Why Was Mario Designed as Overalls-Plumber?

PART 4 (Genre: Trivia)

– Why Was Mario Designed as Overalls-Plumber? –

Super Mario is a wonderful character who was born because of the LIMIT OF TECHNOLOGY.

As you know, the quality of 1980’s computer technology wasn’t that good. In general, 1980’s game creators believed it impossible to draw a human character who can run and jump in the TV screen with the small capacity of 16×16 dots (shown in the picture). Eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and chin… If we draw a human face in a normal way, we would only have enough space for the face……

But Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto, a Nintendo game creator, didn’t give up to draw a human character. He thought of a strategy to save the capacity:

“What if I hid the complicated face parts that require a lot of dots to be drawn by other simple face parts?”

First, Mr. Miyamoto drew a MUSTACHE to hide a mouth. A MUSTACHE is possible to be drawn right under a nose by a single stroke line, and he can avoid drawing a complicated mouth. For the same reason, he drew a HAT to hide eyebrows and hair. And he completed drawing the small face by adding eyes and ears!

But it doesn’t mean all the problems were solved by this strategy. Mr. Miyamoto still had to draw the character’s body with a few dots left, and also make him run in the screen!! How is it possible!? He noticed it was impossible to draw the picture of his running-motion no matter how much more capacity he saved……

BUT MR. MIYAMOTO DIDN’T GIVE UP YET. He changed his way of thinking and approached to this problem:

“It doesn’t matter even if I can’t draw the exact picture of the character’s running-motion. It’s fine if I CAN LET THE GAME PLAYERS RECOGNIZE THAT HE RUNS.”

Imagine if you are running… You make a big swing of your arms when you run, don’t you?

A strategy Mr. Miyamoto came up with was to LET GAME PLAYERS RECOGNIZE THAT THE CHARACTER SWINGS HIS ARMS when he runs. Even if the picture of his running-motion isn’t very accurate, the game players could understand that he’s running as long as they can see him swinging his arms:

“So it’s perfect if I make him wear OVERALLS, isn’t it?”

OVERALLS have the different color’s torso and arms, so players can easily recognize that the character swings his arms. Those colors should be opposite to each other so that it makes easier to recognize arms-swinging motion; he made the character wear a BLUE SHIRT and RED OVERALLS.

To finish, Mr. Miyamoto clothed the character WHITE GLOVES in order to make easy to recognize the movement of the hands when he jumps. He created Super Mario while solving these problems.

…As we could see in the story behind the development of Mario, he is actually a well-conceived character who was designed with many struggles; each part of his appearance has a purpose to fulfill the functions as an action game character within the LIMIT OF TECHNOLOGY. (And this is why I love this character the most.)

In the video game, the OVERALLS-PLUMBER never gives up running to save the princess no matter how many enemies disturb him… The MARIO’S APPEARANCE shows us the Nintendo game creators’ INDOMITABLE SPIRIT: NEVER GIVE UP! OVERCOME ANY DIFFICULTIES! REACH A GOAL WITHIN THE TIME LIMIT!

So who’s worthy to be called “Mr. Video Game!?”

Of course!!!!!!

It’s-a me, Maaarioooooo!!!!!! Who-hoo-hoooooo!!!!!!

– END –