In a 1995 developer interview, Shigeru Miyamoto stated that the Super Star was originally going to briefly transform Baby Mario into his adult self. However, the idea was discarded after one of the developers pointed out that it would clash with the game's premise of being an origin story for the Mario brothers. Instead, Super Star Mario was redesigned to simply be Baby Mario in a yellow cape.

In 2020, sprites for Mario's adult form were uncovered as part of a massive leak of data from Nintendo's internal servers. These sprites indicate that Super Star Mario was not originally able to float in the air and that he was able to ride Yoshi to some extent (in the final game, Yoshi reverts to an egg until the Super Star wears off).