Why Super Mario Bros is still an essential lesson in game design

It's been forty years since gaming changed forever with the release of Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The landmark September 1985 release not only introduced what would become Nintendo's most iconic franchise, it also established the side-scrolling platformer genre and set the standard for creative, intuitive level design.

Amid the Mario anniversary celebrations this week, it's worth looking back at what a great lesson in video game design Super Mario Bros provides right from the first seconds of gameplay. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, World 1-1 remains exemplary in how it presents a simple and enjoyable tutorial right within the game (see our pick of the best game development software if you're working on your own title).

Super Mario Bros World 1-1 was designed to quickly and simply orientate players to the game, teaching them how to jump and how the various objects worked. It seems so simple, but devs put a huge amount of time and thought into designing the short level of around 15 screens in such a way as to provide a full Mario 101 course in minutes by teaching several things at once in a way that doesn't feel like a lesson.

In just a few steps, the players learns how to move, how to avoid and destroy enemies, how question blocks work and how to differentiate Goombas from beneficial mushrooms.

Some of the work that went into this was revealed by developers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka in an interview with Eurogamer a decade ago in 2015, revisited this week by IGN.

Shigeru said they “kept simulating what the player would do. So even within that one section, the player would understand the general concept of what Mario is supposed to be and what the game is about.”

“If we have a question block, they might just try to tap that as well,” he notes “If they see a coin, it will make them happy and they’ll want to try again.”

Immediately a Goomba appears. Since running into it kills you, a player immediately learns to jump. The player is then quickly presented with low bricks and question blocks.

Tapping the second question block releases a mushroom that slides away, but bounces off a pipe to come back towards Mario. That makes it hard to avoid, so players quickly get their taste of being transformed into Super Mario, learning that the mushrooms are beneficial.

This attention to the learning process even led to some quite major late changes to the game. The developers said the first enemy was going to be a Koopa Troopa, but they were concerned that teaching the jump and kick movement needed to defeat it didn't work well as the beginning of the game before players had got to grip with the basics.

That led to the decision to create the Goomba as an easier enemy to defeat, Takashi says.

A more complex mechanic that players needed to learn is to hold B to run before a long jump. This was taught by two gaps later in World 1-1. The first has a filled-in bottom to make it a safe place to experiment and learn how to perform long jumps without having to risk lives, but this is quickly followed by a very similar but potentially fatal pit that players can survive by employing the skill they just learned.

“By doing that, we wanted the player to naturally and gradually understand what they’re doing”, Shigeru said. “The first course was designed for that purpose: so they can learn what the game is all about.”

He also revealed that the team would develop this initial part of a game after later levels so that they fully know what skills the players need to learn for later in the game.

“Usually when we have a really fun course, they tend to be the later levels”, he said. “World 2-1, World 2-2, we create those first and then afterwards come back and create World 1-1. There’s a lot of testing whilst the game is being built. I don’t give them (players) any explanation and just watch them play and see how they do it, and most of the time I think they’ll play a certain way or enjoy a certain part, and they end up not doing that. I think ‘That's not what I intended!’ So I have to go back and use that as feedback”.

This attention to detail creates an illusion in which they player feels like they're learning on their own while enjoying the game. After a few games, a player can already feel like an old hand, executing a single flow. Some devs today could learn from this unintrusive introduction to a game.

Nintendo's announced a whole bunch of news to mark Super Mario Bros's 40th anniversary. It's announced Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 coming to the Switch in October and the Super Mario Galaxy Movie coming next year. It's also revealed the revival of the infamous Nintendo Virtual Boy for Switch – yes, really!

In the meantime, check out our pick of the best Nintendo Switch 2 accessories or see my pick of the best retro handheld game consoles for alternatives.