Miyamoto explains why Mario is chubby

“The reason Mario is a plump shape is because gaming devices at that time could only read collisions between square boxes, not because I wanted to make him cute. His design turned out like that because I adjusted for the capabilities of the gaming device of the day. For example, resolution was low, so I made his face big. But today’s game consoles can handle collisions with round or irregular shapes.” - Shigeru Miyamoto

Well, I think we’ve had just about every aspect of Mario explained now. We know that just about every decision made with the original Mario was based on hardware limitations. Gloves, hat, mustache, clothing clothing choice and now weight. Mario is a product of limited hardware, but we wouldn’t want him any other way!

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