CASE STUDY #1: Super Mario Bros - 1-1 Opening Sequence

Game: Super Mario Bros

Genre: 2D Side-Scrolling Platformer

Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Color, various re-releases.

Release: September 13, 1985 (JPN); November 17, 1985 (NA); May 15, 1987 (EU)

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Section: Stage 1-1, Opening to the first pipe.

[I'll set up some pictures later.  I'm tired.]

Walking in the steps of giants at the dawn of the third generation, but don't bother to wipe your feet: this is Mario, you know they're going to see worse before we're done.

Would there be anything more redundant in the history of gaming for me to dredge up than the context of Mario's earliest moments, including the NES's North American launch post-Crash?  Both topics (intertwined) have been done to death, and while I will likely cover history more than a few times in the future, to leave this rock unturned would likely harm no one's education.  Unfortunately, what's about to follow flows directly from that context, and context demands it.  Nintendo's highest fiscal moments seem to hinge on those periods when they're most conscious of their audience, after all.

The key point to understanding the opening moments of Super Mario Bros is to be totally oblivious.  This is a fair way to approach any tutorial to test its ability to teach, but with Super Mario Bros it is even more central for one's understanding of what makes not just the sequence but the entire game successful.  Like the opening line, then paragraph, then page of a novel (though perhaps not definitively, as one can observe those before purchasing a novel), the opening moments of Super Mario Bros strike me as critical to its success.

As I said, we must consider the context of its release.  The NES was released, firstly, in the wake of the infamous and perhaps exaggerated Video Game Crash of 1983.  Regardless of any exaggeration, it goes without saying that video games were found less in many households.  As a result, the NES was released as a toy rather than a video game console.  This leads to two potential problems for Nintendo: the market they are marketing to not only likely does not play video games, but may not be fully aware that they are purchasing one.  Next, one must consider the context of Super Mario Bros within the industry.  SMB presented not just a larger experience than any other at the time, but backed by the power of the NES (not necessarily comparable to home computers but certainly to the Atari 2600) and its brilliant design team, Mario also did more and better than those that preceded it.  Super Mario Bros defined the two-dimensional landscape, but innovation before acceptance is alien and so has to be approached with ample caution.

Despite these limitations, Super Mario Bros became one of the few games to break a massive lull in gaming sales, along with Pong, Space Invaders and Wii Sports.  That is to say: it made people that don't play games play them, and is arguably the most complex of the lot. What made Super Mario Bros strike so much harder than its predecessors?  This has been reiterated to high heaven, but bears repeating: by creating the semblance of a world to be explored.  Certainly this was a new and exciting concept after years of the Golden Age's arena- and fixed- style games.  Even in niches it succeeded: its scrolling and bittage helped it surpass the technical limitations of Adventure.  Graphics also better serve immersion for the general populace better than the text of Interactive Fiction.  But for it to strike so hard when the iron was still warming after the Crash, it needed to immerse its players in its world at once.  The opening section of Super Mario Bros does this spectacularly, and stands as one of the best tutorials in all gaming.  And make no mistake: that is exactly what it is.

It is entirely possible to approach the opening moments of Super Mario Bros from a complete blank slate, with no gaming knowledge whatsoever.  Imagine a player having followed the instructions in the NES' manual to reach the opening screen with the controller properly plugged in, but having not read the instructions for Super Mario Bros.  Knowing that the controller serves to give input to the console, one can quickly discover that the START button will do precisely that.  There is an unintuitive moment right off the bat in that the game refers to its modes as "1P" and "2P" but I never claimed the sequence was perfect.  Either way, the game will begin the same, with the standard-palette Mario (as opposed to the green-palette Mario serving as Luigi).  From here, the tutorial begins with an empty screen.

The game now expects our player to continue to press buttons.  Different buttons.  Why this overcomes some users will never make sense to me, but having met them I will not attempt to pretend they do not exist.  Still, I won't devote a section to this case study to that extreme, though I will mention that SMB helps indicating a pause by silencing the music (to indicate a stop) and a chime (to indicate an intentional stop).  This is basic stuff, but the situation has to be approached from the point of view of an absolute neophyte to see what made SMB different enough to clinch its mass audience.  But enough appetizers, and on to the first segment of the actual tutorial: the empty screen.

Because as I just said, the game now expects our player to press more buttons.  By leaving the player with a blank area in which to test the controls, even if it is one that scrolls irreparably as our player moves along, is simple and brilliant.  Mario is hardly the only game to do the same, but there's a sensitive rule to how much can actually be on the screen and how little should be allowed.  Coins or other lesser collectables should not be present on the opening screen, as if they are almost always used as bait or leads for the player, and are shiny or in motion to draw the player's eye and attention, even for a neophyte.  To lead the player off of this testing screen would defeat the purpose, especially considering that an enemy is just barely off-screen (a mistake made, just off the top of my head, by Vectorman).  Height on the initial screen in form of platforms is fine, and might even be preferred, but Mario does away with it to assure the player first associates themselves with the controls.  To throw enemies at the player at this point would be downright absurd.  If they do not know how to play, they would not know how to react to enemies.

Having brought Vectorman to mind, I also appreciate that Super Mario Bros exists in an open space, even if the player cannot scroll to the left.  A wall to the left would seem unnatural and limiting, while the developers at Nintendo were definitely going for an "unrestrained" if not "unlimited" feel for their game.  Feel and mood are imparted immediately in any work's opening moments, so it is also important to note that there is just enough artistic elements to introduce the player to the Mushroom Kingdom, and to teach them that blocks are solid, green hills and bushes are not.  Given that clouds are drawn in the same style, the player would rightly assume the same about them and would be proven correct before too long – certainly before a lakitu makes knowing that sort of thing critical.  Goodness knows being unable to distinguish the play area from the fore- and background is an ever-present problem in the era of 2.5D platformers.

The player heads to the right, their other means of travel restricted by geography and the engine, and a Question Block appears, followed as the player approaches by the first Goomba.  If the player has learned to run in their free moment, they will reach the block before the Goomba, but in either situation the creature must be dealt with.  Having not read the manual, the idea of jumping on the Goomba will not occur to our player, and they will die.  On their next attempt they will try to jump over what they are starting to understand as what we like to call a Monster.  Here the lone Question Block comes into play, and if the player has ran this far, the blocks that follow serve a similar purpose.

Because of the presence of the lone Question Block, the player is about to learn something critical and is likely to learn something unusual, unique to the Mario franchise-to-come.  There are three quickly reasoned ways to surmount the Goomba problem while keeping in mind this strange block:

1. The player is aware of the block and jumps between blocks, discovering that the top surface of blocks is safe to walk on.  A later section of the game, just before the midpoint, presents the same by building an obvious staircase over a pit.
2. The player is aware of the block and jumps between blocks, but not on top.  This cautious jump teaches nothing, unless the player fudges their timing.  Try it yourself: attempt to clear a Goomba without moving horizontally.  It is actually very likely that the player will stomp the Goomba, and will learn how to approach enemies from this point.
3. The player does not consider the block and attempts to jump over the Goomba.  Because the player and Goomba meet approximately under the block, the player hits the block from the underside, triggering the coin.  The change in physics may disrupt the player's jump at this point, landing them in front of or even on top of the Goomba.  They have now learned that Question Blocks contain items, and that striking a block will change the character's motion path.
4. The player will attempt to wait out the Goomba.  The player is aware of the block and may even be cautious of it, or is at least cautious of the Goomba.  Such a cautious player would hopefully explore the bank of blocks in their own time, or will learn the lesson later.  Obviously a non-explicit tutorial is imperfect: there is no way to ensure that all lessons are taught if the player is left with no leash, one must rather attempt to maximize the odds.

After the player has finally overcome the Goomba, either by stomping it or vaulting it, they are now presented with the rest of the famous set of blocks: suspended 3 blocks from the ground hovers a five-block strip (stone, question, stone, question, stone) with an additional question mark block above the centre stone block.  Three blocks to the right of the final stone is a pipe, clearly delineating the area.  The player will realize by now that the game does not scroll to the left, so if they want to examine this assembly they will have to do so now, before approaching the pipe.  This is the real body of the tutorial.

While there is a small opportunity for the player to learn that Mario can cross 1-block gaps at a run, this is fairly unlikely on its own.  Instead, we must assume that the player learns to break blocks by jumping at them from below.  If they have not discovered how to open Question Blocks already, quick experimentation will provide with the help of a simple, visual cue.  Compare Mario's jumping sprite in this game or, better, in the original arcade Mario Bros (the one with the bendy floors) to the sprite of "Jumpman" from Donkey Kong.  Jumpman's hands are spread wide during the jump, and if even accidental, this helps to give a sense of motion to his floaty, sideways, barrel-clearing jumps.  Mario's hands in the following games, however, are positioned with one fist famously in the air, as if he were punching upwards.  While one would be gravely mistaken if they attempted to take on Bowser's minions with dragon punches, one would not be mistaken if they attempted to strike blocks in this way, and that is exactly what one has to do.

Presuming our player is still stuck on the ground, they may attempt to open the block on the left.  A coin!  Wonderful.  They then attempt to hit the stone block.  Nothing, but the block does respond under pressure (very useful if the player engaged the Goomba just a bit to the right!).  They now try the next block, and reveal the first Super Mushroom.  The Mushroom has been drawn to be immediately distinct from the Goomba, and thanks to the previous coin is very likely a reward – Super Mario Bros 2 would be fast to punish that sort of assumption but it proves correct in the original – though if they choose to stomp the power-up they will get it all the same.  If particularly energetic, the player may continue hitting blocks, learning that the Mushroom can be propelled into the air in such a manner, but we'll assume they do not.

Having collected the Mushroom (which as you should know bounces off the nearby pipe and back toward the player, in case they needed help catching it or discovering its powers), the player is now Super.  Once they have tested out their new form, they return to the blocks and discover one of its critical powers: the stone blocks, if hit again, now break.  If the player breaks the middle block, which they might do out of curiosity about the Super form's abilities or simply because they are not confident that all brick blocks are the same.  Having broken a block, they can now warily test the second Question Block to discover that it does not break when struck by Super Mario.  Having discovered the goodies in the easily accessible blocks, the player will no doubt attempt to collect the one above, concluding rightly that the others are meant as a platform toward it, though their task will be made more complicated (if not impossible to a new player!) if they have broken the centre block as assumed above   Used Question Blocks provide feedback for the player visually or aurally that the block is essentially non-functional, and the player will have soon exhausted the extent of the area.

The pipe that immediately follows has no secret in it, essentially ending the section as defined at the top.  Now, consider what lessons the player has learned at least partially in the opening twenty or so seconds of the game without any prompting, compared to those left to learn:

1. How to manoeuvre in the environment.
2. How to jump to clear enemies.
3. How to jump to harm enemies.
4. How to open Question Blocks.
5. That Question Blocks, once used, are solid and immobile.
6. That Brick Blocks cannot be affected by Small Mario.
7. That Brick Blocks can be broken by Super Mario, and the player should be cautious about doing so.
8. Blocks, when touched from a side other than the bottom, are always solid to the player and powerups.
9. The function of the Mushroom and many power-ups in general.
10. The basic movement patterns of Goombas and Mushrooms.
11. Coins can be found in blocks.
12. Pipes are solid from the side and on the top.
13. That positive actions in the game are rewarded with points – still a relevant action at the time.

Things not learned:

1. Running.
2. Fire Flowers, Stars, 1Up Mushrooms.
3. Pipes and the underground.
4. Free-Floating Coins.
5. Invisible blocks and their function.
6. Spring Boards.
7. Beanstalks.
8. End of Stage flags.
9. End of Castle Stage axes.
10. Running to cross small gaps.
11. Running to slide under small gaps.
12. The purpose of coins.

The player has obviously not encountered every kind of enemy, but that is not necessarily the sort of thing covered in an opening tutorial.  As standard actions and elements go, the player has learned a huge chunk of what there is to Super Mario Bros in the opening section, depending on their course of action (and ability to pursue it).  A player following all the cues will have amassed a half of the list I've created above (which is most certainly deficient), but proportions are not my intent (thus the unnumbered list).  Rather, my intent was to show the number of basic rather than complex elements taught so quickly.

It is not incorrect to say that one taught oneself how to play older video games, but it would be arrogant to say that most of Mario's contemporaries even approached this level of actual teaching compared to blind frusteration.  Even Metroid, a heavily obfuscated game, manages more invisible hand-holding in its first room than it appears and so leads you into the game gracefully.  Doki Doki Panic (Super Mario Bros 2 in the West), which requires you to unintuitively hit Up to open a door and even begin play beyond the first ten seconds of content, is not so graceful.  When even the best falter (and I hold Doki Doki Panic in fair regard for what was originally created as an advergame), you know you're tripping over something very delicate.  Thankfully, Mario proper, with both "2"s as the exception, is king of tutorials, from 1 to 3 and on all the way to the present.

See Also

SydLexia.com – Syd's look at the changes made to Super Mario Bros: All Night Nippon are probably the most comprehensive you can presently find in English.  Linked articles details several changes made between versions, including the preceding but distinct arcade release Vs. Super Mario Bros.

Scheduling: How to Simulate Infinite Monkeys

The only way I'm going to actually get into the habit of using this blog is if I get into a schedule, so here's the plan.  At the minimum, I will:

• Mondays: Run a case study.  This will analyze a segment of a game in-depth to figure out what it does, how well it does it, where it falters, and for all of the above, why.  I'll be cycling the fame and quality of the games involved to ensure we have a wide sample base.  These will often be followed up by a few subsequent posts just to back up my conclusions, glossary posts and the like so that even if I'm off-base, you'll at least know why.  Variety's key with these.  Our first example's likely to be the opening section of Super Mario Bros as I mentioned in the intro.  This will be followed by a bad game and why it doesn't work, and where it does in spite (either the "Legendary Shit Game" Hoshi wo Miru Hito or a section from infamous Wisdom Tree Game Bible Adventures).  Third in the rotation will be non-video games as long as I can manage it, probably tabletop and board games (starting with either The Trial from Hero Quest or some detail of the Caves of Chaos from B2: Keep on the Borderlands from Moldvay's D&D Basic Edition) until I run out of ideas.
  
• Wednesdays: An ongoing series about classic moments in gaming and game history.  These articles will be much shorter and will simply spell out some of the medium's more spectacular highs and lows.  It's a little more sophisticated than that, but not really.  It might as well be chunks cut from an infinite Top X list, but I figure having an article in the middle of the week will keep up my output.  As a rule, no individual game will get more than one entry (unless that game is involved in a real-world event worth writing about along with earning an entry for its own quality).
  
• Friday: Friday will be home to whatever series of featured articles I'm doing at the time.  This will involve smaller case studies of something that I want to compare and contrast over an expansive sample pool from the same game or franchise.  For example, the opening series will be about Zelda dungeons, or moreover,the clever and curious lengths and puzzles the games will go through to keep you from entering them.  The opening series will be quite expansive and hopefully I won't forget that Fridays were supposed to swap out by the time I'm done, at which point I'll probably do something even more absurd, like to take a look at the AI patterns used by the just over 100 Robot Masters.  In fact it might be such a while that these articles might spill over to Thursday as well, but I have to give the listed schedule a shot, first.

Crossing the Split Pyramid

I wouldn't be where I am today without the Split Pyramid.  I'd say influences like it are pretty common in my industry - that is to say, Game Development - though most of my compatriots probably don't remember theirs in particular.  But mine was definitely the Split Pyramid.

What I'm referring to is the moment when you're looking at something and decide that there's more to it than it lets on, and that you understand it.  The sort of starting moment that leads up to a career, in hope or theory.  Certainly not universal, but again, "pretty common."  In my case it was the Split Pyramid, a block structure in Super Mario Bros Stage 1-1, which is an example of a Passive Tutorial.

How eponymous.

The Split Pyramid is found not long after the stage's midpoint, just past a crop of Goombas lined up to play target practice for your new Fire Flower.  It measures 10 x 4, with a 4 x 4 simple staircase on the left, followed by a two-block gap, and then a 4 x 4 descending staircase to the right.  There are no enemies climbing over it, no Koopa Troopas waiting to be exploited for infinite lives like the player will find further down the game.  It's just there, unguarded and untrapped.  The only remarkable thing about the Split Pyramid in and of itself is the bushes in the middle of it, like the designers felt they had to jazz the place up a little.  In isolation, there's no sign whatsoever to explain why the game designers decided to play with a random crop of blocks, like Alex Kidd would do a few years later.  At least Alex could break them.

But there's still something to this pyramid, though maybe you have to have the dexterity of a five year old to appreciate it.  Pull up a mental map of Stage 1-1.  C'mon, if you've read this far I think we can assume you've played Super Mario Bros like everyone else, I know you know it.  You start in an empty field, a hill to the left, and approach the first Goomba and set of question mark blocks.   Past that are some pipes, the first of which you can descend to some coins.  I'll talk more about SMB's opening moments some other day.  For now, keep going.  Soon both paths are past the pipes and we come to the first pit.  The next pit is larger, but a clever player can climb the blocks above to a gap of similar size to the previous, and at least up there you have a safety net.  Perhaps you can see where this is going?

That's right.  When I was five, I couldn't actually cross the Split Pyramid.  While it's the same width as the previous gaps - two blocks - it lacks the running room of the previous.  Mario's jump width at a walk is somewhere between two and three blocks, while at a run it's closer than eight.  Now assume that my five year-old self would let go of a jump early, or make the jump a block too late.  Either one of those two mistakes would be acceptable on the previous jumps if I hit them at a run, as the jump could be made from safety and clear the 2-block gap in safety.  But not the Split Pyramid.  The Split Pyramid gives you only enough room to run one space.  If I hit the jump a block too late, I'd have already fallen.  If tried to jump without running to avoid that, I probably wouldn't push hard enough to the right, and would miss the gap all the same.  Instead, I would fall in and crawl up the other side.

Totally did this on purpose.  Total, man.

This is all pertinent because of the next hazard on 1-1: the second Split Pyramid.  This one measures one block wider, with two blocks for new Mario players to build up their run, but at the cost of the safe zone in between.  Instead, there's a pit.  Can't do this simple jump?  You die, power-ups or not.  And I could not do that simple jump.  Not for my life.

But the magic moment wasn't in landing the jump, which I eventually did (after a day or two awestruck over my friend's dad, who could beat the level and would go on to get creamed by flying Cheap-Cheaps in 2-2).  No, the key point wasn't the jump, or the trap, but rather the first Split Pyramid.  Even as a kid, I came to realize exactly what on earth it was there for.  I'm sure you've worked it out by now too: it's there to teach you how to cross the second one.

My friend and I lamented SMB's inability to backtrack, since I realized that if we could just go back to the first pyramid over and over, we could practice the jump (obviously we could try to keep it on screen but you remember me saying I was incredibly sloppy at this, right?).  And that is assuredly the purpose of the first Split Pyramid.  It even explains the bushes: the bushes help you identify the gap as a safe spot before you can't go back.  You know you can fall in that gap.  You know as soon as you see the second pyramid that you can't fall in that gap.  And so the Split Pyramids become one of Mario's expertly-created Passive Tutorials: the game teaches you how to play it and identify its cues without actually coming up to tell you how to play it or identify its cues.

This blog is about game design.  Teaching, immersing, engaging, challenging and otherwise interacting with the player to convey the intended emotions.  If I can keep on-focus, it will be about the aspects of game design I understand the least, under the hope that if I talk about them out loud, maybe I'll hit the right notes.  As a result, until I find my comfort zone I'll probably be speaking about things from my level rather than, say, introductory.  In the meantime, just in case you wandered in here hoping to learn game design from scratch, I figured I had best redirect you to a more appropriate sources.

• Gamasutra.com - The game developer's news and hub website.
• GameCareerGuide.com - This is where you want to go if you want to do this for a living.
• HG101 - Encyclopedic entries on hundreds of games and franchises, listing what works for each and why.  With few low-quality or less-objective exceptions, this sort of objectivity is exactly the sort of way you want to start looking at games, both if you've heard of them and if you haven't.
• Kongregate.com - Kongregate hosts Flash and Unity games and has a site-wide Achievement system selected by a neutral source at the company.  Besides learning a thing-or-two about achievement design, more importantly grabbing achievements will force you to play games you wouldn't otherwise bother to play.  And I can't recommend that highly enough.  Branch out.  Kongregate's selection of high-quality "badged" games is a good way to start.