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Nintendo celebrates Mario's 30th anniversary with special behind-the-scenes video

Mario's official 30th anniversary was on Sunday and Nintendo celebrated the occasion with a very special behind-the-scenes look at the making of the original Super Mario Bros. and how the process has led to Super Mario Maker.

Ozzie Mejia

September 14, 2015 9:45 AM

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It's been a busy few days for Nintendo, but for those that missed it over the weekend, the publisher celebrated Mario's 30th birthday on Sunday. As a special treat, Nintendo posted a special interview with creator Shigeru Miyamoto, in which he went into some interesting insight into the creation of the original Super Mario Bros.

Miyamoto goes over much of the game's original concept art and first concept ideas. That includes graph paper sketches, stage layouts, and first drafts of some of the game's most memorable courses.

The video also segued into how these concepts led to the creation of Super Mario Maker. Miyamoto and producer Takashi Tezuka discussed ideas that were tossed around for the original 1985 classic, like riding a Lakitu cloud or inserting enemies into block, but never made it into the game. In fact, the video discusses the resemblance between the Super Mario Maker level editor layout and the original graph paper used to create concept sketches.

"The tools are a little different, but the creative process is very similar," Miyamoto said via a translator. "This project began with the idea of 'Wouldn't it be fun if these tools became a game, so anyone could create these levels?'"

For more, be sure to check out the full video below.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?