Nintendo’s biggest and most famous mascot reaches his 25th birthday today (September 13th.)

Mario’s father, Shigeru Miyamoto explains why he thinks Mario is still popular even to this day.

“Stimulated by advancements in technologies, we have always enjoyed creating the Super Mario Bros. games. The series has always taken advantage of the latest technological advancements and is the fruit of creativity of many of my hard-working friends working closely as a team,” said Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto.

Mario started off as Jumpman where he faced off against Donkey Kong to save the princess. He has gone through many incarnations from Mario Bros on the NES to Super Mario Galaxy 2.

So I plopped it in the Wii and sat through the drearily long intro movie. First impressions…the camera still sucks, but it is cool that you can tag the little star bits with the wiimote. Ooh, a spherical world. Wow, this camera really does suck! I’m suddenly navigating upside down and my head is cocked at a 90 degree angle. I barely know where my little dude is heading.
So I gamely struggle with the wonky interface up until the first black hole. I immediately drive my drunken Mario tank directly off the ledge into the hole’s waiting maw. Boom, back at the beginning of the level I go. And I lose a life. Confusion sets in. Shouldn’t there be like a quicksave or something that lets me try this dastardly trap again? Surely, a mistake made in a fraction of a second surely shouldn’t be punished by a minute long replay penalty.

The frustration of not finding your soul mate
Oh, but it is. At this point I’m pissed. For me, the first hour of Super Mario Galaxy simply isn’t any fun. It is stressful, irritating and it punishes me when I make the slightest mistake. And then it gets worse. I jumped from enjoying WiiSports to playing Super Mario Galaxy. The difference in expected play styles is quite the shock.

• Time between failure and retry is too long: If you make a mistake, retrying again should only be less than 15 seconds away. Even a minute is too long. The easy levels of Knytt are just about right…3 to 10 seconds between retries. Something like Braid promises to be even better. Replay just as much as you need to.
• Lack of dynamic difficulty: My wife died five times in a row trying to run around behind a giant tromping plant. How hard is it to reduce the difficulty level of an enemy if they end up blocking a player’s progress? Make the monster tromp slower. Require fewer hits to kill. We build games in a one size fits all manner when the obvious reality is that there are lots of different types of players. Try to meet up half away instead of asking the player to do all the work.
• Blocking linear challenges: Naturally, my wife quit the game after this repeated punishment. Classic burnout. Never block the player with a challenge that presents no option but continued failure. When the player is presented with challenge after challenge in a linear manner, eventually they get to one that they can’t pass. Beating your head against such an obstacle is frustrating. Instead, let the player try something else. (Eventually you gain access to multiple galaxies at once, but not soon enough. Also most individual levels remain quite linear)
• Too much of a focus on learning through failure and repetition: A good 80% of the levels teach the player new skills by killing them if they screw up. A player new to the 3D platformer genre is expected to rack up hundreds of deaths before they reach the end. Many areas require a half dozen or more attempts, each lasting minutes, before success is achieved. And this is fun?

If you fixed these things, it wouldn’t be a Mario game
None of these problems are the fault of Super Mario Galaxy. I’m playing the game incorrectly. My suggestions are like trying to improve a lover that isn’t quite the right match. Mario is a game about all those things I want to fix. You see, when I play, my most happy moments are exploring and chatting with the little cute mushroom guys. All this jumping crap just gets in my way. But the point of Mario is the jumping crap.

Super Mario Galaxy is all about mastering physical skills. If you map out the skill atoms, everything relies on movement and timing. This is reptile brain stuff that is learned in one very simple manner: repetition. Remember, Karate Kid? Wax on, wax off. The game design is a slave to this biological requirement. If you want to encourage the player to master navigate a narrow path above a black hole, you need to force them to perform variations on that action a thousand times. Each failure improves our muscle memory a fraction more.

This is core of Mario:

• Move accurately.
• If you fail, you die and try again.
• If you succeed, a new challenge appears where you must move with even greater accuracy.

There are of course some lovely exploration elements and cute graphics mixed in with the basic activiities. However, if you removed the core elements of timing and jumping, you wouldn’t have a Mario platformer any longer.

It’s not you, it’s me
Sometimes, it is the player, not the design that is at fault. Somewhere along the way, I have diverged from the traditional gamer path. Those simple pleasures of twitching in sequence to bizarre spacial/temporal puzzles are lost on me. Instead of finding them fun, I find them to be obnoxious time wasters.

This goes back to the work of Chris Bateman, Nicole Lazzaro, Nicholas Lee and others exploring different play styles. Not all people enjoy the same sort of games. It’s an obvious statement that is still making itself heard throughout the gaming ecosystem.

For example, on Nick Lee’s motivation assessment test, I happen to score high on exploration and socializing tendencies, but don’t really give a damn about in-game achievement.

• I’ll put up with fighting enemies or solving puzzles into order to see new vistas or get some coin to help outfitting my character. I’m not in it for the joy of the battle.
• For a person like myself, Street Fighter is the single dumbest game of all time.
• On the other hand, wandering about in Animal Crossing and planting sweet rows of pretty apple trees is pure crack.

With the advent of casual and indie games as well as the efforts on the DS and the Wii to broaden the market, I’m starting to see more games that I enjoy quite thoroughly. Games are beginning to finally emerge from their geeky, masochist roots and it delights me to no end.

I should have never listened to his advice
The rest of the ecoystem hasn’t quite caught up. That 98% score for Super Mario Galaxy on gamerankings.com is so horrendously polluted by a self-selection bias that it is laughable. What percentage of the reviewers fit any of the following criteria?

• Never played a 3D platformer.
• Mostly enjoy casual games like Bejeweled.
• Prefer social board games like Pictionary or Scrabble.

That’s a random smattering of non-hardcore play styles and skill levels present in the broader population. I suspect you’ll find less than 5% of professional game reviewers fit any of those profiles. The quality signals sent by the extraordinarily biased press are completely inappropriate for anyone who hasn’t been playing games as their primary hobby for the past five years.

What will it take for the game industry to adapt to the fact that different gamers like different games? I’m not sure that expert game reviewers, describing their personal tale about their unique experience with the game, have a place in telling most people which games they should play. It’s like taking dating advice from a Guild Navigator, so loaded to the gills with the spice of genre addiction that they’ve mutated into an alien being.

For me, the solution is all about trying the game out before I purchase. This is an area where immense improvement is possible.

• Customers need to learn to seek out demos. They also need to refuse to buy sight unseen the products that fail to offer a free trial. This is a culture change that will likely take years to complete. It is inevitable. People don’t like making $40 mistakes.
• Developers need to learn the fine art of making great demos. A great demo is a viral marketing engine that cuts out the middleman. They improve customer satisfaction and can improve the margin that a developer takes home. There is a huge opportunity here to merge the lessons of free-to-play service models with the mechanics found in current downloadable games. Unfortunately, building a demo that provides instant value, an incentive to purchase and makes users want to pass it on to others is a skill that is rarely found at most game development shops. We are seeing some early attempts on Xbox Live, the PS3 and the DS download stations, though at the moment, the demo is often a separate from the full version. As the concepts of ‘free to play’ and ‘demo’ begin to merge, developers will need to address this disconnect.
• Platforms need to make demos the default method of promoting a game. If a game is released in the store, I should be able to download a demo online. If your platform doesn’t encourage this for most games, your customers are being punished. Ideally, customers can purchase the game from within the trial. This is already the case for the casual download market and I expect it to spread quickly into other areas of the game market.

If Super Mario Galaxy had a demo, I would have tried it out and likely given it a pass.

If only I liked you…
In a way, all this makes me sad. There is an entire herd of twitchy game developers, trained for decades to worship fare like Mario Galaxy. They are out there, busting their beautiful balls to make more games that push the same exact psychological buttons as the pedestal lounging AAA titles of their childhood. They are building some great games, but those games aren’t for me.

It’s like meeting a girl who is cute and smart, but really, really likes the whole dressing up their boyfriend in black duct tape and then whipping them until they bleed from unmentionable orifices. You’ll eventually back away, but there is always that slightest tinge of regret.

You’ll find someone
This tale has a happy ending. My wife picked up the controller after I set it down in frustration. The last platformer that she played was Super Mario Bros on the original Famicom, but she figured, what the heck. She came back from being crushed by the first boss, read the walk through sites for tips and finally defeated him. From that point onward, she’s been clocking in six to eight hours a day and just picked up her 60th star. She dies over and over again. The addiction and delight on her face when she ends a level is palpable. For her, the game clicks.

Perhaps after she’s done, I’ll pop into the levels she’s already conquered and cherry pick the handful of experiences that fit my style of play. There is a beach level with a cannon and a lagoon. There isn’t much there, but it is rather relaxing to hang out with the one scaredy crab (I kill off the hurtful ones) and taking the occasional lazy swim through the pristine waters.

Conclusion
Even universal acclaim is not enough to justify a purchase. Each player has their own distinct playing style and many of these preferences are rarely captured by the hardcore journalists who review most games. Instead of complaining about the game post-purchase, it is far better to grab a demo and experience it directly. This goes for even such gems as Super Mario Galaxy.?

a beautiful walk cycle by Sven-da-man, made in Flash.  Unlike the previous drawing, this Mario has more of a classic cartoon like proportion, though still stylized from the canon design of the character.  Most notably this character is quite plump in comparison, but it gives an extra sense of weight to the character, and thus the small amount of frames in the loop are enough to convey the walk and mass of the character due to the expertly posed drawings of him.  In a sense, the character has a more jolly feel to him, perhaps reminiscent to Santa Claus, making him more appealing that his real counterpart. Next up we have a very classic look at the character, perfectly capturing the feel of the character and world unlike the previous pieces.  The colours are all ‘correct’ and the proportions and overall design of Mario and his enemies are spot on from the games and official artwork.  However, in that sense the image lacks a sense of personal touch in comparison.  Since theres nothing here thats different from the official artwork except perhaps the composition.  Not to talk bad of the piece, since its a nice looking piece none the less, but being fan art one would want some more personality from the artist to seep through, to personalize it and make him into his own character. For more of bad-bloods’ artwork, follow this link.
Last in the gallery is The Legend: Super Mario Bros 3 by SuperCaterina.  As the caption suggests, this image is all about a sense of epic.  The main detail that makes it epic is the composition, adding so many elements from the game and redrawn them into the artist’s style, featuring mostly a cuter and overall more appealing design choice.  The way the artist has placed Bowser and Mario at one side each, and despite size differences and distance away from each other portrayed them as equals in both mass and character.  The image is filled with little details such as the enemies and props from the game, enabling a fun and overall cool drawing.

The Museum is closed for the day now, welcome back for when the next gallery opens.

Many HD Super Mario Game desktop wallpapers for your pc, notebook or laptop. Photos of Super Mario in all resolutions and sizes. All nice Super Mario wallpapers are for free! Click on a wallpaper to see it full size and save the background.

In the last hour there have been rumors of a new Super Mario Bros game, and during the Nintendo keynote at E3 2009, this game was confirmed with some details.

There is a new game that has been referred to as “New Super Mario Bros. Wii”, and it has a release of some time in the 2009 holidays. It will be playable on the E3 2009 show floor.

The new Super Mario Bros game lets you play in co-op or single player modes, and these can be switched at any time. Four players will be able to play at the same time in the 3D style game, where they will compete for coins.

The first Super Mairo Bros game was released by Nintendo in 1985, for over two decades the Super Maior Bro. was the best selling video game of all time. Since the release of the first game, there have been many other alternate versions. Vs. Super Mario Bros, which is in identical format with different stages and small differences and hidden items. All night Nippon Super Mario Bros, which was released in Japan and the graphic were based on Japanese radio show All-Night Nippon. Super Mario Bros. Special, a game that was a Japan release only. Super Mario All-Stars, which included all of the Super Mario Bro games. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, which was released in 1999 for Game Boy Color. And nearly 25 years later they are still producing games. “In the interests of adopting new technology for the Super Mario Bros. tradition, I am now making a new Super Mario Bros. game for the Nintendo 3DS system,” Miyamoto said. IGN said that, “Given the recent success of Mario’s 2D revivals on Wii and DS it seems likely to assume the game will be a side-scrolling platformer, but Miyamoto didn’t add any clarifications about gameplay. In November he spoke about the benefit to jumping in 3D space with the new 3DS screen effects, which provide extra visual information about environment depth and object placement.”

A French humorist rides around the streets in a go-kart, tossing banana peels and turtle shells at other drivers

A French humorist by the name of Remi Gaillard has taken Mario Kart fandom to another level. Dressing up as Nintendo’s mascot plumber, the prankster stepped into a go-kart and drove around the city, cutting off other cars and tossing banana peels and turtle shells (plush turtles) at the other drivers.

The video has garnerd a bit of popularity, and rightfully so. After all, the antics are completely nonsensical (and illegal). Toward the end, Gaillard has no choice but to race away from the authorities. This isn’t the first time the French humorist has taken Mario Kart to the extreme. But after the heat he’s going to be in with the cops, will it be the last?

Mario’s face is plastered everywhere. He’s on lunchboxes, action figures, underwear – you name it. We hear he likes to dabble in the occasionally console game to boot.

No videogame character is more famous than Mario. His shtick is simple. He runs from point A to point B, collecting coins and dodging obstacles. You’d think a portly plumber wouldn’t be able to handle himself well in a fight, but you’d be very wrong. Mario can jump high enough to give Michael Jordon vertigo. He’s the true master of the hop-and-stomp maneuver.

Mario also preaches the virtues of magical mushrooms to all the impressionable children out there. By imbibing in a toadstool, he can grow several times his normal size or gain an “extra life”, which is probably Mushroom Kingdom street-slang for catching a buzz. Mario is a man of 1000 transformations, any and all of which enable him to lay waste to Bowser’s armies.

After approximately 7 billion quests to rescue the princess, Mario has an insane amount of combat experience under his belt. He’s the kind of fighter any opponent will underestimate upon first glance. But they do so at their own peril. Mario is one tough sonuvagun, and he won’t relinquish his championship belt without a serious fight.

A recent survey in Japan has revealed the game series most Japanese gamers would like to try on a big-screen 3D television. 1,072 Japanese internet users – 68% female to 32% male – said they’d like to see a Mario game in 3D over any other title. Mario Kart and Final Fantasy were second and third in the list. Of course, we know for certain that a 3D Mario Kart game is on the way.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Dragon Quest RPG series, a sales juggernaut in Japan, didn’t feature in the top 30 games picked – but Need for Speed did. Groan. Here’s the full list:

 

1. Super Mario
2. Mario Kart
3. Final Fantasy
4. Resident Evil
5. The Legend of Zelda
6. Super Smash Bros.
7. “Musou” (i.e. Dynasty Warriors)
8. Monster Hunter
9. Street Fighter
10. Dragon Ball
11. Gran Turismo
12. Winning Eleven
13. Tekken
14. Metal Gear Solid
15. Tomb Raider
16. Ace Combat
17. Silent Hill
18. (tie) Virtua Fighter
19. (tie) Love Plus
20. Ridge Racer
21. F-Zero
22. The House of the Dead
23. StarFox
24. Siren
25. Medal of Honor
26. Call of Duty
27. Virtual-On
28. (tie) Need for Speed
29. (tie) Panzer Dragoon
30. Space Harrier

It was a defining moment in video game history. Mario in glorious 3D! You know this head. It graced the opening screen of Super Mario 64, and and we finally hear Mario speak. You can pinch it and pull it.

And now you can papercraft it! Thanks to Pixel-Kakashi, who was kind enough to indulge my request for a papercraft Mario. It is about 15cm high and just about as wide.

There are some challenging attachments to be made and experienced papercrafters know how tricky it is to close a sphere; this is basically a sphere with a face and hat. I recommend a little experience before attempting to take this on. But it’s not extremely difficult either. Hope you have as much fun building it as I did. Download comes in two paper sizes, Letter size for the peeps in the USA, and A4 for the rest of the world.