Hotel Mario - Iggy's Lost Hotel

There's a bit of an anomaly with the hotels in Hotel Mario. Your main adversaries throughout the game are Bowser and his seven Koopalings, yet there are only seven hotels in the game. There is either an extra Koopaling that's just there for the ride... or there's a cut hotel. Let's investigate.

Sections:

The Thing About Iggy Koopa -- Ghosts In The (Imagination) Machine -- Leftovers In The Prototype -- Wendy's Hotel Cutscene -- Cheese Hotel Concept -- Raise The Titanic -- Conclusions

The Thing About Iggy Koopa

A good place to start our investigation would be to look at the lone Koopaling that doesn't have their own hotel: Iggy Koopa.

Iggy is only encountered in Bowser's Barbecue Room, the very last level of Bowser's Seizures Palace, which is the last hotel in the game. He is the boss of the level's first half, hiding behind a giant mask of Bowser, and essentially acts as a weaker version of the Koopa King himself. He only summons one lightning bolt and fireball instead of several at a time, and can actually be temporarily stomped off the stage like the other Koopalings.

Other than this one fight, Iggy isn't mentioned anywhere else in Hotel Mario - no cutscenes, no mention in the enclosed instruction book, nothing. Most importantly, he isn't mentioned in the name of any of the seven Koopa hotels. They all have their owner mentioned in their name (going back to Bowser's Seizures Palace as an example), but Iggy is the only one that's been left out.

Furthermore, the manual does state that each Koopaling owns a hotel within the Mushroom Kingdom, and that is true... apart from Iggy.

This begs the question... was Iggy supposed to have his own hotel at some point in the game's development? As you'll soon see, the answer is a resounding yes... though we only have a few small fragments of the hotel itself.

Ghosts In The (Imagination) Machine

Our first order of business is to check the game's files, as one often does when scouring for cut content. This should be a simple task - every hotel has several .rtf and .map files that house their assets. We just need to find the asset files for a level that isn't in the game, extract its contents, and bingo! We have all the info we need regarding Iggy's hotel!

Well, there's a slight issue. We know exactly what level the missing hotel would be...

...Because there's a blank spot between Ludwig's Thump Castle Hotel (L5) and Wendy's Blitz Snarlton Hotel (L7). There are no files on the game disc belonging to L6, the level that should be in-between them. You might think that it was deleted in the final game to save disc space, and that an earlier build of the game - specifically the v0.09 prototype - might have at least one of the L6 files. Good idea!

But, sadly, you'd be wrong. It's also missing the files for L6.

Even with this letdown, we now know where Iggy's hotel would've been in the game order. That's a victory to me! And speaking of the prototype...

Leftovers In The Prototype

While the v0.09 prototype might not have any of the files for Iggy's lost hotel, what it does have are two mentions of the eight Koopa hotels.

The first mention of the eight hotels is in the iconic intro cutscene. In the prototype, the letter that Mario reads is read by Bowser instead, and it mentions both the Klub Koopa Resort (which, in the final game, was only mentioned in a sign in the cutscene) and how the Princess will be staying at one of the eight Koopa hotels.

The second and last mention of the eight hotels is the level select screen. It's quite clearly a work in progress, but even in this state it shows eight levels instead of the final level select's seven. Unfortunately, you can't even attempt to load the sixth hotel, as doing so will load the fifth one (Ludwig's) instead.

These help confirm that there were eight hotels planned at one point. Now, let's take a look at a cutscene that may have some ties to this lost hotel.

Wendy's Hotel Cutscene

The intro cutscene for Wendy's Blitz Snarlton Hotel is... weird, even by the loose standards of Hotel Mario.

First, have a listen to the music track that starts at 7 seconds. It's a rather spooky piece that fits in well with the other Hotel Mario cutscene songs, but here's the thing - this is the only time this music is heard in-game. Sure, other cutscene-exclusive music tracks exist, but the hotel intro cutscenes are unique because they always use tracks that play in-game for a hotel's levels (even if it originates from an unrelated hotel). But this track doesn't match with any music in the game, let alone Ludwig's or Wendy's, and it appears to be a lone exception - a completely original track made for the cutscene. Or is it?

Remember, Iggy's hotel is supposed to be between Ludwig's and Wendy's, and there just so happens to be an anomalous music track when the focus shifts from Ludwig's destroyed castle to the next hotel. I believe that this music track is the only available asset we have of Iggy's hotel... well, apart from one other thing. We'll get there when we get there.

There's more. Notice how, in the middle of the cutscene, the Mario brothers suddenly jump from the wastelands near Ludwig's hotel to the grassy hills of Wendy's hotel? It's like they just teleported there in an instant. Setting and scenery changes in Hotel Mario's cutscenes are never this jarring, and are often accompanied with transitional backgrounds. It's also worth noting that the cutscene doesn't change the background after Mario asks Luigi where the Princess is, kind of like Animation Magic's Zelda games. That's not a big deal... the intro cutscene for Roy's hotel and the intro/ending do it too. Why bring it up?

Well... the cutscene is set up to show two different backgrounds in that scene - one for Mario and one for Luigi - but they contain the exact same graphics data. This is the only instance of a background duplicate in Hotel Mario, as the other two examples just reuse a background without resorting to unnecessary clones. This, to me, indicates that one of the backgrounds (the latter?) looked different earlier in development, and was changed for whatever reason. Very odd, especially in an area that's known to have a cut hotel...

And another thing; what's up with Luigi's reaction in this cutscene? He acts as if he got startled by a noise, but there's no noise for him to get startled at. It's unlikely to be the music as there's no other indication that the cutscene BGM is diegetic, and the sound design for Hotel Mario's cutscene audio is rather well-done... except for this instance? In the cutscene with various composition oddities?? Interesting.

Finally, there are two oddities exclusive to the v0.09 prototype. In this prototype, the cutscene has glitched visuals that gives Mario and Luigi different colors and knocks the background out of alignment. And isn't it interesting how this glitch kicks in as soon as the background does its weird jump from the wastelands to the grassy hills? It's almost like Fantasy Factory stitched two unrelated cutscenes together and had yet to iron out the kinks.

The final oddity I want to mention is Luigi's prototype-exclusive voiceline, where he says "Look, she's heading towards Wendy's hotel!". As you can clearly see, she's not doing that. She's never seen doing that. As a matter of fact, every hotel intro shows the Princess being moved between the Koopa hotels... except for Morton's (which is her initial location) and this one. It's almost as if it was deleted on purpose. Hm.

With my observations, I present a hypothesis:
This cutscene is a fusion of the first half of the Ludwig to Iggy cutscene and the second half of the Iggy to Wendy cutscene.

A potential sequence of events goes like this - after destroying Ludwig's hotel, Luigi would've heard a noise (likely the Princess screaming or crying for help) and pointed towards her being taken to Iggy's hotel. After defeating Iggy and wrecking the place, the Mario brothers would've seen the Princess being shuttled to Wendy's hotel and they follow after her. The mysterious music track was likely a leftover music track from Iggy's hotel, but it's impossible to tell if it would play in any of the scrapped cutscenes without having developer notes or outlines.

When Fantasy Factory cut Iggy's hotel, they got its two adjacent cutscenes, quickly mashed the two non-Iggy halves together, and called it a day.

But, hey, that's just a theory - A GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching reading!

Cheese Hotel Concept

There's one more piece of Iggy's hotel to look at. But before we get there, let's talk about the Cheese Hotel.
You all knew this was coming... or maybe not.

The story goes that, during the early days of Hotel Mario's development, the game's concept and background art felt mechanical and cold. This was due to the background artist working on the game, who was an unnamed Fantasy Factory employee with some... sub-par concepts for hotel. Most notably, the employee had come up with a cheese-themed hotel. This employee was replaced with a new artist, and the background art was revised to be more Disney and Tolkien-esque. This is all sourced from an interview with Trici Venola, that very replacement background artist.

It's a funny little story, and some (including myself at one point in my life) thought that this long-lost cheese hotel was supposed to be Iggy's cut hotel.

But here's the thing...
How do we know that this concept was meant for Iggy's hotel?

Think about this. Nowhere in the interview does it state that this cheese hotel was specifically bespoke for Iggy, or any Koopaling for that matter. It could've been Morton's at one point, or Wendy's, or Larry's, or any of them!! Also, you need to remember that the game's background art was heavily revised after Trici joined the crew, who - in the interview - voiced her disdain for the cheese hotel concept. It could have very easily been replaced by a new theme that made it to retail or, in Iggy's case, was cut from the game.

And, as you'll soon see, we know the exact theme that Iggy's hotel would have had.

Raise The Titanic

In December 2021, Trici Venola posted multiple pieces of background art from Hotel Mario to her Instagram. Among the six images were three levels from Lemmy's hotel, one level from Ludwig's hotel, and a background art sheet for Wendy's hotel. These are fun little pieces of Hotel Mario concept art that, up until that point, had never been posted on the Internet.

However, the sixth image was special:

Special thanks goes to Skeem on the Seedy Eye Software Discord for finding Trici's Instagram post with the concept art.

It depicts a singular level from an aquatic and Art Deco-themed hotel, which is a combination of themes that isn't present in any of the hotels in Hotel Mario. If you've read this page up to this point, you know exactly why this is intriguing...
This may very well be the first and only image we have of Iggy's hotel!

From this image and theme, we can infer a couple of things about the hotel. The background is only a single screen tall, so the hotel likely did not have the "double screen" gimmick of Wendy and Bowser's hotels. Furthermore, there are a surprising lack of aquatic-themed enemies in Hotel Mario; no Bloopers or Cheep-Cheeps can be found in its levels. If they were ever planned for the game, then they would have almost certainly been exclusive to Iggy's water-themed hotel.

This discovery answers some major questions about Iggy's hotel, but it also leaves old questions unanswered and new questions to be answered.
What was the name of the hotel? What was its gimmick? What did the other nine levels look like? What did its music sound like? Did it really have aquatic enemies like Bloopers? At what point was Iggy's hotel scrapped? Was the boss fight with Iggy changed after the hotel's scrapping? And so on, and so forth.
For those, I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

Conclusions

Let's recap all the evidence gathered on this fine page:

And there we go. This page should be a good archive of what we have regarding the cut hotel meant for Iggy Koopa. I think we should give it a fan nickname, now that we know its theming.
How about... Iggy's Under-Waternental Hotel!

Yeah, it's not great, but it's the best I can come up with. Maybe one day, we'll get more answers and assets for this sunken hotel.
One day... hopefully... maybe...