeks after release. But they are subtle, not sweeping. There’s no shame in the fact that it’s a slower-paced turn-based RPG, or in its quirky art-style. The realization has been made that these things are exactly what made this game magical, and so it is all lovingly retained.”

Super Mario RPG is out next week, November 17, on Nintendo Switch.