A portion of an Iwata Asks feature on New Super Mario Bros. Wii...

Miyamoto: After Mario Bros., there were a fair few jumping-style games released by various companies and I felt that this kind of jumping game had been our idea.

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…