The Development History of Super Mario Bros. | 35th Anniversary (Documentary/Retrospective)

[Music] mario is everywhere he's likely the single most well-known character is seen in gaming to date posters merchandise tv shows movies figurines you name it there's a mario of it and of course the most important and where it originated you can be sure to find video games with him front and center on the box perhaps what's most surprising is that mario's popularity is still high even decades later yet like any great success story mario had its own origins too in the early 80s arcade games were all the rage some would even go on to be hugely successful franchises as many well-known franchises as there are in the gaming industry from this era none is as prolific or successful as mario more than 600 million copies have been sold in the franchise across no fewer than 200 games with an estimated revenue at above 36 billion dollars this makes it one of the highest grossing media franchises of all time donkey kong and mario brothers would originally be released to arcades but later be ported to the famicom known as the nes outside of japan the inventive designer of these games shigeru miyamoto would work on many more games after this his blockbuster hit would release in 1985 however super mario brothers a game that would grow into the most massive franchise in nintendo's seemingly limitless catalog yet as giant as this series has become it like any great work of art has been embroiled in its own hardships as the many games of the early to mid 80s were developed many issues arose from technical limitations that are no longer too cumbersome today whether it be characters items or removing the capability to show two players on a single screen sacrifices had to be made to accommodate the famicom hardware during this time miyamoto led a team of only about seven programmers and artists to turn his ideas into what would become a monumentally historic feat and in less than a year as we know it today this ambitious project would in fact be built into a game yet even miyamoto himself likely had no clue of the shock waves he would inadvertently create for the gaming industry decades later as unprecedented as the super mario franchise would become it too started only as an idea to explore this idea in more detail this is the development history of super mario bros i'm here with steve russo who's the creator of the very first video game how you doing steve well uh i have a little problem with first because there were games on computers before space war what is the first video game it's a more widely contested topic than one might expect but space war is probably the most widely recognized as such even if not the first video game however it was certainly an important one as it inspired the first two commercial arcade games in 1971 galaxy game and computer space following these would be the truly successful pong in 1972 the gaming industry entered what's commonly referred to as a golden age in 1978 with the release of space invaders from here many competitors would try to get in on the action one of these would be a little-known company at the time nintendo during the middle of the so-called golden age they would first see major success in the form of donkey kong in 1981. the mastermind behind this game would be none other than shigeru miyamoto after making a couple of sequels to donkey kong miyamoto would start working on a new game he would rework the player character jumpman from this point onward he was mario and mario was to be given a brother and his name was luigi titled mario brothers the first player plays as mario a character who can fall from any height unharmed the goal in this game is to eliminate creatures emerging from sewers even as a two-dimensional game it's crude by today's standards the screen doesn't scroll the background is black and gameplay is slow in the context of 1983 however it works and more importantly it's fun it would be successful too even if not hugely so and miyamoto would go on to work on many more games after this have you ever heard of nintendo no what's he i think it's something in japanese nintendo is something that started in japan and has taken america by storm a hugely successful home console would release in japan only one day after mario brothers release this was nintendo's own game console the famicom it would later be released in north america europe and australia it would be known as the nintendo entertainment system in those regions abbreviated as the nes but in the meantime nintendo would be hard at work developing games for this system [Music] for years miyamoto was doing all the design work by himself but that would change part way through while working on a game exclusively for the famicom game designer takashi tazuka joined the team during this time in 1984 and miyamoto realized that having another designer on the team would be a big help to him the game they were working on would have quite a large character at the top of the screen and the game would be known as devil world released in october of 1984. also in 1984 miyamoto worked with a programmer from the system's research and development team toshihiko nakago they would go on to develop a game that's much more widely recognized than devil's world and includes a prominently used scrolling screen [Music] excitebike a motocross racing game would release in november of 1984 and very well received overall takashi tazuko would be shown the sales figures for the original mario brothers on the famicom seeing how it had sold consistently well he approached miyamoto and he responded by saying mario seems like the way to go miyamoto and nakago would work on two games simultaneously with the same staff these games would eventually turn into super mario brothers and the legend of zelda one end result from this is that bars of fire are used in both games originally used in zelda the team thought it would work better in super mario brothers and so they transferred them across games for the very start of super mario brothers development miyamoto wrote some test specifications in december of 1984. he wanted to see what it would be like with a double-sized mario jumping around and the first thing he told nakago to do was to make a test version of the game with a large character that's capable of jumping around due to this a normal-sized mario didn't even exist in the first prototype of super mario bros instead it was actually a square and the prototype had a black background but it seemed satisfactory to miyamoto at the time beyond this basic gameplay the team needed to think of more to come out with a fun game original design documentation mentions of using rockets in the air and concept art suggests yoshi may have been planned to be in the game while the reason behind why they weren't included in the game is unknown it could likely be due to technical limitations or the team's lack of familiarity with the famicom hardware the team also originally thought about having a shoot em up stage where mario is on a cloud and shoots at enemies this would be dropped however to focus more on action-oriented jumping action-oriented athletic jumping and running this would be the central focus for nintendo's next big game after experimenting with what would become the basis for the legend of zelda miyamoto's team started writing specifications for super mario brothers after being pressured by nakago to settle on making something after seeing successful movement in the december test miyamoto and tuzuka went to work drawing the levels on huge sheets of graph paper and nakago's team would have to painstakingly enter the data by hand this wouldn't start coming together much until the upcoming february of 1985. even this early on one can see both kinks being worked out as well as unique decisions being made for the game these february specifications referred to enemies as just obstacles instead of enemies monsters or creatures this was mostly as a habit from making donkey kong a game using primarily obstacles another oddity came in the form of implementing the game's audio normally when developing a game the developer wouldn't put in the sound until about a month before completion but this game was different [Music] for super mario brothers the team decided to put some sound in the early stages even if only as a placeholder to ensure the cpu would keep up with demand throughout the whole development process this is where musical composer koji kondo comes in impressed with kondo including a song for devil world's bonus screen miyamoto appointed him to sound for super mario brothers as he thought kondo was fit for the job a core theme for creating this game was to have land sea and sky to make up the stages of the game partway through making the levels of the game the team initially gave up on having sky levels due to memory constraints this would be re-examined later on in development but until then the team still needed to implement a basic prototype that at least had a sky greenery and clouds nakago later states that he sensed the game had started to become something amazing when working on the background while trivial to pull off in the industry today black backgrounds were the norm in the early 80s but super mario bros would include a blue background to represent a sky even though nothing would be displayed at this point besides the blue sky white clouds in the ground nakago states it really jumped out to him as he thought to himself this is incredible surprised the famicom could manage to display such vivid graphics he'd never seen anything like it before and called miyamoto immediately telling him they had come up with something amazing yet none of this would matter without at least moderately lengthy gameplay surely right from the start miyamoto wanted to make a single level last for approximately one minute of the character going from the first screen to the end of the level surprised by this nakago was under the impression that it would take about 60 screens to pull that off considering how fast the player can move though only as sky clouds and the ground would be shown miyamoto likely understood that obstacles blocks and enemies would end up having a large impact on the time it takes to get to the end of the level when nakago's team actually created the levels they often only needed around 12 screens or so when they would finish a level they had burned the data onto rom and both miyamoto and tizuka would play through the level whenever a change was needed nakago's team would receive notes stating what was needed and they would sometimes spend the entire day pouring over the notes and making even a single change when creating the characters mario was perhaps the easiest of the bunch to make not only was there an already existing game to look at but miyamoto had been drawing mario for quite a while up to the point of development so he knew what he wanted mario to look like the priorities for mario were simple make the gameplay entail athletic jumping and make his character model large the latter seemingly presented a problem however as the team wanted to see farther ahead in the levels the team could pull the camera back for a broader view but then mario himself would appear smaller nakago suggested that maybe it would be fun to have both a large mario and a small one thus the team decided that you'd lose a life if the smaller mario runs into an enemy but mario would only get smaller if he's large when hit musical composer koji kondo mentions of having played the game since these early experimental stages he states that the game made a strong impact on him when he first saw the player character moving around in the world and was bigger than any other he'd seen prior as far as creating the music and sounds that would match it was easy for him to imagine what the underwater music should sound like so it was the first song he finished after that he made the above ground music and the first version actually didn't go over well while it matched the theme present from the blue sky and greenery in the background it didn't match the rhythm of mario's fast-paced running and jumping after actually playing the early versions instead of matching to how the game looked he created the current above ground music heard in the game [Music] today while the plans were set for mario at this point making the antagonist of the game wasn't nearly as quick or easy for miyamoto first off he didn't draw a bowser much and mentions struggling when getting the lines to come together right taking inspiration from toei animation specifically through alakazam the great he liked how the aux looked and that's how he imagined bowser his drawings didn't quite line up with that idea however and when takashi tezuka saw miyamoto's work he thought it was supposed to be a turtle miyamoto later stated that he'd been drawing something completely incomprehensible a turtle's body with an ox's head and laughs at this recollection eventually it was agreed upon to meet somewhere in the middle to create an interesting but ultimately well-made enemy as for other enemies in the original mario brothers the turtle enemies of the game were called shell creepers and you could only first knock them off their feet and then make contact with them to deliver the final blow upon reflection the team realized it made no sense that you could be killed when jumping on the top of the turtle's back before knocking them off their feet surely the turtles should come out worse from that encounter the team then decided that if they made another mario game they would have it so you could jump on the turtles without dying so for super mario brothers they did exactly that the main enemy the player would likely encounter throughout development stages were koopa troopas in fact goombas as prevalent as they ended up being for the game's release would be made at the very end of development koopa troopas were often tricky for new players due to requiring multiple steps to eliminate them after much testing the team realized that an enemy that only walked would be more natural to introduce the new players to the game [Music] level design for super mario brothers was made much like how koopa troopas and goombas were made the first worlds created were actually not the introductory ones but instead were actually worlds three and five they were often the most fun for the programming team but also proved to be far more difficult than what the first world should be beginners often had difficulties with them when testing it out in fact level 1-1 was made towards the end of development unlike now where there are many predecessors to introduce the player at the time of super mario bros release everyone was a beginner at the game there were no strategy guides available at the time of the game's release and players tended not to read the instruction manual or be told what to do to get the player absorbed in the game in a natural way the team designed its levels with a particular awareness that the player should become familiar with how things worked in super mario brothers for instance the mushroom is easily able to be gotten at the very start of the game even if the player doesn't acquire it immediately the team positioned the very first pipe so that the mushroom hits it to bounce back to the player another example of the team making the game friendly to newcomers can be found in its sky levels while the team had initially abandoned the idea of implementing one tezuka felt strongly about them being in the game and the team managed to pull it off upon re-examination the idea of traversing beanstalks into a sky level came from tsuka himself and was inspired by jack and the beanstalk a fairy tale that includes a boy who grows an enormous beanstalk reaching into the clouds using a handful of magic beans in super mario brothers miyamoto ran with this idea to enact a feature where the player can hit a block to make the vine grow into the sky a new problem presented itself from this however mainly how would you bring mario back to the ground while jumping would work the team thought of this as unintuitive since in the rest of the game that's exactly what the player avoids because they lose a life if they jump down the screen to solve this quandary the team simply added a coin mid-air to entice the player this requires some faith on the player's end but as nakago states in a later interview the team can't betray the player's expectations therefore if there are coins placed you can surely collect them without harm not all accommodations were made specifically for the newcomers however throughout super mario bros development miyamoto states that while the team attempted to pull in elements from a variety of games the most important was perhaps excitebike the arcade version of the game had three levels the player could choose from to start playing because as the team figured people who were good at the game would want to start from the more advanced levels straight away they thought it too impractical to allow the player to choose the last world straight away in super mario brothers yet they thought it would still be nice if people who were good at the game could easily go from world 1 to world 8. this is where the idea of warps comes from the player would need to just go through the short and easy areas to come across the first one and choose between three worlds clearly both the designs of their levels as well as the game as a whole had much thought put into them much of tezuka's work in particular seemed to have interesting level design and enemy placements he'd anticipate how the player might play it and then after making it show it to miyamoto for collaboration and to fix anything that didn't feel right to either of them as far as things that don't feel right go bugs are typically among these however there are a couple of bugs that miyamoto would let slide to further enhance the game during development once you hit a block with mario a coin is supposed to pop out and the block is meant to become unhittable one time for some reason that didn't happen and if you hit the block again another coin came out miyamoto states that even though this should upset the rules and balance of the game when you actually play it the action becomes more pleasing therefore the team made places where a bunch of coins would come out in a low spot due to how fun it was to hit these blocks repeatedly and quickly another glitch would be found in the form of an endless looping water level in the us version of the game while the japanese version sends the player to a succession of three different levels this would be dubbed the minus world while this is a bug and unintentional miyamoto's perspective is that it's essentially a feature too since it doesn't crash or do anything detrimental to the game miyamoto states in a later interview that when you work solely from a paper plan you tend to be hard on it and treat it like a certain father yet as the game comes together you gradually begin to treat it like a grandparent and think well if it makes a player happy i'll give out as much candy as they want while technical optimization is always a concern in development the teams at nintendo wanted to ensure super mario bros would be incredibly optimized for the famicom as a result many objects and sounds are reused in surprisingly inventive ways for instance the greenery and clouds are made from the same parts the sound of mario getting bigger is also the same sound for when he gets smaller and is also the same for when he goes into pipes optimizations like this were not only necessary but also fun for the team at times if someone approaches a programmer stating they're having trouble because there's not enough memory sometimes that was a way to show off what programming one can achieve at the team attempting the same functions but using a smaller amount of memory nakago mentions scrambling around for available memory as the team rapidly ran out and miyamoto demanded quite a bit kondo also required a decent amount for the ending song the team would typically leave about 100 bytes as a precaution in case they encountered bugs that would need to be fixed yet they were reaching the end of development for super mario brothers and there didn't appear to be any bugs in testing so they just used up the leftover space after nearly everything was made and optimizations applied there were still about 20 bytes left over miyamoto said let's make a crown from this the team did exactly that and resulted in a crown at the end of the game as a reward for players who acquired 10 or more extra lives after nearly all was said and done there were still eight bites left miyamoto in a silly mood told the team to just put in some more blocks and jokes if any bugs show up don't look at me after all of this the game would be fully developed and put onto cartridge format in august of 1985. it would be only one month later when japan could first see the game that little did they know would impact the gaming industry for decades onward miyamoto started seeing how people were responding to the game and stated this is just like it was with donkey kong this could turn out to be huge as we know it today super mario brothers wasn't just huge there were still some interesting decisions made up to super mario brothers actual release date miyamoto was thinking about asking a professional artist or well-known illustrator to make the art for the game but time was running out so he drew the original art for the package himself this is likely why there ends up being a pretty large deviation between the original arts scene pre-release and art scene soon after the game's official release september 13th 1985 this would be when super mario brothers would hit store shelves in japan fans from north america europe and australia would need to wait a little longer to get their hands on the game the actual release date of super mario brothers in the us would come soon after japan's nintendo cites this as being october 18th 1985 as a launch title alongside the nes however there doesn't appear to be any definitive proof of this for the game itself in fact it's actually uncertain precisely when super mario brothers released for the us what detailed in a gamasutra article in 2012 there are a few dates that could have been the actual release date for the game while a filing with the us copyright office suggests an october 18th release date there's no official recording of any sales or introduction of the game being alongside the nes debut in new york one possibility is that the game had a ship date of october 18th but a release date of november 17th nearly one month later this is what the gamasutra article suggests with a source unsighted as they are believed to have collected this information from an internal database after the north american release of super mario bros european and australian fans would both receive the game in 1987. looking back during an interview tezuka was surprised to see how many people from around the world would end up playing super mario brothers to create such a popular game much help came from development in miyamoto's previous games most notably devil world and excitebike experienced from creating devil world's large character that experience was a big help for the team in making a large mario the experience from scrolling the screen in excitebike also helped in making the very same function for super mario brothers miyamoto states that super mario brothers was supposed to be a grand culmination of all nes cartridge games up to that point being one year prior to the famicom's disk systems release the team intended for it to be the last game they would release on cartridges miyamoto wanted to put in as much as possible that would make people think thoughts like nintendo sure does no cartridges and how did they do that while the intention was to make super mario brothers the last major cartridge release in anticipation for the famicom disk system the disk system didn't end up being successful for very long it sold well in japan for a while jumping the 2 million units sold mark by the end of 1986 which was also the same year it released this momentum wouldn't keep going for long however as the fragile discs would often be made unplayable due to a lack of shutters a decision made to reduce costs combine this with rampant piracy of disks as well as major developers refusing to produce games for the system due to nintendo's strict licensing terms and it creates a perfect storm that leads to the system's downfall even with the disc system's downfall however nintendo would push on to make many more games including of course mario games with the release of super mario bros 3 and world in 1988 in 1999 respectively miyamoto mentions of an almost obsessive idea that arises if he and the team don't add new elements fans of previous games won't be satisfied due to this tzuka started implementing mini-games such as roulette in these mario entries there was a time after this however that miyamoto had to put a ban on many games so the team never had to rely on them to make the core gameplay fun by 2005 the game's 20th anniversary it would receive no fewer than eight ports as we know it today super mario bros was immensely successful in popularized side-scrolling platform games in the super mario series alone there would be 31 entries made all the way up to 2019 with the release of super mario maker 2. when asked how he makes the mario games miyamoto states that they're thinking the game's up as they go and he can only really answer what makes each game different he comments the easy thing about making them is that they naturally change alongside the technology as the tech advances so too do the mario games change alongside it and because of this adjustment he doesn't think he could have stuck with the series for this long if it weren't for them reflecting upon his amicable relationship with the rest of the team he mentions that they've been together making games for so long likely because while their opinions often differ it never drags on he suspects it to be like a symbiotic relationship where they think they should let each other thrive with their own ideas because it works out to everyone's benefit as a whole even 35 years after the release of super mario brothers the series is still quite alive and well tuzuka thinks the series has stayed popular precisely because they've preserved the original foundation and states the pleasures that human beings get in seeking fun are concentrated in the super mario brothers games even when the times change and a new installment comes out the visuals change and music becomes richer but the basic fun elements of play can still be found in each game nakako mentions that while there are a lot of different kinds of video games he feels that super mario brothers is its own genre not that it's just side-scrolling action but he feels that it constitutes its own genre and if it didn't it too would get old while the sheer quantity of super mario games makes innovation a seemingly impossible task nintendo has been doing so for 35 years now whether or not this novelty will eventually wear off as unknown but no matter what the future holds saying that super mario brothers has revolutionized the gaming industry is likely an understatement nothing can take that away from shigeru miyamoto takashi tazuka or anyone at nintendo who helped develop the game what the team has achieved is a truly incredible accomplishment it invigorated gaming as a whole for years to come and hopefully i've shown you how the team managed to pull off this tremendous feat in gaming's history thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Trogdor8freebird

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Rating: 4.927928 out of 5

Keywords: Super Mario Bros., Development History, nintendo entertainment system, NES, NES games, SMB, Documentary, Gameplay, 35 years old, Anniversary, 35 years later, Review, Retrospective, Retrospective Review, Video Game History, Gaming, Classic, Nintendo, mario, super mario, famicom, mario famicom, mario bros, new super mario, shigeru miyamoto, nintendo srd, super mario bros 35, super mario documentary, history of super mario bros, Development History of Super Mario Bros., super mario bros

Id: 5aYiXbxgT30

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020