|
|
||
|
|
by
Kristi Kates
Check
out these statistics - back in 1991, computers were in only 15 percent of U.S.
homes - while Nintendo's NES game system was in 33 percent. This year, 25
million of the newest Nintendo gaming units (GameCube and the portable GameBoy
Advance) were sold, and continue to be available at such local outlets as
K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy. That's a lot of house calls for Dr.
Mario. It all began with Shigeru Miyamoto, who grew up in Sonebe, Japan. An avid artist even as a kid, Miyamoto spent much of his childhood sketching, painting, constructing models, and crafting puppets and flipbooks as well as exploring the local forests and caves around his home. In 1970, Miyamoto went to college - but he wasn't the best student. It took him 5 years to graduate with a degree in industrial design because he spent most of his time daydreaming, continuing his artistic hobbies, and teaching himself to play the guitar. Like many graduates, Miyamoto found himself jobless in 1977, and his father helped him get a job through an old family friend who was the then president of the Nintendo company, a Japanese firm that was, at that time, working to break into the American coin-operated arcade business, and not doing so well. Their early efforts - the games Space Fever and Sheriff - were nowhere near hits. The
Radarscope game got a little bit of attention - which Nintendo promptly
squandered by over-ordering units of the game. Nintendo was in dire straits,
and all of their best designers were preoccupied with more important Japanese
projects. A couple of years later, in 1983, Mario became the star of his own stand-up arcade game, Mario Brothers, in which he graduated from carpenter to plumber along with his "new" brother, Luigi, and a host of pixilated pests that included crabs, turtles, and fireflies - the game was a moderate success, appearing in arcades and pizza parlors across the country, even in the slow-to-catch-on Midwest.
Meanwhile, Nintendo had released the "Famicom" - or Family Computer home console
in Japan, had offered up the NES System (the "original" Nintendo console) to
North America for a test run, and had assigned Miyamoto to head up Nintendo's
R&D4, a new development project whose mission was to create the most inventive
video game ever made. That game was Super Mario Brothers, which Miyamoto
crafted from his earlier childhood cave and nature expeditions. Light years from "Pong" (the first - and very primitive compared to today's standards - video game), Miyamoto's Super Mario Brothers offered up a colorful mushroom world that also featured side-scrolling, which had never been seen before. Cute, appealing, and non-violent (unless you count animated magical creatures toppling over), Mario appealed to the adult demographic just as much as kids.
Combined with the NES home system, Super Mario Brothers spent the tail end of
1985 as a huge hit and a popular Christmas gift that was as often played by
parents and older siblings as it was by the kids who received the game in the
first place! Demand for more Mario picked up quickly, and by 1988, Super Mario
Bros. 2 - with its additional Princess and Toad characters, plus cacti,
vegetables and potions - Super Mario Bros. 3 followed next, suiting up Mario in
special suits, including the Frog and Sledgehammer suits, that gave him new
abilities. A national survey taken in 1990 found that Mario was more
recognizable among American kids than Mickey Mouse. Now that's Mario power. Next
up for Nintendo was the Super Nintendo console - and you can bet that Mario
would be invited to the party. The flagship game for Super Nintendo was,
appropriately, Super Mario World, with the Super Nintendo consoles in such
demand that there were near-riots at some stores when not enough units were
shipped, causing shortages for eager shoppers. With
the translation of Mario and pals to 3D, Nintendo and Miyamoto's distinctive
approach to game design was even more solidified. Nintendo kept the bar high
for such competing consoles as Playstation, Sega, and Dreamcast, continually
developing more sophisticated games. But it's Mario who remains both the
workhorse and the king. A priceless asset to Nintendo, Miyamoto's Mario has branched out like crazy. He may just be a plumber, but he sure has a lot of extracurricular interests - over the years, Mario has taken turns as a painter (Mario Paint), a physician (Dr. Mario), a race car driver (Mario Kart), and an athlete (Mario Golf and Mario Tennis), and quite the party animal (the entire series of Mario Party games, which as of this date number 5). He's starred on the cover of Nintendo Power magazine 18 times - far more than any other character. He's even expanded his appeal far beyond the TV screen - if you haven't actually played a Mario game, chances are you've seen his cartoons or his movie, or have seen his likeness on plush dolls, cereal, t-shirts, lunchboxes, housewares, books, ice cream, and so much more - the list is endless. Some
gamers even purchase all of the Nintendo console systems, from NES to GameCube,
in order to own the Mario games in all their configurations. You can even take
traveling Mario with you wherever you go with his special games for the Game
Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. In the last twenty years, over 160
million Mario games have been sold. And more Mario is on the way. With the launch of Nintendo's newest game system - the GameCube - came Super Mario Sunshine, which positions Mario in a brighter, even more detailed world that is again proving to be a guilty pleasure for adults just as much as a fun pastime for kids. And now that the development time for games has been streamlined (Super Mario Sunshine took only a year and a half to develop, compared to the three years that passed between Super Mario Brothers 2), the key designers of the Mario series have been divided into several teams in order to introduce Mario games with even less lag time between releases. Mario has a long life ahead of him - he's the Tom Cruise, the Mick Jagger of the gaming industry - but Tom and Mick probably wouldn't look half as cool in Mario's red overalls. |
|
|
|
Enable frames | |
|
home | out/about | events | personal | store | classified | real estate | forums | archives | contact |
||
