It has been nearly 40 years since Nintendo’s flagship franchise burst onto the scene. Since its revolutionary debut, Super Mario Bros. has maintained its popularity, relevance, and status. During our discussions with Nintendo during our Super Mario Bros. campaign, we found that Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, which started around that time, has remained a genre leader all these decades after. Throughout the Wonder cover story this year (as well as other interviews earlier this year), we explored why these franchises – in particular the Mario franchise – have remained popular and of high quality while so many others have struggled to stay on top for so long.
The tenure of the staff involved in Mario and The Legend of Zelda helps keep series like Mario and The Legend of Zelda as industry leaders, according to Mario series producer Takashi Tezuka. He describes how many of them have worked on these franchises for a long time. “For example, Mr. [Eiji] Aonuma joined the Zelda team at some point and has been there throughout, and for Mario, it’s me! The level-design philosophy, of course, is very important in the Mario series.
Super Mario Bros. (1985)
Since its 1985 debut, the Super Mario franchise has been a premier platforming franchise based on its level-design philosophy and emphasis on iteration. “When we’re creating every individual course, we just keep iterating, we keep looking, and we work on it until we believe that it’s interesting; if it’s interesting to play or fun to play, it’s because someone made it fun to play,” Tezuka says. A major characteristic of side-scrolling 2D games is that you can still make changes to the course during the final stage of development. Of course, this cannot be achieved without excellent course editing tools. It is important to remain tenacious and strive to improve until the very end, taking feedback from focus groups into account.”