

Mario Couldn't Jump At First - bdr
http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page1.jsp

======
wgj
Iwata: "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."

~~~
sofal
The original Donkey Kong is easily the hardest and most frustrating video game
I have ever played.

~~~
eru
Did you try Spelunky or Nethack?

~~~
leej
...also the funniest and cutest. then answer is donkey kong.

------
Hexstream
" _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.

------
mkyc
Have 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
Good attention to class names, but terrible use of markup. He should be using
paragraphs instead of divs. Edit: Span for the name.

~~~
xinsight
Is 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.

------
rbranson
The number of (laughs) in this interview makes me believe it is truly
Japanese.

~~~
brown9-2
I've never read an interview before which sounded like so much fun to be a
part of!

~~~
iron_ball
Well, 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.

------
cyen
general - 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
If 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.

------
boredguy8
"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.

------
brown9-2
This interview makes me wish that someone would write a "Video Game Designers
at Work".

~~~
ilamparithi
You might like "Masters of Doom".

------
Volt
If 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.

------
flocu
I always thought Mario was a bad copy of Giana Sisters. Seems like Giana
Sisters was a clone with minor improvements...

------
TheSOB88
I 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
Yes, 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.

