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Super Mario Bros. 3 Level Design Lessons

Posted by Soulskill on from the double-whistle-to-victory dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Significant Bits about how the early level design in Super Mario Bros. 3 gradually introduced players to the game without needing something as blatant and obtrusive as a tutorial: "Super Mario Bros. 3 contains many obvious design lessons that are also present in other games, e.g., the gradual layering of complexity that allows players to master a specific mechanic. What surprised me during my playthrough, though, was how some of these lessons were completely optional. The game doesn't have any forced hand-holding, and it isn't afraid of the player simply exploring it at his own pace (even if it means circumventing chunks of the experience)."

20 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. I think the biggest lesson by raicesrasta · · Score: 2

    Is that at this point in time SMB3 is still the subject of the matter.

  2. agreed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The current industry standard today basically assumes the player is stupid and needs handholding, that is a sad fact, even though it opens up the games to a much wider audience than the one that played games back in the day of SMB3. I think nowadays people are very much afraid of introducing complexity in their games just because they will have to explain how the complexity works with a tutorial or similar, wich in turn requires more resources on design/tutorial building etc.

    1. Re:agreed by justinmikehunt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree to an extent. But things were also simpler back then. You move left or right, and press A or B. Now you have controllers with 78 different buttons on them, there is a higher degree of complexity there. Of course anyone who's played one FPS can pick up another and figure out the differences easily enough.

    2. Re:agreed by hedwards · · Score: 2

      What's worse is when developers decide that you have to play the entire game. I stopped playing Kingdom of Loathing largely because they felt the need to make zones that suck mandatory for a run through. Rather than accepting that those zones suck and serve little to no strategic interest and addressing that, the solution was to put a quest item there. The Hidden areas were probably the worst, as there wasn't any strategy involved and the areas weren't interesting, didn't change ascension to ascension and were basically just there as a turn sink. If you're going to do a turn sink, either make it interesting or make it instantaneous. A turn sink that wastes real life time to do isn't going to win any friends unless it's actually fun.

      It's difficult to impossible to make an entire game fun, so forcing people to play the entire thing every time is pointless for all involved. Once a person knows the story, there really isn't a particularly compelling reason to make them repeat it.

    3. Re:agreed by mjwx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The current industry standard today basically assumes the player is stupid and needs handholding, that is a sad fact, even though it opens up the games to a much wider audience than the one that played games back in the day of SMB3.

      On the contrary, this is exactly what the article was talking about.

      The earlier SMB 3 levels were easy, yet the later SMB 3 levels where phenomenally hard (World 8 and those ships), especially for younger audiences.

      This is something that has been forgotten in game design, the gradual increase in difficulty. Now days it's a sudden increase (Crysis), start at max level (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) or don't even bother with it (Bioshock). SMB3 introduced you to the game mechanics slowly whilst allowing the player to still have fun (in case you've forgotten, that is why we play games).

      I'd like to see more of the SMB 3 kind of gradual increase but unfortunately the big dev companies seem to hate it when things get to hard for the mouth breathers. Something about lost profits.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  3. Generally speaking, all Mario Jump & Runs... by RichiH · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...are this way. And that is a huge portion of what makes them awesome. Not only has the level design always been done with an incredible dedication to detail, surprises and general experience, many levels are as easy or hard as you'd like them. Just think the star (coin) system in the newer games. You can play through the game and never care for all the bonus stuff and it's still a nice experience. Or you can go after every devious bit.

    There's a reason why I own both a DS and a Wii and only break them out when a new Mario or Zelda game is released. (If Square Enix were to get their act together and release a true successor of Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger, we could talk, too).

    tl;dr: I 3 Nintendo

  4. Tutorials :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/5/

    1. Re:Tutorials :) by Again · · Score: 2

      Good one. Here's another comic: http://www.hiwiller.com/2010/04/29/if-mario-was-designed-in-2010/

  5. Re:Generally speaking, all Mario Jump & Runs.. by RichiH · · Score: 2

    PS: Fuck you /. and your parser that eats angle brackets.

    PPS: I specified J&R because Paper Mario, Inside Story etc are kinda weird. On the plus side, each of them explores a new concept, which is very neat.

  6. Donkey Kong Country Returns by MasaMuneCyrus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii is a great example of classic level design. The beginning of the game shows the opening cinematic, and after that, Donkey Kong leaves his house, and left just standing there. After a few seconds, you move the joystick after the realization that, "Oh... The game just started."

    You're just thrown into the game. It guides you along the correct path, but it doesn't sit you down and teach you. You learn how to play for yourself gradually from the moment you touch the joystick.

    Donkey Kong Country Returns is how games used to be. This is how they are now.

    1. Re:Donkey Kong Country Returns by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Let me just say there's a big difference in difficulty. Donkey Kong Country Returns is actually very hard when compared to Super Mario Bros 3, though it's only saving grace is that a game over event doesn't send you to the start of the world, and instead only the start of the level. I was pleasantly surprised by the challenge it presents after Nintendo basically threw limitless lives at me in Super Mario Galaxy and New Super Mario Bros Wii.

      The other key difference is that Mario tends to let you figure out everything for yourself. We actually made it to world 4 before we found about a synchronised ground pound because we didn't read the manual (damn that would have been useful in killing Goombas). Donkey Kong Country Returns on the other hand drops you in the game with a basic up down left right mechanic, but yet the entire way through there are pop-up hints to tell you what to press. I don't see this as being very different from providing a tutorial at all, though quite different from SuperMario which has an admittedly far more basic level design in comparison.

  7. Re:Generally speaking, all Mario Jump & Runs.. by simon0411 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Love the speed run demos they included in New Super Mario Bros., which really illustrate your point. Sure, one could play through every stage in a straight forward fashion, or one could play through without losing star power the entire stage, while getting a dozen extra lives with a single turtle shell, or without ever touching the ground. In the hands of a creative player, the depth of the classic Mario game play truly shines.

  8. Similar to expositional elements in movies by noidentity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This reminds me of well-done exposition in movies or other fiction, where the audience is given a good amount of information about the characters or story, but in a way that is interesting and not disjoint from the presentation.

  9. Re:Generally speaking, all Mario Jump & Runs.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    <

  10. Re:Generally speaking, all Mario Jump & Runs.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    <

    Now /. is eating "3"'s! When will this madness end?!

  11. Re:Generally speaking, all Mario Jump & Runs.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Agreed. And I think they reached perfection with Super Mario Galaxy, which starts out requiring only simple motions, but constantly adds complexity throughout a very long game. By the end, you're an expert, and the game requires extremely complex maneuvers to complete. And when Galaxy 2 was released, there was a lot more you could do early in the game if you are already familiar with the advanced controls.

    Super Mario 64 could have been as good (I know most people bow before it) if only it hadn't been plagued by a frustrating camera. Zelda - Ocarina of Time had a much better camera in the same era, and succeeded like Mario Galaxy at introducing complexity.

  12. Explicit tutorials are nice by rickward · · Score: 2

    Sometimes explicit tutorials are nice. Take the one in Steamshovel Harry. http://www.e4.com/game/steamshovel-harry/play.e4

  13. Incredible Attention to Detail by Vyse+of+Arcadia · · Score: 4, Informative

    This interview is the best example of Nintendo's attention to detail that I can find. In it, Miyamoto describes the insane amount of detail that went into the first ten seconds of Super Mario Bros. The mushroom, goomba, blocks, and pipe were all played just so in order for the player to realize what was good, what was bad, and so on. All without a tutorial and losing at most one life.

    I think modern game designers could learn a lot by going back and studying how they used to convey ideas to the player without the memory space for tutorials.

    1. Re:Incredible Attention to Detail by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 2

      Cave Story does a good job of that as well. I particularly like the placement of the fifth spike in the game, since it's exactly at the point where you'll die if you don't properly grasp the floaty physics.

  14. True, but... by cvd6262 · · Score: 2

    DKCR could take some lessons on "introducing slowly." There are too many segments where trial and death are the only way to figure out how to pass a level. When I first came upon a giant-hippo-on-a-stick, I actually stopped to think about WTF I was supposed to do. There is no indication that you can bounce on it, there is no warning that doing so will lower the hippo, etc.

    The level designers also seem to have spent a lot of time planning pitfalls so the only way to pass many levels is rote memorization. That may be classic, but it's not fun.

    The spider hoard race is a rare exception.

    --

    I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.