Week 3: Research (Super Mario 3)

Super Mario 3 by Shiguru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka

Description

Super Mario Bros. 3 is a 2D side-scrolling platformer game first released in Japan in 1988. The player can play as either Mario or Luigi, and going to save Princess Toadstool from Bowser, the antagonist of the game. There is also a multiplayer option where one player can play as Mario and another player as Luigi. The game was re-released for various nintendo consoles.

Mechanic

The basic mechanic of the game is the same as the previous Mario games, with jumping on the enemies to kill them and various special items that the player can obtain to level up. In addition, the game introduced new abilities like flying or picking up and throwing blocks. The player have to complete the different levels, each with varying theme, in order to get to the final level of the game. There are 7 worlds in total that the player have to complete by defeating the boss in order to reach the final level where Bowser is the boss. There are also lives as the resource that the player have to manage like in the previous games. The same goes for coins.

Level Design

The Mario series always have a level desgin that communicates to the players what they can do in the level without having to tell the players word by word through instructions of what they can do. In addition to that, Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced the overworld map into the game. These is the map that shows the different worlds' locations in the game, along with the path to them. The overworld map looks like a normal map, which world labeled, and it depicts Mario walking on the path(from bird-eyed-view) when he moves from one world to another. 

My Thoughts

The Super Mario series is something that I would assume anyone to know, and maybe have played it once before. Now that I think about this again, I realized that this might be because of how the game and its mechanic was designed that have made the game so widely-known. The responsiveness of the player character, created with the effective feedbacks, has resulted in the 'good game feel' (GDW Chapter 8 Sidebar) which hooked the players into continuing to play the game. Since the players feel that they can control the game, they also feel that they can reach the game's objective and win the game. In addition, the game was designed in a way that the first level was easy, even for new players, to understand. The layout of the level has created a motion context which conveyed to the players which actions they can and cannot do within the game. The combination of the 'good game feel' along with the elaborately designed levels have resulted in an easy-to-get-into game that's enjoyable to play, causing the players to keep playing and even re-playing the game.