Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
, released by Nintendo in 2009 (see Figure
1.1
), is a sequel or a remake
of
Super Mario Bros.
from 1985. Though the newer game diverges pretty quickly in design
from its progenitor, the first few screens of the first level of
New
are arranged in deliberate
mimicry of the same screens from the 1985 version. The player (or players, in the case of
New
Super Mario
) starts on the left side of the screen; to the right, there's an enticing, flashing block
with a question mark on it, floating just above the ground. Then the game's most basic
enemy
trundles toward the player to the left. After that, you see two parallel platforms made of hover-
ing blocks, some breakable, some that contain rewards, one of which contains power-up items
for the players. After that, there's a tall obstacle that the player has to jump over to progress
further: a big green pipe in the 1985 game, the side of a cliff in the 2009 one.
Figure 1.1
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
starts with an arrow pointing to the right.
Super Mario Bros.
was many people's first videogame; there were almost no games similar to it
at the time.
New Super Mario Bros
., in contrast, has almost twenty years of related games as prec-
edent. Despite that, the 1985 game leaves one thing out that's present in the 2009 game: a big
sign with an arrow telling the player which direction to go.
What happened between 1985 and 2009 to cause game creators to lose that much trust in the
player? The player of
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
gets off easy, in fact, as far as “tutorials” go. Lots
of contemporary games feel the need to explain to the player, via game-interrupting exposi-
tion and big stupid dumps of instruction text, how they are played. Many games even keep the
player from starting the game until she's proven she knows how the buttons work, making her
jump in place, in a contextless situation, like a trained pet.
