Okay, be honest; when you woke up this morning, did you think that Mario was going to be coming to the App Store in 2016 and that the game would be announced in such a way? I didn’t, and neither did most of the gaming world judging from how the press has been covering today’s announcement. Shigeru Miyamoto’s brief presentation on stage didn’t give us much information about the thinking behind Super Mario Run (Free), but an interview with TIME shortly after sheds some light on how Nintendo went about bringing its famous icon to the App Store. According to the interview, the team developing Super Mario Run mostly comprises of the original Super Mario development team and includes Nintendo developers who know the side-scrolling Mario games best in an attempt to deliver the best side-scrolling Mario game for mobile.
Super Mario Run, Miyamoto continues, came out of the desire to make a Mario game people can play with only one hand. Mario games are generally simple to play, but the deeper you get into the mechanics, the more challenging they get. So, the thinking was to find a way to translate that simplicity into a mobile game, which is why Mario will run on his own. However, the challenge comes in the form of the jumping mechanics that include both short and long jumps depending on the length of the tap. Nintendo decided to bring the game to iPhone first (Miyamoto says they will be bringing the game to other mobile devices later) because the platform is streamlined and designed in a way similar to Nintendo’s devices; therefore, the two companies are similar from a “philosophical standpoint."
The game will potentially be able to connect with My Nintendo to allow you to access your friends list and other similar features, which means it’s probably not going to have that option at the time of release. And finally, Miyamoto also felt that being on the Apple stage with Tim Cook was a historic moment. Unsurprisingly, it seems that a lot of thinking went into the development of Super Mario Run, and, to be honest, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
[via TIME]
