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Mario 128 was a tech demo for the GC, just like Luigi's Mansion was. Mario 128 showed off the GC's ability to handle that many onscreen marios each running their own collision and lighting routines. Luigi's mansion was made to highlight many of the onboard video effects the GC could literally do on the fly compliments of ATI's shaders.

Luigi's Mansion was later turned into a thin skinned game because of the audience's response when shown it's tech demo footage. Low sales numbers, and even lower game ratings could attribute to reasons why Mario 128, the other tech demo, never saw the light of day.

That said, I believe whatever was worked on, and or planned for Mario 128's eventual debut as a game had been put on the back burner and reissued as either one last hurrah for the GC, to be released closely to the non-cel shaded version of Zelda, to play on older gamer's nostalgia trump card. If not a GC game, it's highly probable it's being made into a DS game, simply because the DS lacks it's own original Mario title, which is defacto on any Nintendo flagship console or handheld.