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Recently, "Super Mario Bros. Movie" is a hit, have you watched it?
As an adaptation of one of the world's most classic games "Super Mario Bros.", it broke the North American box office record for game adaptation movies on the day of release, and the popularity can be seen.
Whether adults or children, as long as the familiar soundtrack sounds, classic characters such as Mario, Luigi, Kuba and other classic characters appear, as if they can enter the magical adventure world full of pipes and mushrooms.
This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Mario Bros. How this plumber, born 40 years ago, conquered the world, perhaps we can find the answer in "Japanese Originality" by "Unread Thinker".
[US] Matthew Alter | by Zhang Pei | trans
Unread, Thinker|Produced
01 days to the heavy duty of Miyamoto Shigeru
In 1981, Nintendo had transitioned from cards to video games, but the transition was not very smooth.
The arcade games produced by Nintendo were derivative versions of those that were more popular, none of which appealed to players. Meanwhile, Nintendo's competitors are doing well.
In desperation, Nintendo's president entrusted a 29-year-old with unkempt hair to design a popular game.
This person is Shigeru Miyamoto.
In Yamauchi's long career as Nintendo president, perhaps the luckiest step he took was to find Shigeru Miyamoto.
Born in 1952, Miyamoto grew up in a small village on the outskirts of Kyoto with no cars, no televisions and no toys. Rice paddies, streams, woods, rolling hills full of small animals are his playground.
In interviews, Miyamoto often recounts an experience that had a profound impact on him, when he discovered a small cave and solved the secrets of the cave with the help of a small lantern. This childhood experience has been told many times and polished into an origin story.
As The New Yorker wrote in a 2010 profile: "[The story is to Shigeru Miyamoto] what cherry trees are to George Washington or LSD is to Steve Jobs." ”
02A kawaii perspective that opens up a different way
Shigeru Miyamoto is actually a graphic designer with no programming experience, but this will be a surprising advantage.
Video games were still very rudimentary at the time. When Miyamoto entered the industry, although video game technology had developed to a certain extent to be able to design an image that players could recognize, that was about it.
Shigeru Miyamoto faced much the same problems as Sanrio designers. Sanrio is extraordinary, but it is also just a supplier of cheap goods such as pencils, stationery, and cutlery. What makes it unusual is that it can harness the power of cute images to make these otherwise ordinary daily necessities stand out in a highly competitive market.
Miyamoto knew he also needed an image that would make his game stand out. However, while Sanrio's designers were limited only by their own imagination, Miyamoto's ambitions were constrained by very real factors, namely the limitations of the era's computer and television technology.
For example, the protagonist of his game needs to be placed in a square that is only 16 pixels. The conventional wisdom in the art world is that in general the human body is 8 times the size of the head. However, the matrix space of 16×16 is not enough to represent the true proportions. The points are too few, and if Miyamoto follows anatomical design principles, the protagonist's face will end up being only two pixels in size and cannot be recognized at all.
After weeks of pondering, he finally had an idea: he didn't need to follow real proportions! He can design non-realistic protagonists—a flattened image, a kawaii thing.
Miyamoto Shigeru simplified his protagonist and retained only the most basic elements.
He made this figure grow a mustache so that there was no need for a mouth; put a hat on him so that there is no need for a haircut; Have him wear a red overalls so that he doesn't have to draw his arms and allows him to show shape. As with Hello Kitty, the final avatar uses minimal elements, allowing users to use their imagination to fill in the rest.
"He was the first person to use the kawaii perspective for a game character." Nintendo entertainment system designer Masayuki Uemura said.
Mario was born — back in the 1981 issue of Donkey Kong, the character was simply called "Jumpman."
The exclusive logo of the Donkey Kong series
Miyamoto originally wanted to call him "Mister Video." Years later, he explains, "I wanted him to appear in all the video games I designed, like Hitchcock in every of his films, and I thought it was really cool, or like the same character appeared in many different manga by Osamu Tezuka." ”
In the end, the jumping person was changed to "Mario", which was originally an internal joke -
The bearded character resembles Mario Sigale, the landlord of Nintendo North America, who reportedly interrupted their discussions and asked them to pay for the rental of the company's warehouse.
03
The triumph of international pop culture
Donkey Kong is a hit abroad, not only because of the game's well-made, but also because of its unique kawaii design, which contrasts with military-themed games such as Missile Directive and Warzone, produced by American game makers.
Donkey Kong doesn't just look kawaii, it's almost kawaii's incarnation. The game has no lasers, no spaceships, no explosions, just a little cartoon man running, jumping, climbing, and has no enemies other than existential threats like sloping oil drums and simple gravity.
The villain Donkey Kong also proves that even a fierce gorilla who escapes, the kawaii design can make it extremely cute.
Western gamers refer to Donkey Kong, made by Japanese companies, as well as other kawaii-style games, collectively as "cute games."
At first, industry insiders scoffed at these Japanese games, which looked and sounded very different from American-made games, but cute games like Pac-Man, Hit the Air, and Frog Crossing soon outscored American games in earnings. It was one of Japan's first international pop culture triumphs in the United States.
By the end of 1981, Nintendo North America had sold more than 60,000 Donkey Kong consoles, and its founding partner instantly became millionaires and turned the subsidiary around on the brink of bankruptcy, making it Nintendo's most profitable company.
Donkey Kong proves Miyamoto's ability to create engaging characters and game worlds.
Junpei Yokoi asked him to create the sequel, Donkey Kong II, and then asked him to create the Mario Brothers, a game that added a brother named Luigi to Mario.
However, what really cemented Miyamoto's reputation as a game master was Super Mario Bros., released in 1985.
04
A blockbuster that takes advantage of the right time and place
Donkey Kong used to be a hit, but for players, Super Mario Bros. is even more intoxicating.
Because its game action is no longer limited to a single screen. In search of a kidnapped princess, Mario runs through a series of levels such as lava pits, secret rooms, castles, bridges, monsters and more in a fairytale virtual world.
Super Mario Bros. wasn't the first "sidescrolling platform game" — as fans later called the genre (Pac-World and the reel version of Pac-Man were released a year ago), but it was undoubtedly the most popular.
It has sensitive controls, captivating graphics, intuitive rules, an infectious soundtrack, interesting characters, and most importantly, a sensation that a shocking secret is just around the corner. It's not just a game, it's a facsimile of childhood imagination.
There are a lot of players who have already met the protagonist of the game through previous adventures, and this only makes them feel that they are engaged in something bigger than the game that unfolds on the screen. Suddenly, the family gaming system was no longer just a toy, it was a gateway to a mysterious world, a springboard for a new type of digital leisure that offered a far richer experience than a crazy coin-operated arcade.
While Super Mario Bros. is indeed an amazing game, part of what made it successful was due to coincidence.
Just seven months before the game's release, Japan enacted a new regulation that has a huge impact on the gaming industry.
In 1948, Japan's parliament passed the Customs Business Management Law, which prohibited minors from patronizing adult establishments such as bars, dance halls, pornographic shops, and casinos.
In 1984, lawmakers amended the law to include 26,000 video game arcades in Japan, which alarmed the authorities.
However, to the chagrin of many who actively campaigned for a revision of the regulation, the regulation caused sales of home video game systems to skyrocket, sparking a gaming boom across society.
This new form of family gaming and entertainment permeated mainstream culture, and a book called Super Mario Bros.: A Complete Strategic Guide topped Japan's bestseller lists for two years in a row (1985 and 1986), a feat that even the likes of Haruki Murakami or J.K. Rowling could replicate.
In 1986, when the Red-White was officially launched in the United States and Europe, it was redesigned as the Nintendo Entertainment System, and one of the key selling points was that the Red-White was bundled with Super Mario Bros.
Due to the collapse of the American game industry 3 years ago, Nintendo seized the beachhead of the American market with little competition from American game manufacturers, and achieved ultimate success, maintaining its unshakable position in the hearts of children around the world until the beginning of the 21st century.
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