“It’s-a-me!” Celebrating the craft-first approach of Mario, 40 years young

Mario’s longevity comes from design choices that both include and go beyond visual tropes, incorporating the capabilities of both hardware and software, thoughtful UX, and references to other entertainment and storytelling mediums. “The Mario series has endured because Nintendo pioneered a player-centric, craft-first approach to game development,” says Michael Highland, creative director at Buck Games, who is currently at work on a platforming title. “The elegant simplicity players experience is the result of decades of institutional knowledge, iteration, and painstaking craftsmanship, all aimed at perfecting engagement and delight.”

It also broke containment from the video-game and entertainment world, as has seen him star in or inspire campaigns spanning CPG brands like Cheerios’ Game On tribute (2015), Domino’s Pizza (1992), Got Milk’s milk-moustache spot (1996), Kirin Lemon (Super Mario World era), Kraft Mac & Cheese, and McDonald’s Arch Enemies (2015), as well as non-CPG ads for Budget Direct (2021), Canguro Scarpe (2016), and the New York DMV (2025).

Inspiration in nature and playgrounds

In her 2015 biography of Shigeru Miyamoto, Shigeru Miyamoto: Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Jennifer deWinter, dean of Lewis College of Science and Letters at Illinois Institute of Technology, details how he wanted to translate early childhood experiences into game mechanics. “Miyamoto grew up in the countryside of Japan and, like many people of our generation, was kicked out of the house and told not to come home until evening time,” Jennifer tells me. “So he’s going into the forest, he’s going into caves, he’s going to playgrounds, so you just see this embodied joy about being outside.”

There is a formula that has remained consistent regardless of the nature of the environments – magical paintings inside a castle in Super Mario 64, planetoids in Super Mario Galaxy, kingdoms in Super Mario Odyssey, and even locales of a tropical paradise in Super Mario Sunshine. Starting with Super Mario Bros (1985), you start in vast grasslands, then you go down tunnels, then you swim and then you jump into the clouds. “So you can kind of see the joy of playgrounds here, right? That running and slipping, that you get the slide feeling, from the swinging fast to slow, the super high jumps, the exploration leading to, like, secret tunnels.” Up until the advent of 3D, though, exploration was fairly linear, with levels marked by a beginning, a middle, and the iconic flagpole. When Mario moved into the third dimension, though, Miyamoto placed him into sandbox-like levels, a fairly open-ended structure that encourages, within its confines, free roam. “A sandbox allows for both structural play and imaginative play. But at a certain point, we often want to add narrative structure,” says Jennifer. “That structure gives us a shared way to interact, and a language to talk about our experiences with each other.”

Self-awareness and storytelling devices

Most gamers have fond memories about playing Mario titles with their friends, but, for design nerds (and this very audience) the fun element consists of the fact that Mario often indulges in fourth-wall-breaking and meta-commentary-like elements.

There is an underlying reason for these meta elements. “As game worlds have become more detailed and immersive, arbitrary systems like scoreboards, finite lives, and timers increasingly risk breaking the player’s sense of immersion… unless, of course, they’re thoughtfully justified within the fiction,” says Buck’s Michael Highland. “As a designer, you might discover a fun new mechanic, but justifying its existence within the game requires intention, effort, and resources. Nintendo’s brilliant solution for this challenge within the Mario franchise has been to embrace a layered reality that feels like a self-aware performance.”

Take the series’ affinity for storytelling mediums including stage plays, reportage, TV, and storybooks. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988) is designed as a stage play, complete with clouds depicted as hanging props and exit-stage cues at the end of stages. Princess Peach: Showtime! (2024), starring Princess Peach as a protagonist, unfolds inside a theatre that had been taken over by a sorceress. The RPG Paper Mario (2000) takes place inside a book, and each battle takes place on a stage, complete with an audience. Super Mario 64 (1996) comes with its own “camera crew,” giving it the appearance of some live documentary. Super Mario Odyssey (2017) is set up like a globe-trotting (well, kingdom-trotting) adventure, and each kingdom comes with its own meticulously designed, tourism-board-worthy brochure.

Mario Kart 8 (2014) has an in-game “TV channel” that has its reason for existing both in-game – it’s a sponsor of the races, with banners appearing in certain tracks – and as a meta element: it introduces the mechanic of watching and editing the replays of your own races. And speaking of sponsors, recent titles have the characters double as entrepreneurs, with business logos as well. Peach and Daisy recently opened a patisserie together. Yoshi now has a whole fast-food chain.

“These design choices invite the player in. It’s like you’re the one attending that play, you’re the one reading that book, or you’re watching found footage,” says Yannick D. “You’re a participant and an observer and that ingrains you in the game even more.”

Doubling down on wonder

Despite the unwavering commitment to playfulness and exploration, between 2023 and 2025, the Mario characters underwent a subtle but substantial redesign: they are now bouncier, more cartoony, and rounder. “I think that the indie game revolution and the handheld revolution – like everything being on your phone – has created a sort of aesthetic nostalgia,” says Jennifer deWinter. “In the same way that fashion repeats – my daughter is wearing 90s fashion – our aesthetic sensibilities repeat, and thanks to the indie revolution, it’s no longer the constant pressure for higher bit rates, for faster speed. There’s nostalgia about it, and nostalgia, handily in this situation, is always about childhood.”

Lost in Cult’s Abram Buehner ties it to the release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023), which combined classic side scrolling with moments of psychedelia, where a standard 2D level would come alive in ways players had never witnessed before within the series. “Nintendo had put out an interview with a lot of the key creative staff behind Wonder shortly before release, and they were talking about how they felt like there’s a real existential challenge, as the development team after Super Mario Maker (2015), to figure out: well, if people can already make infinite amounts of levels, levels that are as mechanically ambitious or complicated as they can, what can we provide?” he explains. “And I think that the answer that they found, which to me is brilliant, is that it’s not mechanics that they can provide, it’s ideas, visual ideas, little moments of joy.”

In all, Nintendo can reinvent the look and feel of Mario with every generation, but that’s always in service of the core gameplay and the sense of wonder. “You can see this in every major console shift for Nintendo, because for them, gameplay and presentation is normally the priority over realism and graphics,” Yannick D. concludes. “Mario’s look does evolve, but Nintendo’s changes are always true to Mario’s identity that you don’t feel jarred or like anything was lost. No matter what art style they choose, it’s done so skillfully that it just feels right. He’s timeless and that part is magic in and of itself.”