The story behind Shigeru Miyamoto’s choice to incorporate green pipes into games Super Mario finally finds its conclusion. It was the famous game designer himself who lifted the veil on this still brilliant mechanic, 40 years after the character’s debut on console.
What next after Super Mario Wonder?
Nintendo’s cult license has not aged a bit since its debut in 1985. The release of Super Mario Wonder last year proved to us — once again — that Japanese studios knew how to come up with ideas for level design always as innovative, to maintain interest around the mustachioed plumber, who is celebrating his 40th birthday this year. The proof is: the game is currently number 1 in sales across all Nintendo Switch games.
The title offers players the use of new powers, such as the ability to transform into an elephant — a design that the historic boss of the firm Shigeru Miyamoto did not like — to use the bubble flower, or the mushroom drill. Nintendo also overhauled the use of pipes, which can literally come to life.
The famous green pipes from Super Mario Bros.
The fans know it. A good Mario is nothing without his famous green pipes, sometimes means of teleportation for Mario and his brother Luigi, sometimes generators of enemies. These conduits are certainly one of the best game design ideas in video game history. How, back when the first game was released Super Mario Bros. in 1985 – did Shigeru Miyamoto have the idea of incorporating this feature, which will still be cult 40 years later?
Thanks to a recent English translation by Shmuplations of a 2000 Miyamoto interviewwe now have the answer. The famous game designer explains that he was walking through the streets of the ancient Japanese capital Kyoto one day while the game was still in full development, and he was looking for a way to make enemies move from the bottom screen upwards, and thus offer a much more difficult challenge to players. He then came across a huge plastic pipe sticking out of a wall.
Due to the way the screens worked, enemies that went down to the bottom had to respawn at the top of the screen. So we said, “Okay, we need a path or a way for them to get back up there.” » Then one day, as I happened to be walking through the streets of Kyoto, I saw a plastic pipe sticking out of a wall. »
In that same interview, Miyamoto stated that the decision to place the game in a “New York type place” was taken because the developers imagined enemies such as turtles or crabs and flies made sense to be encountered in tunnels. “Huge underground tunnels must exist somewhere…like under New York, I thought.”
What will Nintendo have in store for the 40th anniversary of its plumber? We imagine that Big N has something planned, especially since the Nintendo Switch 2 is coming out this year. Two events that must be landmarks in Mario’s life. Perhaps this anniversary will be made a reality by a new Mario 3D? Or a Mario Kart 9. And why not both?
Source: hitek.fr
