Super Mario Bros. – 2015 Developer Interview

—Did you join Nintendo because you wanted to make games?

Tezuka: I didn't actually join because I loved games. I studied design as a student, and I knew I wanted a job where I could create "play", or something fun. I entered the company with the vague intention of drawing art for games. At the time, Nintendo was making games with a limited number of people and on very tight schedules, so in addition to creating art, I ended up doing level design too.

—When did work on Super Mario Bros. begin?

Tezuka: Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, planned the project in February 1985. There were already games featuring Mario, but the idea this time was to make a game where a larger character ran around a field, and I was brought in to help.

—Why make him large?

Tezuka: Because it feels good to control. In action games, it's easier to convey movement to the player if the character is bigger. We wanted to see a big Mario in action across land, sea, and air. When I heard that, I thought, "That sounds like fun." In the prototype, we were just moving a big box around the screen, but there was a certain joy in just moving something that large.

—Mario is such a unique character.

Tezuka: Miyamoto designed him before I joined. Considering the hardware limitations of the time, he had to figure out how to make a human shape look effective. He made the nose large so his face would be distinct, and added a mustache so the features would stand out.

—In practical terms, how did you actually build the levels for Super Mario Bros?

Tezuka: This was an era before we had dedicated software development tools. We would draw the stage layout on graph paper and hand it to the programmers. The next day, it would come back as a playable level on the computer. The turnaround was very slow.

—That sounds tedious.

Tezuka: For corrections, like "move this block up one space," we would place tracing paper over the original layout, draw the changes, and resubmit the order. I wouldn't call it hard per se, but I felt like we were inventing the development process as we went.

—You worked closely with Miyamoto on this, right?

Tezuka: I would show the levels I drew to Miyamoto before they were input. There was really no conflict of opinion. When I'd come up with something I liked, he'd think it through with me, saying, "To make that idea work, let's try it this way." Because the hardware was limited, we weren't only thinking about the levels; we were inventing the rules to build them.

—Did the levels require a lot of revision, or were they mostly right off-the-bat?

Tezuka: They almost never clicked on the first try. I'd build it with a specific flow in mind, like "an enemy appears here and Mario moves like this." But people rarely play the way you expect, so I'd watch them and make adjustments. Also, when you build it yourself, you inevitably make it too hard. The basic stage known as 1-1 was actually something we came up with at the very end while balancing the overall difficulty.

—If you're skilled enough, there are levels you can sprint through without ever stopping. Was that intentional?

Tezuka: Yes. I wanted to build levels that felt good to "blast through." People really liked the rhythm of running continuously and jumping occasionally, so we leaned into that sense of momentum. Sound was the same way. The Famicom could basically only output three sounds at once. When you grab a coin or break a block, one part of the background music actually cuts out for an instant. If you grab a coin while jumping, you're only hearing one part of the melody. We accepted that because the feeling of exhilaration was more important to us.

—The sound effects are so iconic, like that "boing" when Mario jumps.

Tezuka: That's the sensibility of my colleague, composer Koji Kondo. The sound usually comes in toward the end of development. It seems he can't really visualize the audio until the game's movement is finalized. I was so happy when I finally heard the music for the overworld and underground themes. "This is going to make the game so much more fun," I thought. Up until then, there was no sound, so I had been making the "boing" noises myself when I played. (laughs)

—The year after Super Mario Bros. launched you released a sequel with souped-up difficulty.

Tezuka: Players were demanding "more difficult levels." We made SMB2 for a new type of hardware (the Disk System). We kept the characters and music the same but changed the art on the floor blocks. It was a small thing, but I wanted to make the distinction clear.

—There were also new additions like the Poison Mushroom and headwinds.

Tezuka: I wanted to include items that weren't just rewards, but also some "mean" ones. They ended up being too mean though, so we didn't bring those things back for the later games. (laughs)

—Two years later, Super Mario Bros. 3 arrived with a completely revamped structure.

Tezuka: Because the second game hadn't changed that much, I felt a lot of pressure to "change things significantly." The development took over two years.

—Mario flew for the first time, using a tail.

Tezuka: We really just forced it in there, honestly. (laughs) Sprouting a tail from taking a leaf, or turning into a Tanooki… Japanese people know those tropes, but overseas audiences probably didn't understand them. We were marketing our products abroad back then, but we weren't really thinking deeply about global audiences yet. We used local Japanese tropes without worrying about it.

—I've heard you tried some radical new approaches for SMB3, too.

Tezuka: We were actually looking at an isometric perspective early on, where it looked like Mario was coming at you from a diagonal angle. We wanted to change the look of the game drastically. In the end, though, we decided to stick with the traditional side-scrolling. It would have been a massive amount of work, and when we weighed how much it actually added to the "fun," we decided to put our energy elsewhere. No trace was left of that isometric idea, and it didn't really influence later Mario games either.

—A lot of work goes on behind the scenes that people never see.

Tezuka: Yeah, for example… in the next game, Super Mario World, the dinosaur character Yoshi makes his debut. Mario rides on his back, but Yoshi would have gotten in the way of the controls when you go into ghost houses or castles. So, we put in a scene at the start of those stages where Mario and Yoshi part ways. Players just accept it as "the way it is," but we actually racked our brains over how to handle that.

—SMB3 also marked the appearance of new characters who went on to become staples of the series.

Tezuka: The ghost character Boo (Teresa) was interesting. He stops when Mario faces him and chases when Mario turns his back. It was a type of movement we hadn't seen before, yet it was simple and intuitive. Those kinds of things that just click with a person's intuition, that's what I really value in game design.

—Last September, for the 30th anniversary, Super Mario Maker was released for the Wii U, allowing players to build their own levels.

Tezuka: I wanted to make something where the act of creation itself was the fun part. My ideal is "parent and child play." The generation that played obsessively 30 years ago now has children of their own. Parents can play what their children make, and vice-versa. What's great about this game is the responsiveness. If it looks a bit too hard, you can immediately fix it by placing an item. It creates conversation and plays like a party game.

—Do you ever feel like saying, "Now you can experience the struggle I went through making these!"

Tezuka: Not at all. (laughs)

—Many players are sharing their original levels online.

Tezuka: I actually play those levels myself. They are very difficult, but if you keep at it, you can eventually push through. Since a core part of action games is enjoying the process of getting better, it makes me feel like I've returned to my roots.

—What is the "trick" to making games?

Tezuka: I think it's better not to think too deeply about tricks. It's about trying various things. In Super Mario Maker, if you stick items together, they might move in unexpected ways… there are several "hooks" like that. It's also fun to think about who you are making it for. If you make a maze-like course for a friend who loves mazes, you might get a reaction you've never seen before.

—Did you get those kinds of reactions back in the Famicom era?

Tezuka: We used to include postcards in the boxes for player feedback. Just seeing a child write "it was fun" made me very happy.

—Did you think it would last this long, 30 years ago?

Tezuka: I didn't think that at all. It's only because there are players who enjoy Mario, and I feel truly fortunate. Recently, the design blueprints for the original levels were found. We don't think much of these materials ourselves, but the people interviewing us say they are incredibly valuable. That was a surprise.

—What is Mario's appeal?

Tezuka: He isn't just for side-scrolling action games; he's like an actor who appears in various Nintendo games, from sports to racing. I think players feel like they become Mario in all these different roles. I want to continue making things so that people see Mario in many different places. I'm hoping to set something new in motion to coincide with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics season.

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