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Mario Couldn't Jump At First
- yourmomjump 17y agoYour mom can't jump!
- wgj 17y agoIwata: "So you wanted to know what it was that made players insert another 100 yen coin once the game was over and have another go?" Miyamoto: "And basically, I concluded that this was born of the players being mad at themselves. So I would try to analyze how the game made players feel that way."
- lanstein 17y agoI bet a lot of 100 yen coins were spent on Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japanese version, 'The Lost Levels' in the States)
- mlinsey 17y agoA key point here is that players were mad at themselves, not the game, which is why Mario's tight, nearly perfect controls are so important.
- aw3c2 17y agoAnd that is what I do not understand about Super Mario World (SNES). It seems to be the most popular of them all and people love it. To me the controls are very inaccurate and sluggish, especially compared to Super Mario Land 2 (6 golden coins, Gameboy).
- TheSOB88 17y agoSluggish? Really? The reaction times for air movement and probably movement in general are miles faster than in the original SMB. Are you sure you're talking about SMW? The one that introduced Yoshi?
- aw3c2 17y agoYes. I think it is something about the air control or "braking" that makes me feel this way. SML2 is way more direct.
- sofal 17y agoThe original Donkey Kong is easily the hardest and most frustrating video game I have ever played.
- eru 17y agoDid you try Spelunky or Nethack?
- leej 17y ago...also the funniest and cutest. then answer is donkey kong.
- christonog 17y agoI guess you've never played any of the games the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed? http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?page_id=13 http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?page_id=13
- TheSOB88 17y agoI never realized that they made it so you couldn't jump over the mushroom in SMB. That is so cool, and I need to somehow make my brain have those kind of ideas.
- Zot95 17y agoYes, a brilliant idea. It seems that much of the design in video games is to trick the player into failing. This was a case of tricking the player into success.
- ShardPhoenix 17y agoValve does a lot of this based on testing with players - they notice that players aren't doing what they need to do, or looking where they need to look, so they alter the level with (more-or-less) subtle ways to guide/force them into doing it.
- thristian 17y agoThere's a good exploration of how SMB World 1-1 teaches you how to play the game, here: http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=465
- jcl 17y agoI'm pretty sure you can jump over the mushroom if you either do so in the areas without the overhead blocks or if you time it right. They merely made it very difficult for a new player to avoid the mushroom.
- cyen 17y agogeneral - the other articles (the early ones at the very least) are all incredibly interesting discussions wrt video game design. Highlights: "The Reason Mario Wears Overalls" (character design by pixel): "Before you know it, you've used up 8 X 8 pixels. But if you draw a nose then a moustache, you don't really know if it's a mouth or a moustache, and it saves pixels." "Letting Everyone Know It Was A Good Mushroom": "That's the reason why it's designed so that whatever you do, you'll get the mushroom."
- boredguy8 17y agoIf you're interested, you should play Portal in the 'commentary' version -- a lot of thought went in to making the game intuitive with zero explicit instructions. I think they were pretty successful.
- rbranson 17y agoThe number of (laughs) in this interview makes me believe it is truly Japanese.
- brown9-2 17y agoI've never read an interview before which sounded like so much fun to be a part of!
- iron_ball 17y agoWell, in my understanding, what seems like free and unforced laughter is actually a sort of social signifier intended to grease the conversational wheels: "I am having a good time, we can continue talking." In the same way, Japanese conversations are marked by constant "aizuchi," little words of agreement and encouragement by the listener. A listener can constantly mutter "yes, quite so" and "now I understand," out of reflex, and then immediately follow up with a scathing rebuttal. Interesting cultural difference. In America, you show attention by being quiet and making eye contact.
- boredguy8 17y ago"Miyamoto - That's when we thought about what kind of creature could withstand being struck from below and would eventually recover. We racked our brains thinking what we could use…" "Iwata - And that's how you came up with the turtle! (laughs)" "Miyamoto - The turtle was the only solution! (laughs) Strike it from below and it flips over! Leave it for a while and it rights itself!"" I always wondered how turtles came to be so heavily involved.
- flocu 17y agoI always thought Mario was a bad copy of Giana Sisters. Seems like Giana Sisters was a clone with minor improvements...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- mkyc 17y agoHave a look at the source: <div class="utterance"><div class="name">Iwata</div> <div class="message">In this interview, we're going... I would have chosen "speaker" rather than "name", but this sort of attention is nice to see :)
- coderdude 17y agoGood attention to class names, but terrible use of markup. He should be using paragraphs instead of divs. Edit: Span for the name.
- xinsight 17y agoIs a paragraph a logical or a visual concept? Can a paragraph have a name/speaker attached to it? The author answered these questions differently than you, and kudos to them for thinking about the problem. Markup is "terrible" when people don't think about structure at all.
- henriklied 17y agoWhy on earth would you use a semantically insignificant element (SPAN) to markup something as significant as the name of the interview object? I'd easily mark this up as a DIALOG: <dialog> <dt>Iwata <dd>In this interview, we're going… </dialog>
- brown9-2 17y agoThis interview makes me wish that someone would write a "Video Game Designers at Work".
- ilamparithi 17y agoYou might like "Masters of Doom".
- Volt 17y agoIf anyone is interested in knowing, Iwata was at HAL Laboratory (before recently moving to Nintendo proper) where he programmed such games as Kirby, Earthbound, and (at least the original prototype for) Super Smash Bros.
- Hexstream 17y ago"Iwata: Donkey Kong involved jumping, as did Mario Bros., so you felt that Nintendo were the real originators of this kind of game. Miyamoto: I did. I went as far as thinking that jumping is an original idea and that it should be patented! Anyway, I thought: "Right, I'm not going to let those other games top us!" (laughs) We had done tests where a large character jumped around with the blue sky in the background…" Now, close your eyes... then, try to imagine a world in which nobody other than Nintendo can legally sell a game which involves jumping in some way (unless they have a license). The terror.