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AAlmost everyone who has ever chosen a video game controller will have played at least one Mario game. Whether you had a Nintendo Entertainment System in the 80s, the N64 in the 90s, or a Wii in the 2000s, the jolly bouncy plumber has graced every generation of Nintendo consoles and touched every generation of gamers. More than 373 million Super Mario games have been sold to date, meaning hundreds of millions of siblings unite to find Star Road in Super Mario World, travelers escaping with Super Mario 3D Land on the train, and parents flying from planet to planet in Super Mario Galaxy. with his kids.
These are, in essence, simple games about the pleasure of running and jumping, of moving a character in an abstract and colorful space. What makes them better than a thousand other platform games, as this genre is known, is Mario’s finesse and responsiveness in movement. The dizzying jump, the slight inertia that carries you forward after a jump, and the sudden acceleration of your run translate into pleasure when you play. There is so much skill and satisfaction in mastering its movement, in chaining backflips, wall-kicks and long-jumps to scale the geometry of the levels and find its secrets, and this is what has captivated children (and adults) for 35 years. Mario’s designers know how to hide things in the nooks and crannies of these levels, always answering the question “what happens when I do this?” with “something fun”.
The first of those designers, Shigeru Miyamoto, was 24 when he joined Nintendo in 1977, and a month short of his 33rd birthday when the original Super Mario Bros was released. For him, that joy of movement is what still defines Mario, even as he has gone from being a tiny pixel to a superstar leaping into the galaxy. “[Mario is about] being able to feel that you improve as you learn the movements by heart, and then use those movements, think about what to do next, and try different things. Creating all kinds of different reactions to this player’s experimentation has been at the core of these games, ”he says. “I have [always] He felt that players trying different things, knowing very well what they are doing, is the core of interactive play. “
Takashi Tezuka, who worked alongside Miyamoto as a director on the 2D Mario games of the 1980s and 1990s, agrees: “The basic premise of Super Mario games is that we can naturally enjoy Mario’s actions. The technical aspects may be different between 2D and 3D games, but it remains the same. If we as players screw up a move because of the controls rather than something we did wrong, then we end up not wanting to play anymore. On the other hand, if we feel like things would have worked out if we had jumped a little earlier, that makes us want to try again. “
Mario’s history as a character goes back a little further than the launch of Super Mario Bros in Japan on September 13, 1985. He first appeared in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, trying to rescue a young lady from a giant ape. At the time his name was Jumpman, although Miyamoto’s own name for him was “Mr Video”. It was after some employees of the nascent Nintendo of America noticed a resemblance between the chubby, mustachioed character and the store’s owner, Mario Segale, that he became known as Mario; Miyamoto liked the nickname and stuck with it. Another arcade game, 1983’s Mario Bros, was the character’s debut as an Italian plumber, alongside his tragically less famous brother Luigi.
The visual limitations of 1980s video game technology (small pixel grids, limited color palette) are the explanation for both Mario’s appearance, with his contrasting blue bib and red shirt, as well as the mind-blowing aesthetics of Mario games to this day: clouds with eyes, little googly-eyed turtles, animated rocks, trees, and mushrooms. “I’ve always designed the features to better match the game’s functionality, that is, so that players can understand them without any explanation, just like the people watching from the sidelines,” says Miyamoto.
“There were several reasons why we used pipes [as a visual motif]- They were perfect for the mechanic in Mario Bros, where enemies that disappeared at the bottom of the screen reappeared at the top; they had this comic book feel about them where they would bulge up and get something out of them; and then there was the fact that I always saw them on the way to work [at Nintendo HQ in Kyoto]. “
“In the age of 8-bit hardware, many games used black as the background,” adds Tezuka. “However, to create a world where the background shifted, we made use of these limited colors and created a design based on black outlines filled with unique colors. Miyamoto drew rough sketches for the Super Mushroom and Super Star, and it seemed perfectly natural to add eyes to them. After that, it felt like a natural extension to set eyes on the clouds and mountains in Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels. “
From Super Mario Bros in 1985 to 1996, 2D Mario games grew increasingly colorful and extensive, with an ever-expanding wardrobe of vaguely psychedelic power-ups, from the classic mushroom to a blade that bestowed a raccoon tail and ears. to a pen that gave Mario the power of flight. In 1996, Mario took his first steps in 3D in Super Mario 64, a revolutionary game that laid out the plan for how to move a character in space. Where most early 3D games are practically unplayable now, hampered by the limitations of nascent technology, Super Mario 64 still feels magical.
Mario owes his current expanded set of moves to the challenges of running and jumping in 3D, says Yoshiaki Koizumi, who has directed 3D Mario games from Super Mario 64 to Sunshine to the Galaxy. “When we first went to 3D in Super Mario 64, we realized how difficult it is to jump on enemies that are moving in 3D space,” he explains. “So we created a lot of new movements in addition to the jumps that make use of 3D functions, like running, shooting water or spinning… I was full of enthusiasm working with the new technology that we had in front of us. I didn’t feel like we were transforming Super Mario into 3D; rather, I had the feeling that we were creating a whole new style of entertainment. “Later, Koizumi found himself recreating these early experiments during the development of Super Mario Galaxy in 2007:” There was no other game available where you would move by gravity modified space, so creating it was a trial and error process. “
Nintendo’s first experiments with Mario in 3D left Miyamoto unsatisfied. Plans to include Mario’s brother Luigi in the game so that people could play together were quickly abandoned. “When we tried to run our 3D experiments on a console, Mario was the only thing that moved. Of course, there was no precedent either. While we expected things to be limited, what we got was even less than we anticipated. It was at this point that we stopped Mario and Luigi from showing up at the same time and decided to rework the game, ”he says.
Mario 64’s famous opening screen, where players can grab and twist a giant Mario face into hilariously grotesque expressions, was also due to the frustrations and challenges of working in 3D, Tezuka says. “I did not participate in the design of the game for Super Mario 64, but because it was 3D, we had a lot of things that we dealt with for the first time. As we struggled with that, Mr. Miyamoto said that he wanted players to be able to play outside of the game itself with the model of Mario’s head that a programmer made; letting them rotate it or pull their nose “
Around the time Super Mario 64 was in development, Miyamoto started swimming and got very excited about it; If you’ve ever wondered where Mario’s quirky breaststroke comes from, now you know. Mario’s other designers over the years have also been inspired by his real life experiences. “Through Mario, I wanted to recreate the experience of a hero jumping from ceiling to ceiling like those heroes I saw in my childhood,” says Koizumi. “I did achieve something in Super Mario Sunshine, since you can climb onto the rooftops of the plaza and run. The water-based game with FLUDD [Mario’s water-gun backpack] it also reflects my childhood experiences, playing in the water and enjoying the freshness of my skin ”.
Kenta Motokura, director of the most recent Mario games, Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario Odyssey, is part of a generation of Nintendo designers who grew up with the first Mario games, so his approach to the series is based on their childhood experiences. “Super Mario Bros 3 is my favorite Mario title,” he says. “The idea of having many different kingdoms in Super Mario Odyssey came from Super Mario Bros 3. The fact that I was raised playing Mario games in my childhood had a huge impact on the way I make games.
“I have also used the knowledge of body movement, which I have acquired through sports like snowboarding, as a reference for Mario’s movements, and I have also included terrains and environments that I find interesting in the games. I think you can also see things from trips to places like Mexico or New York that I found funny or that made me nervous reflected in Super Mario Odyssey as well ”.
The first level of Super Mario Bros, 1-1, is considered today as a perfect example of game design taught in universities. The elements are arranged in such a way that you cannot stop learning the rules: you have to jump on a Goomba to avoid it; eating mushrooms makes Mario transform; ? the blocks contain surprises. Each Mario game has adopted this design philosophy, where the levels themselves teach you how to play, always giving you the opportunity to experiment before letting yourself fail, allowing you to follow your curiosity. It is this joy and experimentation that the new generations of Mario designers are encouraged to adopt.
“First I tell them that they should have an idea in mind of how the users are going to play,” says Tezuka. “Imagine we came running down a particular route, we ran into an enemy and we dodged it, then we’ll probably wonder what’s up there to the left and want to go down that road, so that’s where we should put a hidden block. That kind of thinking. It’s like playing pretend when I was a kid. “
