PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 60. Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Miyamoto: We wanted to create a game with a bigger character that you could move around. The problem was that if you had a bigger character, there was less space. … In Excitebike, the screen scrolled so that there was more room to play. We used this screen scrolling technology to create a bigger Mario and allow him more room to move. So we made Mario bigger and had him running across the screen, which turned out to be fun.  However, we [also tried making] Mario smaller so that the space in the game seemed bigger.  We enjoyed the big and small Mario so we thought it would be more fun if Mario could change sizes [in Super Mario Bros.]

Miyamoto on how both big and small Mario came to be, 2013.

Source: Time For Kids (Time Magazine)

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PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 58. Creator of Zelda & Mario. General Manager of Nintendo EAD. QUOTE: Miyamoto: 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.

Miyamoto on why Mario is a plump shape, 2011.

Source: Iwata Asks

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PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Creator of Zelda. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros.. - Koji Kondo, age 64. Composer for early Zelda titles and for Super Mario Bros.. QUOTE: Miyamoto: I think that the expression of the underground theme [in Super Mario Bros.] is a masterpiece! [Laughs] I was thinking, “So you're gonna bring in a bass slap here, huh?” I was surprised how it turned into a proper song even though it was made with sound effects. I was cognizant of how it would feel cold if you went underground, so I thought it would be better to use black for the background, and when I heard those sounds, the feeling of cold was amplified, and it was like, “Whoa! It works!” [Laughs] Kondo: … I wanted to give the underground BGM a quiet feeling, so I included slap-bass phrases that were popular at the time.

Miyamoto on the Super Mario Bros. underground theme being "a masterpeice", 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

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PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Creator of Zelda & Mario. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros.. - Takashi Tezuka, age 64. Co-creator of Zelda. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros.. QUOTE: Miyamoto: At the end of making a game, we have a debug process, and we left 10 bytes of memory for that [for Super Mario Bros.] Once we confirmed there were no bugs, we wondered what we could do to maximize what little we had left. Fun things, like, "Well, we can put in five more coins, so where should they go?” Tezuka: We couldn't just freely decide where to put pipes on each screen, and each course is made of multiple screens. Distinguishing between pipes you can enter and pipes you can’t uses memory, so we made if so that pipes placed in specific locations can always be entered. So we crafted the courses well, so players couldn't tell we had these restrictions.

Miyamoto & Tezuka on using leftover memory for Super Mario Bros., 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

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PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 64. Composer for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Producer and Director for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.. QUOTE: Kondo: The Famicom has little memory, so I remember thinking about reducing the size as much as possible for the music. It was hard work. For example, I thought that if I created a single group of phrases as a block, I could use that over and over again. By repeating that process, I think I ended up with a melody that stuck in players’ memories. Miyamoto: In the end, the player will hear those repetitions over and over, even though there are individual differences. … Because I myself started out by developing arcade games, the idea of people walking down the street hearing the music and sound effects coming from the arcade and immediately recognizing it was important.

Kondo & Miyamoto on re-using short musical phrases in NES music, 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

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PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 68. Lead Programmer of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Takashi Tezuka, age 64. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Director of The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Miyamoto: Though Nakago-san is a programmer, I invited him to planning meetings [for Super Mario Bros.] with us. Aside from the music, it was the three of us for the most part. We did anything and everything we could. Nakago: When working on the programming, I even brought in Miyamoto-san and the others to devise how to structure the game data. We've always been involved in all sorts of things. Miyamoto: … It was my job to present game ideas that can be conveyed to programmers, and even before Super Marlo Bros., Nakago-san would get mad at me. It felt like he was my editor or something, saying, “If you continue doing this, it’s never gonna get done!” [Laughs]

Nakago & Miyamoto on collaborating as director and programmer in the 80s, 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

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#MiyamotoQuote, #NakagoQuote, #TezukaQuote

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PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros., Director & Artist for Donkey Kong. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: "Miyamoto: Sometimes there'll be a single block floating in mid-air, right? When I first made that [in Super Mario Bros.], I thought it was totally outrageous. Even when I was working on Donkey Kong, I'd design things properly. I'd make sure that if there was a floor here, then there'd be a pillar somewhere to support it. … When we made the game, it would start off with a large number of blocks and Mario would go along smashing those until there was just a single block floating there. We decided that ending up with just one block floating there didn't seem to feel unnatural. Iwata: But why doesn't it fall? [laughs] Miyamoto: Well, it's actually connected round the back... [laughs]"

Miyamoto & Iwata on single floating blocks and believability, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#SuperMarioBrosQuote, #DonkeyKongQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #IwataQuote

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PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Nakago: That's right. Miyamoto-san said to me right at the start [of Super Mario Bros.’ development]: ‘Make it so that a single level lasts about one minute.’ But with a regular game, you could run across a single screen in about one second. Iwata: If it takes a second to run across the screen, and you want it to last for a minute, you're going to need sixty screens. Nakago: That's why I asked: ‘Are we really going to make this many screens?’ Miyamoto-san responded by saying: ‘We're going to have all sorts of things going on in between, so twenty screens should be enough for a single level.’ At that time, I couldn't grasp what Miyamoto-san meant. "

Nakago on Miyamoto's direction for the length of Super Mario Bros. levels, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

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PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: "Tezuka: We came up with all kinds of objects [for Super Mario Bros.], all the time trying to limit the bytes we were using. Then right at the very end, we made the Goomba. Iwata: You're kidding! You made the Goomba last? [laughs] Tezuka: We did. Even though it's now such a major part of the game, at the beginning we actually only had Koopa Troopas. Then when we got people to play the game, they would say that it was quite tricky to encounter Koopa Troopas at the very start. … So we decided that that we should make an enemy that you could easily squash with a single blow. "

Tezuka on when they created the Goomba for Super Mario Bros., 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

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PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Q: How did you create the levels [for Super Mario Bros.]? Tezuka: … We'd sketch a design for the level on a piece of paper then pass it on to SDR, saying: ‘Please make it look like this.’ Nakago: Tezuka-san or Miyamoto-san would draw the level on a huge sheet of graph paper and we would have to painstakingly enter the data by hand. … Every morning when I got to work, I'd be handed about twenty sheets of paper and be told to get on with it. … We'd spend the entire day poring over these notes and adjusting the map. Then at around ten at night when we'd finally finished, we'd burn the data to the ROM, at which point the two of them would play the level."

Tezuka & Nakago on the level authorship process for Super Mario Bros., 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

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PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Nakago: I can clearly remember right at the start of the development process [for Super Mario Bros.] when the blue sky appeared on the screen. Iwata: Games at that point almost always had black backgrounds, didn't they? Nakago: That's right. At that time, there was nothing displayed on the screen aside from the blue sky with white clouds and the ground but that image really jumped out of the screen and I thought: ‘This is incredible!’ … I'd never seen anything like it. When I saw that image, it was already late in the evening but I rang Miyamoto-san straight away, telling him: ‘We've come up with something amazing!’ [laughs]"

Nakago on a vivid memory from Super Mario Bros.' development, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

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PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: "Tezuka: The head of [sales] at the time was a pretty approachable guy, and though it might be hard to imagine it happening nowadays, I got him to show me the sales figures. Iwata: So a new employee just went up and asked to be shown the sales figures? Tezuka: Well, at lunchtime I'd often wander to various places and chat to people from other departments. So I'd become friendly with people that way. Anyway, I was shown the sales figures and I saw that [Mario Bros.] was still selling consistently well. I thought: ‘This Mario is pretty popular.’ I recall that I mentioned [that] to Miyamoto-san and he said, ‘Mario seems like the way to go [as the star of Super Mario Bros.]’"

Tezuka on how Super Mario Bros. came to star Mario, 2009.
Source: Iwata Asks

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