Iwata Asks: Mario/Zelda's birth, Mario riding rockets/firing beam guns, obstacles/enemies, Kondo involvement, Excitebike connection, reusing sounds, Miyamoto's ban on mini-games. family bonding with Mario

Miyamoto: If memory serves…the first thing I told Nakago-san to do was make a big character that jumps around.

Iwata: And that’s how the big Mario first appeared.

Miyamoto: Around December of 1984, I wanted to see what it would be like with a Mario jumping around who was about twice the size of the one in Mario Bros.3, so I asked the programmers at Nakago-san’s company, SRD4, to make a test version—something in which, when you pressed a button, Mario would jump, and if you hit it repeatedly, he would jump in the air, too. And it turned out to be pretty good.

Miyamoto: Yeah, yeah, I remember now. After doing the square experiment for Super Mario Bros., we began experimenting with what became the basis for The Legend of Zelda. And I wrote these specifications in February the next year?

Iwata: Yes, in February.

Iwata: And it says the A button is for kicking when empty-handed and also for using a rifle and a beam gun. Is this really for Super Mario Bros.?! (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Miyamoto: He was going to use a beam gun when he flew on a cloud.

Iwata: Ever since the beginning, you imagined him flying in the sky?

Miyamoto: Yes. But at the time, it wasn’t on a cloud, but on a rocket.

Iwata: Huh? Mario flying on a rocket?! (laughs) Oh right, that’s on another page.

Miyamoto: See how it says ojama (obstacle) in a picture of the screen in the first specifications?

Iwata: Yeah, there were “obstacles” back then, not “enemies.” I remember we used that term when we shifted the arcade version of Donkey Kong6 over to the Famicom. Originally it was “things that get in the way.”

Miyamoto: We called them ojamamushi (nuisances). But once, when interpreting to overseas staff, someone asked what kind of an insect (mushi) an ojamamushi is. It was a serious question, and I had no idea how to answer.

Miyamoto: Yeah. After Kung-Fu, we started making Super Mario Bros., and I appointed Kondo-san to sound.

Iwata: You thought Kondo-san was right for the job. Why was that?

Miyamoto: He made a song for Devil World’s bonus screen, and I thought that attitude was really great.

Iwata: A song for Devil World? (laughs)

Miyamoto: Yeah. Kondo-san thought up the tune, and Tezuka-san wrote some lyrics. I thought, “They’re neat, so let’s put them in the instruction booklet!”

Iwata: Because they were neat. (laughs)

Miyamoto: It was really fun to have young guys come into the company and to work with them.

Iwata: Is the musical notation for Devil World still around?

Kondo: The lyrics are around somewhere, but…

Miyamoto: On the bonus screen, there’s a song that goes ♪da-dum-da-dum da-dum-da-dum, and the words go, “♪This one? That one? Which one?”

Everyone: (laughs)

Nakago: I’ve heard that. (laughs)

Miyamoto: Writing words for video game music and including the notation and lyrics in the instruction booklet wasn’t something anyone was doing back then, so I was all for it.

Iwata: No one was doing it, so you encouraged the new guys to. You encouraged the new guys to do it by saying no one else was doing it.

Kondo: But unfortunately, that never got put in. (laughs)

Iwata: Miyamoto-san, could you relate for us how the 25-year history of Super Mario Bros. originally began?

Miyamoto: Sure. About two years before Super Mario Bros., I made the arcade version of Mario Bros., but the screen didn’t scroll, the background was black, and it was sort of plain. So I decided to test out something like Mario Bros., but which scrolled, had a bright background, and had bigger characters moving around.

Iwata: In other words, you brought in the partial scrolling technology from Excitebike, which allowed you to scroll part of the screen, and the two-character mode technology from Devil World, which allowed characters twice the size of those in Mario Bros.

Miyamoto: Right. It was a combination of elements from previous games.

Iwata: Given the overall power of today’s gaming consoles, we can display just about anything, so only a pro can look at a game today and know how to answer the question “How did they do that?”

But in the days of the Famicom games, the hardware restrictions were quite severe, and there wasn’t a lot we could do. But by slipping around those restrictions and achieving something new, the public wouldn’t have seen anything like it, so we could really impress players with something new they’d never seen in another game, and make them think, “How did they do that?”

Miyamoto: That’s right. We tried to pull in good elements from a variety of games, but perhaps the most important one was Excitebike. For example, the idea for warps came from there.
Iwata: How so?

Miyamoto: The arcade version of Excitebike had three levels, and you could choose where you wanted to start playing. That was because we thought people who were good would want to start at the advanced levels right away. Of course, if you started at World 7 on Super Mario Bros., it would be too difficult, but we thought that it would be nice if people who were good could easily go from World 1 to World 8.

Iwata: Oh, so that’s where the idea for warps came from. I guess you couldn’t save with the cartridges back then.

Miyamoto: Right. Every time, you had to play from the beginning. So we made warps possible for people who want to play to the end. If the players figure out the warps, they can jump to World 8 right away. That was like how you could choose which course you wanted to start on in Excitebike.

Nakago: The castle at the start is small, and the one at the goal is big, but they’re actually the same castle.

Tezuka: We took the top of the castle at the goal and used it at the start.

Nakago: If you look closely at the castle at the goal, there’s a door in an upper floor, but we insist it’s a window! (laughs)

Iwata: You began making Super Mario Bros. and came up with various artful contrivances to make the game a grand culmination of previous games. When did you sense that it had become something amazing?

Nakago: Without a doubt, when we did the background.

Iwata: When it went from black to a blue sky.

Nakago: Yeah.

Miyamoto: (picking up a planning sheet) Here it is.

Nakago: Oh, there it is!

Iwata: Tezuka-san, did you draw this?

Tezuka: I think maybe it was Miyamoto-san.

Iwata: Miyamoto-san?

Miyamoto: Did I draw this? Yeah, it’s mine. I signed it. (laughs)

Iwata: Looking at the date…it’s signed February 28, 1985. Only a week had passed since the first specifications.

Miyamoto: Don’t I work fast?

Iwata: (laughs)

Miyamoto: There’s a palette in the upper right-hand corner of this planning sheet. I tried to use that to manage things—like by making the greenery and clouds out of the same parts.

Iwata: The greenery and clouds are made from the same parts, and you could only use four colors for each one. You filled into the palette which colors you wanted to use for those four colors. That was a feature of the Famicom hardware. If you change the combinations of the four colors, the same object can look amazingly different. We made full use of that back then.

Miyamoto: Yeah. In order to put a bigger game than any other into the small capacity of the Famicom cartridge, we had to come up with ideas like that to pack in content.

Iwata: That kind of puzzle-solving was a big part of making Super Mario Bros. games.

Miyamoto: It was fun making games that way.

Nakago: It sure was.

Miyamoto: That was fun for those of us making the game, and the resulting levels were fun for the players.

Iwata: Who designed the levels?

Miyamoto: Tezuka-san and I.

Tezuka: We designed them together.

Miyamoto: No one but Tezuka-san and I drew them.

Nakago: It’s true. It was just them.

Miyamoto: We drew them all. That way, different personalities meet in an interesting way that you wouldn’t see if only one person did them.

Iwata: Tezuka-san, what did you have in mind at that time with regard to landform design and placement of enemies? Even 25 years later, everyone recognizes that the placement of enemies in Super Mario Bros. is interesting. How did such impressive mapping come about?

Tezuka: Um…

Iwata: And you can’t just say, “By chance.” (laughs)

Tezuka: It wasn’t by chance. (laughs) As I designed a level, I would anticipate how the players would play it, and then I would show it to Miyamoto-san.

Iwata: I see.

Tezuka: He would look at it and make comments like, “The player will probably approach it this way. When an enemy appears here, the player will run this way, but we don’t want the player to hit Mario’s head on that, so…” Then I’d fix what didn’t feel right.

Iwata: Tezuka-san, did you comment on the maps Miyamoto-san made?

Tezuka: Did I?

Miyamoto: … (laughs)

Iwata: Or was Miyamoto-san always the master?

Tezuka: (firmly) He was the master. Back then, you could only see a working version of a map you’d drawn once a day, so you tried to make it as good as possible on paper.

Iwata: Oh, right. That was another restriction, but maybe there were benefits to that. At the time, we didn’t have all the convenient tools that we do now, so you couldn’t just plop in an item and check it right away. If you designed a sloppy level, you’d waste a whole day.

Tezuka: Despite the way it looked…I really thought about it.

Iwata: (laughs) Sorry.

Miyamoto: I was just a new guy, but I thought about it as hard as I could.

Iwata: Kondo-san, what did you seek to do when you first started making the music for Super Mario Bros.? When it comes to Super Mario Bros., a lot of people think of the aboveground background music. How did that song come about?

Kondo: I’d been playing the game ever since the experimental stages. I remember it made a strong impact on me when I first saw the Super Mario Bros. prototype and the player-character moving around in it was bigger than any I’d ever seen before.

Iwata: Mario when he becomes Super Mario.

Kondo: Actually, the normal-sized Mario didn’t exist in the first prototype.

Iwata: That’s right. Having a big player-character was one theme that we focused on as we began experimenting. Did you start working on the sound at a fairly early stage?

Kondo: Yes.

Iwata: A lot of the time during the early days of the Famicom, you wouldn’t be told to put in the sound until about a month before completion.

Kondo: Yeah, that’s right.

Iwata: But it wasn’t like that for Super Mario Bros.

Miyamoto: If we put in the sound later, the CPU would get eaten up, which could pose a big problem. So we decided to put some sound into the prototype, even if it was temporary.

Iwata: Oh, that’s right. You do use the CPU to generate sound, so when you put in sound back then, sometimes the CPU, which was just barely keeping up, wouldn’t be able to keep up anymore. Super Mario Bros. was a grand culmination of previous games, so we had to be thoroughly prepared when it came to the sound as well.

Miyamoto: That’s how we handled the sound.

Kondo: So I started in on the music, but the first song I finished wasn’t the aboveground BGM.

Iwata: (reading the specifications) The notes for the aboveground BGM say, “Above ground, Western-sounding, percussion and a sound like a whip.” That isn’t at all like the actual song! (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Iwata: But it also says to make above ground sound fun, which is accurate. And it says the music should be a little dark underground and have bubbly sounds under the water.

Kondo: It was easy to imagine what the underwater BGM should be like. That was easy to make, so it was the first song I finished. Then I made the aboveground BGM, and like I said in the session of “Iwata Asks” over Super Mario All-Stars, the first version I made didn’t go over well at all.

Iwata: The first version you made was easygoing, so you scrapped it.

Kondo: Right. I tried to match it to the blue sky and greenery in the background, but it didn’t match the rhythm of Mario’s running and jumping, so people said it didn’t feel right.

Iwata: At first, you made the music to match the way the game looked.

Kondo: That’s right. Then, when I actually played the prototype, I made the current song.

Miyamoto: I did say something wasn’t right about the first song, but we settled on the next one right away.

Kondo: That’s right.

Miyamoto: It was perfect.

Iwata: After you made the second version, did you make any big changes to it?

Kondo: No. It stayed the way it was.

Iwata: Perhaps being able to play the prototype so early on was one factor that led to that song.

Kondo: I think so. I learned the importance of being able to actually play the game and match the music to its rhythms.

Miyamoto: I thought the aboveground BGM was good, but when he made the underground BGM, it was an even more perfect fit! He made it with sound effects, but it sounded like music. I thought it was really a good thing to be working with someone who specialized in music. I was really happy about it.

Kondo: Um…

Iwata: Yes?

Kondo: I don’t remember Miyamoto-san ever really praising me at the time, so I feel like that’s the first time it ever happened. I’m so happy. (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Iwata: After 25 years, he finally praised you. (laughs) Miyamoto-san, I feel like maybe you should compliment him a little more. (laughs)

Miyamoto: Well, he turned out all right. (laughs) But actually, I just complimented you recently. I said the athletic music from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was good.

Kondo: Yeah. (laughs)

Iwata: (laughs) So it’s not just once every 25 years.

Miyamoto: I praised him about two times last week!

Everyone: (laughs)

Iwata: I’d like to ask about the sound effects, too. Did you immediately hit on the sound for Mario getting bigger?

Kondo: I poked around a bit for that, too. It’s not a sound you can figure out just by thinking about it in your head.

Iwata: I’ve never heard any other sound quite like it. It’s a distinctive sound that sticks with you.

Kondo: Yeah.

Miyamoto: Did we give you examples of what kind of sound to make?

Kondo: I don’t think you gave me any instructions like that.

Miyamoto: Did we suggest anything like (going up a scale) ♪dumm…dumm…dumm…dumm, or a fanfare like ♪dum-da-da-dummm?

Kondo: No, no. (laughs) I think you just told me to make a sound effect for when Mario got bigger.

Miyamoto: I thought so.

Everyone: (laughs)

Kondo: Mario sort of flashes as he gets bigger, so I made that sound effect to match. And to save memory, I needed to get a lot of use out of the same sounds. So, for example, I used the same sound for when he gets smaller and when he goes into pipes.

Miyamoto: When he goes into pipes, it goes chung-chung-chung. I bet you hadn’t noticed they were the same.

Iwata: Oh, I guess they are.

Kondo: And the bwip! sounds when he steps on turtles and swims are the same.

Iwata: They seemed different in my head, but I guess they’re the same!

Kondo: That was all to save memory.

Miyamoto: Thanks to that, I’d be overjoyed and say, “Now I can put in three more blocks!” (laughs)

Iwata: Speaking of the sound effects in Super Mario Bros., the jumping sound is another distinctive one. How did you make that? In the real world, you might make a noise when you kick off, but you don’t make a ♪pyoing sound in the air!

Miyamoto: Jumping had always made a ♪pyoing sound ever since Donkey Kong.

Kondo: When I was first asked to make a jumping sound, I remember saying, “Jumping doesn’t make a sound!”

Iwata: Well, in the real world, that’s true! (laughs)

Kondo: I think I was being a pain, saying, “Do you really need a sound for jumping?” (laughs) In the end, I played the game and came up with a sound that would match what was happening on-screen.

Miyamoto: And we brought in a sound from Mario Bros. for when you grab coins.

Iwata: But why coins in the first place?

Miyamoto: We could have used fruit or something, but I thought that if fruit came out in place of turtles and crabs, the players would think they were in danger and run away. When I tried to think of something that anyone would definitely want if they saw it, I knew that money was just the thing!

Miyamoto: No matter how gorgeous we make a game, that’s what it’s all about! (laughs) It’s like we’re remaking the series each time just so people can enjoy falling in holes!

And to pick up on what Tezuka-san said, as we build up the series, the almost obsessive idea arises that if we don’t add new elements, fans of the previous games won’t be satisfied. That’s why Tezuka-san, in developing the Super Mario Bros. series from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Super Mario World, started making things like mini-games such as roulette. At that time, roulette was the best way to show the Super Famicom’s high functionality, but there was a time when I put a ban on mini-games.

Iwata: A ban on mini-games?

Miyamoto: Yeah. I said we should stop relying on mini-games. I kept saying that rather than make games fun by putting in lots of mini-games, we should make the main thread of the game more interesting.

Tezuka: Oh, that’s right.

Miyamoto: But if we hadn’t put in any mini-games when we did, the series might have ended there. Perhaps the series still exists today because there was once a time when we floundered around a bit.

Tezuka; I think it’s good that we put in lots of new things back then.

Miyamoto: That’s right. New Super Mario Bros. Wii hardly has any mini-games, though. When I look back now, I even think it might have been all right to take out all the mini-games, like the cannon one.

Iwata: You could just have challenged yourselves with regard to the main game.

Miyamoto: Right. It’s been awhile since that happened. I think the new four-player mode is fun, so with New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I’m satisfied that we were able to reinforce the Super Mario Bros. genre as a basic starting point for video games. From now on, the three of us will be like a preservation society.

Tezuka: I think New Super Mario Bros. Wii firmly established the idea of everyone in the family playing together.

Iwata: Yes. I think families played the original Super Mario Bros. together, too. I feel like New Super Mario Bros. Wii suddenly brought us back to that time, and expanded upon it.

Tezuka: Yeah. I want to keep heading in that direction so the games are a tool for family bonding. However, I want the games to be a tool for expanding upon previously existing good elements rather than for making something different.

Full interview here