The Wonderful 101 was originally going to be a very different game, with a very different cast. Hideki Kamiya says that when Platinum Games first approached him about the project, it was going to star a gaggle of franchise characters from Nintendo and other popular series.

"Originally I got an order from the president of Platinum games 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," Kamiya told Videogamer.com. "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."

In a sense, it sounds like a Smash Bros action game. Ultimately, though, that idea was "put on hold." When the team came back to it, they "decided to change the idea to an all hero game."