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1,031,185 Views ⢠Jan 19, 2024 ⢠Click to toggle off description
From Super Mario Bros. to Mario Wonder, Nintendo has explored and experimented with a genius way to let players dictate their own level of difficulty.
=== Sources and Resources ===
- Sources
[1] New Super Mario Bros: Volume 1 | Iwata Asks
iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/nsmb/0/4/
[2] Super Mario World â 1990 Developer Interview | Shmuplations
shmuplations.com/supermarioworld/
[3] New Super Mario Bros: Volume 3 | Iwata Asks
iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/nsmb/2/0/
[4] Interview with Shigeru Miyamoto | Nintendo Channel
themushroomkingdom.net/interview_miyamoto_nc_smb_2âŚ
[5] New Super Mario Bros: Volume 2 | Iwata Asks
iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/nsmb/1/6/
[6] 9 Things Shigeru Miyamoto Told Us About the New Star Fox | TIME
time.com/4245215/starfox-wii-u/
[7] Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.631 WR | Niftski
   â˘Â Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:... Â
[8] Is it Possible to Beat New Super Mario Bros. U Without Touching a Single Coin? | Ceave Gaming
   â˘Â Is it Possible to Beat New Super Mari... Â
[9] Super Mario Odyssey Nipple% Speedrun in 7:23.650 | Tyron18
   â˘Â [WR] Super Mario Odyssey Nipple% Spee... Â
[10] SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses | pannenkoek2012
   â˘Â SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x... Â
[11] Ask the Developer Vol. 11, Super Mario Bros. Wonder | Nintendo
www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2023/October/Ask-the-DevelâŚ
- Additional resources
Miyamoto and Tezuka on the struggle of balancing games for advanced players and beginners | Nintendo Everything
nintendoeverything.com/miyamoto-and-tezuka-on-the-âŚ
Shigeru Miyamoto talks Game Design (1998) | Shmuplations
shmuplations.com/miyamotodesign/
=== Chapters ===
00:00 - Intro
02:34 - The Three Pipes
04:11 - Making the Game More Difficult
11:29 - Making the Game Easier
17:19 - Seamless Shifting
19:06 - Encouraging Players to Try
23:02 - Case Study: Super Mario Bros. Wonder
27:06 - Outro
=== Games Shown ===
Super Mario 3D All-Stars | 2020
Super Mario Bros. | 1985
Super Mario World | 1990
Super Mario 64 | 1996
Super Mario Odyssey | 2017
Super Mario Bros. Wonder | 2023
Doom Eternal | 2020
Final Fantasy XV | 2016
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown | 2024
New Super Mario Bros. | 2012
Super Mario Land 2: The Six Golden Coins | 1992
Super Mario Galaxy | 2007
Super Mario 3D World | 2013
New Super Mario Bros. Wii | 2009
Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS | 2016
New Super Mario Bros. 2 | 2012
New Super Mario Bros | 2006
Super Mario Galaxy 2 | 2010
Super Mario 3D Land | 2011
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island | 1995
Donkey Kong | 1981
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe | 1999
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels | 1986
New Super Luigi U | 2013
Super Mario Maker 2 | 2019
Super Mario Sunshine | 2002
Super Mario Bros. 3 | 1988
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe | 2019
Super Mario Bros. 2 | 1988
Dead Space | 2023
Fire Emblem: Three Houses | 2019
Star Fox Zero | 2016
Super Mario Run | 2016
=== Credits ===
Music provided by Epidemic Sound - www.epidemicsound.com/referral/vtdu5y (Referral Link)
Music from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Super Mario Odyssey, New Super Mario Bros. U
=== Subtitles ===
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/videos/5WwvofSn9p7U/
Views : 1,031,185
Genre: Gaming
Date of upload: Jan 19, 2024 ^^
Rating : 4.938 (691/43,991 LTDR)
RYD date created : 2024-05-04T08:34:38.890319Z
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YouTube Comments - 1,463 Comments
Top Comments of this video!! :3
I think we can all agree that the best difficulty setting in a Mario game is âYou can now play as Luigi.â
6.4K |
8:38
I love how without any further explanation, this makes it sound like being Luigi is just inherently harder than being Mario.
2.6K |
Jan Misali just off screen having a stroke when GMTK declares he's played "every mainline Super Mario game"
936 |
Now that I have kids, I discovered this about Mario and Minecraft. Allow me to talk about Minecraft for a moment: it has the best invisible difficulty settings I've ever known. Just like with lego, my kids naturally reach for the pieces that they understand. When my oldest was 3, he would make dirt houses. Then he started adding windows. Then he made a basement with a ladder. Then some tunnels. Then added switches and buttons. Then added rail cars. Then began crafting things. Then discovered redstone, etc. He's had this close relationship iwth minecraft for years and it's never felt like he was too young or twoo old for it. And none of this required me deciding "you're ready for the next bit so I'll enable it, or get you to the next area, or buy the DLC." From the very start the game enabled ALL of this, but never skill checked with, "you MUST learn to use x, y, and z, to keep playing." This meant my son could advance to the "next level" whenever he was ready, while never feeling like the game was telling him he wasn't yet good enough. Every other game he plays for a while then walks away from suffers from the same issue: he gets to a point where he can't continue, so he loses interest.
2K |
14:55 "slightly unsettling" is putting it mildly - I remember being at 110 stars or something before seeing Cosmic Rosalina for the first time and it seriously scared me until I realized why she appeared. At that point, I was at the home stretch, super comfortable with the game and just cleaning up (not aware that there were 120 green stars in the postgame), so this character caught me completely by surprise at a point where I wasn't expecting new characters.
702 |
I think the switch palaces in SMW were not just about making the game easier, there's a few places where they're part of the expected route, and some secrets require glitches to access without them.
I think the game developers intended them to be more of a reward than a crutch.
This is also evident that a few levels featuring them need to be beaten to unlock the relevant switch palace, if they were just to make the game easier they wouldn't be useful in a level you need to beat to unlock the palace, you're clearly already able to beat that level. But giving a cape power up before a secret exit that requires flying under the exit is a pretty good reward for exploring.
411 |
What I like about most of these "difficulty settings" is that by using different levels, bonuses or whatever, you don't feel bad, instead it makes the game more fun and easier to explore.
The game doesn't slap you in the face for being terrible, but instead rewards you for playing.
118 |
Gotta love the deep dives whenever you cover Nintendoâs mastery in the craft. We have been quite fortunate to enjoy that consistent quality out of such a developer in our time
451 |
There was one flaw in the Mario 3D Land assist system that bugged me a lot. The star sparkle (or I think it was an extra star that didn't show up on the screen; either way) punishment didn't apply when you used the assist mode, but when it showed up. Since I liked to fully complete a level before finishing it, I would often deliberately jump in a pit if I missed a coin and couldn't go back to it, and some times, I had to retry often enough that the assist box showed up. So by trying to show a certain sort of expertise (100%ing levels in the first go through), I was punished as though I needed assistance.
240 |
~2:00. Kirby. Give it to your kid or little sibling and they can float through the levels no problem. Give it to an experienced gamer and suddenly there's a bunch of secret paths, harder alternate routes. And there's never any real reward for it other that a stamp on the level select or a percentage going up. It all just exists to make an easy game for kids into something everyone can enjoy.
94 |
Personally, my favorite part about super mario wonder was that, despite the game being really easy, you can completely break the game apart if you have the skills for it. Infinite wall jumps with the floaty jump badge and bubble flower flight can allow you to basically go wherever you want if you can pull them off consistently, and while it isn't always useful by being faster or letting you get to unintended areas it's rewarding simply by allowing you to test yourself. I have the theory that these things were left in intentionally, despite nintendo being known for patching out skill-based exploits like one sided wall jumps or midair shell jumps, which is a huge step in the right direction for them
250 |
Note that you can't 100% New Super Mario Bros Wii nor Super Mario 3D Land if you ever see (not even use) a Super Guide Block for the former or an Assist Block for the latter. You'll still be able to have five stars on your save file but they won't be sparkling.
New Super Mario Bros 2 and U aren't as punishing. In the former you can restore the sparkles by beating a level you triggered the assist in by yourself, and in the latter by simply not using it (which means that you don't have to reset your game if you trigger it).
168 |
Something I noticed about Odyssey when watching differently skilled players is that the same level can have multiple "main paths".
If a level presents a goal with a large gap between you and the goal, a skilled player will work out that they can combine all of the different jumps with precise timing to get over the gap and get to the goal in record time. A less skilled player might not realise and explore around the level and find a much easier route to the goal. The same puzzle has multiple difficulty levels in disguise that invisibly gets tailoured to how familiar you are with the game.
241 |
Mark Rosewater had an article about a similar thing for magic the gathering, he used the term lenticular game design. Since depending on the way you were viewing a card, at a beginner or advanced level, changed your understanding of the card. But the key is to still understand the card in either case, or to grok it. So what you do is make a card with a simple to understand first reading, but the way it interacts with the system includes things that an advanced play can opt in to. Like imagine a spell that make one of your minions disappear for a turn, and the next turn it comes back plus a card from your graveyard. A new player can go "Oh, it goes down to the underworld and saves them, nice!" and an advanced player can go, "This could be really good with cards that have effects trigger when they enter play." Basically, the card's effect scales with how much information you know about the game and its applications.
83 |
The Grumps recently referred to Yoshi and Nabbit in Wonder as "little brother mode." Which is both a perfect way to describe that and incredibly amusing to me because I'M the one who needs the help. My little brother is the one who has beaten the game while I tag along trying not to die
221 |
I think the Star Coin "added difficulty" concept from New Super Mario Bros actually dates back to the Dragon Coins in Super Mario World. In the original SNES release, collecting all 5 nets a 1-up. But in the GBA release, Super Mario Advance 2, all 5 Dragon Coins are tracked in the stage progress screen just like Star Coins. I wonder if this was a limitation of save RAM storage, since Yoshi's Island (like original Banjo Kazooie) saves a "score" instead of individual collectables found per stage. It's actually pretty interesting that 3D collectathon Mario ended up influencing 2D Mario in such a way. Congrats on the 200th episode, Mark!
79 |
Congrats on turning 200!
Right around 22 minutes you mention something that's a *real* problem in video game design: Game rewards (particularly character leveling) intrinsically makes the game easier to play as you progress, inverting the desired difficulty curve. It's a huge problem in RPGs and strategy games, where the longer you play the more powerful items and skills and abilities you collect that make the game easier to play. This ends up requiring the game designers to implement artificial difficulty to try and keep the games balanced.
I play a lot of MechWarrior 5 and one of the best mods for the game (YAML) has introduced an "upgrades" feature. This feature locks you out of being able to drop heavier battlemechs until you buy the mech bay upgrades. You can't repair or refit certain items until you buy the repair bay upgrades. Other upgrades reduce the cost of repairs or reduce travel time. These upgrades end up having a positive feedback loop where the more upgrades you have the easier it is to play the game and get more upgrades until the game has become so easy that it's boring.
I love the mod and the upgrades feature, but it inverts the difficulty curve - making the game far more difficult to play for new players or new games, but so easy that it becomes banal for late game experienced players. (MW5 can be pretty flexible with this because of its open world difficulty zone design, and because mods can increase late game difficulty to improve late game balance.)
Dealing with that inverted difficulty curve requires very careful game design to ensure that each of those "upgrades" (or character levels or higher level items or spells or abilities) also opens up higher difficulty gameplay, while also keeping the escalating power levels from turning into an WoW-meme mess of stupendous nonsense.
This inverted difficulty curve problem is especially prominent in games (such as Oblivion or Skyrim) that deal with it by leveling opponents alongside the player. Leveling up doesn't feel very meaningful because all of the same enemies have also leveled up with you.
This inverted difficulty curve problem is worth its own video and I'd love to see you examine it in depth!
98 |
I can't understate how much of a welcome addition the Badges are to Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Using them feels great and they've been a big help in getting me through the Stages and clearing all those extra challenges. Congratulations on 200 videos!
59 |
1:29
"Which is why in more than 30 mainline super mario games"
Jan Misali is rolling in their grave right now (except they aren't dead)
224 |
@Willandacamera
3 months ago
I just like how by adding the Luigi guide to those games, Nintendo codified "have your brother beat it for you" as a strategy to their games.
2K |