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People who made the original Super Mario Bros shipped Wonder 38 years later
- boiler_up800 3y agoI’m trying to imagine myself crafting saas apps for 38 years.
- ulizzle 3y agoImagine running 'rm -rf node_modules' forever. Sounds like the 3rd circle of hell
- hotpotamus 3y ago> Peter Gibbons: What if we're still doing this when we're fifty? Samir: It would be nice to have that kind of job security. From "Office Space" - welcome to the club.
- tshaddox 3y agoI certainly wouldn't want to limit it to "SaaS apps," but I feel excited enough about the web to be making web sites for 38+ years.
- AndrewDucker 3y agoIf you don't enjoy your job at all then it's probably time to look for one that you do enjoy on some level.
- boiler_up800 3y agoOh I enjoy it… mostly.
- altairTF 3y ago[flagged]
- nerdjon 3y agoI didn't really realize that Nintendo was that good at keeping talent. I guess it kinda makes sense, they seem to have a vastly different culture than game developers have here. It is also interesting to compare this to the stories that came out of breath of the wild of them specifically asking their newer developers for the crazy ideas and that leading to how great BoTW was. However given just how crazy Wonder is I have to imagine this was still the case here. Super Mario Bros Wonder really is an amazing game. I have struggled at times with putting it down and going to bed. This will likely be my first 100% Mario game. (Can we talk about the Singing Piranha Plants in the second level!)
- surgical_fire 3y agoNot really that surprising when you have reports such as these: > https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 > https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/02/nintendo-is-raising-its-employee-pay-by-10percent-in-japan https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/02/nintendo-is-raisin... It's important to notice that both of these initiatives happened when the company was facing downturns. It is easy to be a good employer when things are going great, not so much when things are not as rosy. Add that to the Japanese working culture where tenure is merit, and staying in the same company is valued by employers in general.
- nazka 3y agoI feel like they are managing a tech company like you would manage a 300 old Japanese workshop and still be there for next 300 years.
- velcrovan 3y agoWhereas in the US: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103122001615 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... (from HN a few days ago IIRC)
- kmlx 3y ago> Add that to the Japanese working culture where tenure is merit, and staying in the same company is valued by employers in general. imo this is by far the biggest driver of “keeping talent”. japanese society and businesses don’t reward people that jump from job to job.
- goodboyjojo 3y agoalways loved mario.glad everyone is enjoying the new wonder game
- persnickety 3y ago> Back in the NES days, video games were small enough to be developed by absolutely tiny teams. Ahem Stardew Valley. Wordle. Almost anything on itch.io. Heck, NES is still getting new games: https://limitedrungames.com/collections/witch-n-wiiz https://limitedrungames.com/collections/witch-n-wiiz I think a better point of comparison is how much time it takes to create a game that receives acclaim now versus then.
- Arainach 3y agoTime is generally represented in person-hours, which correlate well to team size necessary to get a product out the door. Most individuals or tiny teams can't afford to spend multiple years working on something alone.
- PsylentKnight 3y agoYet a lot of very popular games have been made by individuals or very small teams. Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria, Hollow Knight, Braid, Vampire Survivors, Slay the Spire, Papers Please. I think you're right that the majority of games are made by larger teams, but there certainly seems to be something to the focus in vision enabled by smaller teams.
- trealira 3y agoThere's also Cave Story, which came out in 2004. I find it really impressive that the creator made the art, music, music editor, sound effect editor, music format, game engine, and stage editor, with only C++ and the Win32 interface, all while keeping a full time job (although he deliberately picked a low-key job at a printer company so he could work on Cave Story in his free time more). And halfway through, he got married and had kids, which slowed development.
- opyate 3y ago> got married and had kids, which slowed development Story of my life!
- muglug 3y agoOriginal interview quoted in the tweet this article regurgitates: https://www.nintendo.com.au/news-and-articles/ask-the-developer-vol-11-super-mario-bros-wonder-chapter-1 https://www.nintendo.com.au/news-and-articles/ask-the-develo...
- dang 3y agoThanks—good catch! We changed to that from https://www.gamesradar.com/5-people-made-the-original-super-mario-bros-all-of-them-were-still-at-nintendo-to-ship-wonder-38-years-later/ https://www.gamesradar.com/5-people-made-the-original-super-....
- jjice 3y agoThat's _wonder_-ful to see. I love the idea of being a "lifer" but I just can't see it happening for me. I like working on a variety of different things, but I think a lot of modern software won't have to make drastic changes the same way these devs did, moving from platform to platform and starting from scratch each time. Also, there's just too much financial reward in switching companies early in one's career (here in the US, at least). I'd be interested to hear from some folks that have been with their employers for quite a while here in HN and what makes them really want to stick around.
- claudiulodro 3y agoI think at Nintendo they've probably worked on like 20 games over the years, which probably helps keep things fresh and interesting. If they were in the Super Mario codebase for 40 years, just adding features like 2FA and CSV Export using an "Agile" workflow, that would make it rougher for sure.
- brokenbyclouds 3y agoI feel so seen in such a bad way
- MikeTheRocker 3y agoThis made me laugh out loud
- cableshaft 3y agoAlso completely swapping out the technology multiple times over as many years, so you're re-implementing 2FA or other features multiple times, without anything particularly new or different about it, just different tech.
- xnx 3y agoNintendo doesn't get enough credit for making games that are actually enjoyable to play. Most modern AAA games look great, but feel like a distraction (at best), and more often just like a chore.
- hcks 3y agoYes, when I think small not at all overrated game studio producing very original gameplays I really think Nintendo
- cloudking 3y agoNot only that, but enjoyable for all ages. They pay extra attention to details, and think about the experience from different age groups. For example on Super Mario Bros on Switch, when playing multiplayer you can tap both L+R to put your character in a safe bubble that floats and follows the rest of the players. This allows younger players to flee to safety in really difficult parts of levels, while older players can help them navigate to the next area before popping their bubble and bringing them back into the game. Such a small detail, but makes a massive difference when you're playing with the game with younger kids.
- xnx 3y agoExactly! Lots of shouting "bubble! bubble!" when playing that game with my friends of different video game skill levels.
- artificialLimbs 3y agoIt's great. 3D world had a helpful out for the young 'uns in the White Tanooki suit that appeared when you died enough times. =)
- Fuzzwah 3y agoI've played so much Super Mario Bros on the Wii with my young kids and the bubble mechanic is excellent. We've just started playing SMB Wonder on Switch and one of the changes is that it's no longer a bubble but sort of like a shooting star and you no longer need to manually trigger it. The new Nabbit character is also something that was added in the Wii-U game. This character isn't harmed by enemies, so can just run around only worried about environmental dangers. To balance this out, Nabbit can't pick up any power ups. It's a neat idea that returns again in Wonder, but now with more characters to select from you're not forced to have one of 4 players using it.
- kemenaran 3y agoKazuaki Morita was a programmer on Mario Bros., Zelda NES, Zelda SNES, Zelda Game Boy, Zelda 64, where he did the bosses and fishing game; among many others. He was often assigned the most challenging programming tasks. His coding style is so specific that it even shows in disassembled or decompiled code ("Ha, this file is classic Morita").
- RicoElectrico 3y agoCan you elaborate on Morita's coding style?
- hospitalJail 3y agoThat is a resume. I wonder how he feels about modern Nintendo. I feel like I'm second hand embarrassed for them.
- hcks 3y agoI mean they’ve been shipping the same game every year for all this time too
- sdwr 3y agoYeah, you can see in the interview that they are LOCKED IN to the core Mario concepts. Really get the sense that Mario is an institution, a career at Nintendo. Explains why the game feels subtly boring, at least from the trailers I watched. They are taking Mario and adding modifiers, not rethinking the foundation. You can't get the wonder + magic back by building off of what everyone already knows. BotW + TotK were the really creative games, this is just lip service to creativity.
- seanhunter 3y agoNot sure what you're getting at here. The amount of innovation in these Mario games is astonishing. It's not like "Madden" or "Fifa" or goodness knows annual franchises like "Assassin's creed". In "wonder" for example every single level has some sort of crazy unique mechanic that is distinctive to that level. Videogame dunkey has a good summary of wonder showcasing these innovations specifically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXhfuicuUa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXhfuicuUa0
- WillPostForFood 3y agoSo it's been almost 11 years since the release of the previous title, New Super Mario Bros. U. Mouri: Yes. While Super Mario Maker (7), Super Mario Maker 2, and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe were released after the launch of the previous title, this is the first new 2D Mario game in almost 11 years. I don't think "same game every year" is a fair characterization of what Nintendo is doing. They do the "yearly release" less than almost any major game company.
- hx8 3y agoThis is getting downvoted, but I openly wonder how many ports and emulations releases Super Mario Brothers has received.
- Fuzzwah 3y ago
- PredictorX1 3y agoThis article indicates that the Super Mario Brothers game for the Nintendo console (1987) was the original title in the Super Mario Borthers franchise, but it's worth noting that there was at least one earlier game, Mario Brothers (not "Super") for the Atari 800 (among others?) from 1983.
- krapp 3y agoAlso, if we're getting into trivia, Donkey Kong (1981) was the first game to feature Mario, called Jumpman at the time, because he was a man who could jump. Also also, Mario is supposedly based on someone who rented property to Nintendo.