In an interview with Eurogamer, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto spoke about the creation of the original Super Mario Bros. video game and the introductory World 1-1 level, easily one of the most important developments in video game history.
Miyamoto says he designed World 1-1 to be a sort of tutorial level, educating gamers and easing them into the game itself.
He also explained the intuitive steps of the first few seconds of the game and how, when broken down, they become incredibly important to the rest of the game. You see a suspicious enemy? You jump over it. A box with a question mark appears? You tap it. A coin comes into your view? You get excited. A mushroom hits you and you get bigger? You feel more powerful.
Every game designer, aspiring or otherwise, needs to watch this video.
It’s a lot of insight into one of the most important video games of all time and it’s coming from the man himself.
“Once the player realizes what they need to do, it becomes their game.”
