Mario’s history as a character extends slightly further back than the release of Super Mario Bros in Japan on 13 September 1985. On the other hand, if we feel like things would have worked out if we’d just jumped a little earlier, then that makes us want to try again.” If we as players mess up a move because of the controls rather than something we did wrong, then we end up not wanting to play any more. The technical aspects may be different between 2D and 3D games, but this remains the same. Takashi Tezuka, who worked alongside Miyamoto as director on the 2D Mario games of the 1980s and 90s, agrees: “It is the basic premise of Super Mario games that we can naturally enjoy Mario’s actions. “I’ve felt that players trying out different things, knowing full well what it is that they are doing, is the core of interactive gameplay.” Creating all kinds of different reactions to this player experimentation has been the core of these games,” he says. “ being able to feel yourself improve to the extent that you learn the moves by heart, and then using those moves, thinking about what to do next and trying different things out.
For him, that joy of movement is what still defines Mario, even as he has gone from little pixel-man to galaxy-hopping superstar. The first of those designers, Shigeru Miyamoto, was 24 years old when he joined Nintendo in 1977, and a month shy of his 33rd birthday when the original Super Mario Bros was released. Mario’s designers know to hide things in the nooks and crannies of these levels, to always answer the question “what happens when I do this?” with “something fun”. There is such skill and satisfaction in mastering his movement, in stringing together backflips and wall-kicks and long-jumps to scale the geometry of the levels and find their secrets, and this is what has enthralled children (and adults) for 35 years. The soaring jump, the slight inertia that carries him forward after a leap, and the sudden acceleration of his run all translate to pleasure when you play. What makes them better than a thousand other platformers, as this genre is known, is the finesse and responsiveness in Mario’s movement. These are in essence straightforward games about the pleasure of running and jumping, of moving a character around in colourful, abstract space.
Over 373m Super Mario games have been sold to date, which means hundreds of millions of siblings uniting to find Star Road in Super Mario World, commuters escaping with Super Mario 3D Land on the train, and parents soaring from planet to planet in Super Mario Galaxy with their kids.
Whether you had a Nintendo Entertainment System in the 1980s, the N64 in the 90s or a Wii in the 00s, the joyful little jumping plumber has graced every generation of Nintendo’s consoles – and touched every generation of players. A lmost everyone who has ever picked up a video game controller will have played at least one Mario game.
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