People who made the original Super Mario Bros shipped Wonder 38 years later | Hacker News Reader

People who made the original Super Mario Bros shipped Wonder 38 years later

nintendo.com.au

341 pointsI-M-S133 comments

I didn't really realize that Nintendo was that good at keeping talent. I guess it kinda makes sense, they seem to have a vastly different culture than game developers have here.

It is also interesting to compare this to the stories that came out of breath of the wild of them specifically asking their newer developers for the crazy ideas and that leading to how great BoTW was. However given just how crazy Wonder is I have to imagine this was still the case here.

Super Mario Bros Wonder really is an amazing game. I have struggled at times with putting it down and going to bed. This will likely be my first 100% Mario game. (Can we talk about the Singing Piranha Plants in the second level!)

Not really that surprising when you have reports such as these:

> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070

> https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/02/nintendo-is-raisin...

It's important to notice that both of these initiatives happened when the company was facing downturns. It is easy to be a good employer when things are going great, not so much when things are not as rosy.

Add that to the Japanese working culture where tenure is merit, and staying in the same company is valued by employers in general.

> Add that to the Japanese working culture where tenure is merit, and staying in the same company is valued by employers in general.

imo this is by far the biggest driver of “keeping talent”. japanese society and businesses don’t reward people that jump from job to job.

This can have negative effects too. While I don't think "society" (who's that?) rewards people who job-hop. However, being willing to move to the employer who values you the most every couple of years is bound to increase your salary, because you're optimising your match to the market. I wonder how Japanese businesses avoid recognising this value, unless they just frown on people moving around.

Western employers don't deliberately reward people who job-hop, but their actions actually encourage employees to job-hop.

- Not investing in people enough (e.g. training)

- Prefer outside candidates to internal promotions

- Not willing to give significant raises, but willing to hire new people at a higher salary

All those actions end up rewarding job-hoppers, even if it's probably not the intended goals behind this employers' behaviour.

> Western employers don't deliberately reward people who job-hop

I don't know of any employers who would admit to deliberately rewarding job-hopping outside the company[1], but I suspect that's out of concern for potential negative consequences of admitting to the practice, not because they don't do it intentionally.

Hiring skilled job-hoppers often makes a lot of sense. They bring in knowledge and experience of things that worked (or didn't) in other organizations. It can be a great way to avoid getting stuck in local maximums, and avoid repeating mistakes others have already made.

[1] At least one previous employer deliberately rewarded job-hopping between roles internally, because it gave people a much wider base of knowledge and promoted empathy between people in different parts of the company.

> They bring in knowledge and experience of things that worked (or didn't) in other organizations.

They also bring in a lot of change for change sake because they don't know the current systems.

It can make sense, but serial job hoppers may also keep bouncing to the next thing before learning what the medium to longer term implications are of certain technologies or design decisions. For example operational issues and maintenance.

I’ve seen teams get screwed over by someone parachuting in to deliver v1 with shiny new tech and getting a pat on the back ($$) for a job well done. Fast forward 6-12 months and you realize the new tech debt is as bad or worse as the old tech debt.

That said, stagnation and sticking with Blub can also bring its own set of issues.

Currently dealing with this situation, shiny new architect declares Kafka as "the one true way" and forces all services to use it.

Fast forward 12 months and we have a terrible, complex, non-scalable, system, which should have just been a really simple REST service but instead we just have another point of failure.

Oh, and they quit so have no idea that their designs were trash.

> Hiring skilled job-hoppers often makes a lot of sense. They bring in knowledge and experience of things that worked (or didn't) in other organizations. It can be a great way to avoid getting stuck in local maximums, and avoid repeating mistakes others have already made.

Understandable. A counter would be that you can't expect to retain someone who's really good if this is your habit, but the counter to that would be that you can make it up if you're really cultivating a culture of hiring high quality job-hoppers.

It's the difference between taking one extended-release medication or taking a new pill every hour for the same effect. With the ER, if you get a dud, you're in trouble all day. With short-lived medication, duds can be a big problem in the short term but overall you can still be getting better.

The problem with raises and promotions is that it's slow, requires a lot more work from the manager, and doesn't increase the manager's number of reports. Thus hiring externally is a lot easier and more beneficial to the manager. Especially for those managers who are serial job hoppers themselves.

Another factor is the recruiting teams are assessed on conversion, how many passed phone screens, on sites, and offer accepts etc, but not on the performance of those employees after they join. So recruiters just spam anyone they think will have a remote chance of passing some stage of the interview process.

There have to be consequences to hiring a bad hire for the recruiting team and they have to be severe enough to make recruiting risk averse.

But this will never be the case if the organization is in growth mode where everything manager is trying to get as much headcount and hiring as fast as possible.

Naturally, unless your employer is the employer that most highly values your skills in the world, another employer will pay more for you. Changing job is a way of finding that employer who values your skills the most.

That's just what will happen in companies that value skills more. If other companies value loyalty more, then their employee profile will look different.

That involves a really unrealistically narrow and abstract idea of "skill", where they're just some characteristic of an individual that manifest independent of the environment. In practice, people perform differently in different environments, and a high-performer with deep collegial relationships at HyperBiz might have pretty unimpressive impact as a newbie at HoopaCorp. This is even true among engineers, if not especially true among them.

Most of us do better work around good, familiar colleagues (once we find them) than at the place with the biggest TCO budget, and many of us prefer to work somewhere that invites our best work more than one that let us buy the fancier trim line on our already-luxury car.

The cultural distinction isn't "valuing skill" vs "valuing loyalty" - it's a worldview of radical individualism vs interdependent pragmatism.

> That involves a really unrealistically narrow and abstract idea of "skill", where they're just some characteristic of an individual that manifest independent of the environment.

No it doesn't. This is about companies needing to hire a skill and valuing it more than your current employer values it. Companies don't hire people who are already performing well in their environment, because they're a new hire.

> Most of us do better work

I'm not talking about this. I'm saying, say, a web developer working for a scaleup with a global customer base is going to be worth paying more for than a web developer working for a company with a customer base of up to 1000 businesses.

> many of us prefer to work somewhere that invites our best work

This also irrelevant - I'm not saying what people should choose; I'm saying that moving for a raise is you finding somewhere that values your skills more right now.

> it's a worldview of radical individualism vs interdependent pragmatism

This is just silly biased phrasing. It's not about individualism at all. It's about hiring. Unless you think hiring individuals is radical individualism, and only complete teams should be hired, like the NFL.

> Naturally, unless your employer is the employer that most highly values your skills in the world, another employer will pay more for you. Changing job is a way of finding that employer who values your skills the most.

This sounds like the Peter principle.

Depends, in Portugal outside IT that usually means one isn't good enough keeping their job in first place, or is only working across low paying jobs.

Not really a good sell to have CVs with long list of employers.

Would it be inaccurate to imply that the many western employers are prefer to maintain by the position and power over their employees rather than empowering them to compete against abundance of competitors in their respective countries and on the world stage?

> Western employers don't deliberately reward people who job-hop,

Don't techbro employers also deliberately reward people to job-hop to them, from where the person is currently, by knowingly providing a big pay bump over the person's current place?

Kinda yes and no.

The “no” part comes from understanding what’s happening. And what’s happening is that for every year you work there, the pay for the level you are at increases across all of them.

However, you wouldn’t be getting those increases (you would still get some, just not as significant). Talking about averages, it means that the person who got hired for the same level as you at the same company 3 years later would get paid noticeably more than you currently are (unless share prices skyrocketed, but we are talking about current compensation, not future or past; if shares tanked since you started, the new employee gets an even better deal).

Assuming no promotions or anything like that in the meantime (e.g., you are at your terminal level already or you just need more time for a promotion), you are SOL. It was almost comical at times. The mid-level dev i was working with was getting paid not that significantly more than me (an entry level dev at the time), and was only doing a little bit better mostly due to his old shares (or whatever was left of it, as he was diversifying heavily and selling the stock on vest and dumping it into etfs, so he missed out on his massive chest of old shares going 5x). He had been with the company for 6-7 years at that point. Every dev hired at his level at the time i was working with him would get paid about 50% more than him in total comp.

So yeah, the other employers would pay him more if he switched, but they aren’t “rewarding” him for job-hopping, it’s more like his current employer just not paying him as much as they would for a new hire at his level, because they are betting on the fact that he would just stay due to inertia or whatever other reasons. And guess what, they were right, as he is still there and the company saved a lot of money on him and others in a similar situation.

That’s where the good old boomerang trick of leaving, working for a bit elsewhere, and then coming back comes from. You get your salary “adjusted” twice, and then you come back.

Note: this usually only applies reliably up to senior level (aka the terminal level for the vast majority). Once you go higher or into management-type positions, things stop being this simple and work out rather differently.

> I wonder how Japanese businesses avoid recognising this value

Current employees are experts at the code base and processes. They have way higher value for the company than other equally good in general non-employees, who would have to spend alot of payed time to get into things.

Not just code base, but that's a big part.

But also processes -- a big one if you're in a large org -- subject matter, even simple stuff like getting a laptop setup and getting AD groups set up correctly for all roles and accesses can take a long time. I've been at multiple multinationals/F500s and it often took 3 months just to get me into things (part of that also being we don't give sudo/admin to the newly hired).

I've known PMs from aviation work that aren't deeply technical but know TONS about how to drive projects in that sector, who to contact, what's a priority, and that's not something you can easily put into a udemy course the way you can SAP or NodeJS.

This is often true. But some times the older programmers can't adapt to the new technology and we get technical disasters like the newer Pokemon games.

> can't adapt to

This is probably more appropriately said as "don't know". To give a past example, Final Fantasy 7 was pretty famous for having bad character models but it didn't take long for the same team to figure out how to make better ones. FF8 had much more real-looking models. Not many games today look significantly better than FF15 on standard console hardware.

Probably the "disaster" in the Pokemon game context is that Nintendo didn't feel the need to keep up rather than that they couldn't keep up. I get the feeling that the generation 10 games are going to be a strong counter statement to such comments. Likely in no small part because the people working on it are the same people who released the games which critics like to call a disaster.

Nintendo does not develop the Pokemon games for what it is worth. The quality of Game Freak's output is notably lower than Nintendo first party releases in general from a technical perspective. Even the original Pokemon games are some of the most famously buggy games of any prominence, so it is nothing new.

>Probably the "disaster" in the Pokemon game context is that Nintendo didn't feel the need to keep up rather than that they couldn't keep up.

Nintendo is the publisher of the Pokemon games and co-owner of the Pokemon IP. However, they do NOT develop the Pokemon games - that's Game Freak.

That was a team making gameboy games switching to making home console games, it will take a bit for them to adapt. But letting them adapt and learn new skills is probably better for the economy than firing them like we would do in the west.

I don't know about "can't adapt". As I get older my willingness to put up with programming fads has gone to zero though. I guess that is some form of can't adapt. Then again I have only worked for 8 years.

We fall back on the tried, tested and more reliable methods and fads seem to become glaringly obvious. This can easily be assumed as inadaptability. Maybe I am just old now.

> "society" (who's that?)

It's just the average of individual persons in relevant positions of power.

That is, if 80% of direct managers use indirect pressure to get employees to work more than they're contractually expected to, "society" expects people to be overworked. (totally random example, not sure if it applies to Nintendo)

(we could discuss deeper causes, there's no saying where those managers learned their behavior, but that's not what we're measuring)

true, but japanese society values stability more than anything. as such, the value of increasing salary by job-hopping is dwarfed by the unpredictability it generates.

but there are a lot of other negative effects. being stuck in a dead-end job is a common issue for example.

of course, i am heavily generalising here, so grain of salt and all of that.

> being stuck in a dead-end job is a common issue for example.

A job would look like a dead-end only if you hate it.

Hate has nothing to do with a job being a dead-end. A dead-end job just means that there is nowhere to go from there, your progressed as high as you possibly could in it, and staying there won’t help you with your future career elsewhere neither.

Kind of an extreme example, but it illustrates the point well: that one forgotten employee from the infamous reddit thread[0] who got hired, the company had a mismanagement shitshow, and he eventually ended up having no manager and no assignments/work for months. He realized they just forgot about him and continued showing up to work to just play games and relax by himself, all while collecting the paycheck for over a year. IIRC he mentioned enjoying this, but worrying about what could happen if they “unforget” about him. That situation was a classic example of a dead-end job, even though OP was having a good time at first.

P.S. The original threat wasn’t the most popular one, but the follow up to it with how he eventually got found out (about a year after the original post) was massive[1].

0. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/s/gUfaIZ65QI

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/s/vj71mPNGAw

> A dead-end job just means that there is nowhere to go from there, your progressed as high as you possibly could in it, and staying there won’t help you with your future career elsewhere neither.

If you love your job, you wouldn't want to go anywhere else or "progress" in your career. BTW, what is that "progress" in a career? Endless better pay? Longer job title? More work? More difficult work? Switch to management (that's a different career to me)?

The example is not relevant. That's not a dead-end job. If there's no work, then that's no longer a job at all.

Japan is basically socialism when it comes to values and the actions people take. Limited tolerance for big change or extreme competition, very static communities and low mobility. It used to work uptill the 80's, but in the age of innovation and change, it's backfiring.

Japanese society is collectivism, not socialism. They have a long history and many traditions around keeping social harmony. This is has both good and bad effects.

This gets confused for socialism because when action happens, everyone is on the same page and working to support the action. Before that point, there are lots of meeting and discussions to create harmony and make sure that everyone agrees with the action. Sometimes this is lead bottom up, workers will get an idea and circulate it to get everyone's buy in but without the upper management's approval, no one will try an idea for fear of causing offense. Which leads me in to how they are very authoritarianism, if the boss tells you a poster is blue not green, everyone will agree that it is blue. Only after the boss is gone will people stand around and question the edict.

If you look at how Toyota reacted to electric vehicles, someone did not like the idea or their pet project was fuel cells and that is the direction they took for a long time, rather than hedge their bets and split focus that is what they were committed to and now they are late to the EV party where they had a large head start with the Prius.

That's not what socialism means.

Socialism is state-controlled means of production, IIRC.

Socialism is worker-controlled means of production. State-controlled means of production is socialism if the workers control the state (which is generally not the case for states that call themselves "socialist").

Youre kidding yourself if you think the average worker in Japan has much say in the company, or how those companies direct the state

they're conservative, in the sense they don't like change, but that ain't nothin to do w/ Karl M

There's nothing in their answer that indicates this, you are confusing with the other person.

I don't think Japan is socialist.

No, that's communism, or at least what communist propaganda say it is. In communism the means of production are controlled by the state (saying they're controlled by the workers, but it's false).

AFAIK, the means of production (large ones, not a one-man-tailor-shop) were never controlled by the workers, except maybe in the extremely short periods of anarchism.

No, that's communism.

Depends who you ask, but Marx used the two interchangeably. Lenin thought that Socialism was Communism stage 1.[0]

But I think it's pretty normal to see Socialism as State-owned means of production. Trust your bureaucrats!

[0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Marxian-communism

In any case, Japan and its history are very far away from Socialism / Communism. Meiji Era was pre-industrial Samurai. Meiji / Imperial Japan was Fascist but with the rise of independent companies like Mitsubishi (who had ties to the old Samurai families). Perhaps its best to use Japanese words: like Zaibatsu, to describe these concepts.

I don't know if Capitalist is the best word for Japan, because those weird centuries-old Samurai families / companies are just an alien concept to Western-language. Yes, Zaibatsu is kinda-sorta like a Western Company or Corporation, but not really.

If I were forced to put Japan on the Capitalist vs Communist axis, I'd say the proliferation of Zaibatsu clearly put them towards Capitalist slant (ie: private entities who control large sums of wealth). But its very different than Western societies or our concept of companies. The values system of a Zaibatsu / Japanese century-old company is very different from the values system of a traditional American mega-corp.

---------------

Going back to this topic: Nintendo itself was founded in 1889, during this rise of the Meiji Era and Zaibatsu (though I don't think Nintendo ever grew to the size large enough to be considered a Zaibatsu... it grew up and existed in the era of such beasts).

Due to the emphasis of longevity and company values, Japan has odd traditions. Such as the concept of adult-adoption, where some Fathers (often businessmen in charge of a 200, 300+ year old company) will adopt 20 to 30+ year olds with the expectation that these adults will take over a family business.

Does this make Japan more capitalist or socialist? Well, neither. Its just different and probably best to try to not bring Western axis (like Capitalism vs Socialism) to describe their society.

Japanese society from Meiji era onward was undoubtably influenced by the British (Japan studied the history of the other "industrialized island", and used Britain as the basis for their new government / theories). And later, when USA took over and occupied after WW2, Japan further was influenced by USA. As such, I really do think they're more capitalist if we had to pick capitalism vs socialism.

Japan's big deviation from what "capitalism" has meant since the 1980s, in the US and Britain, at least—which is to say, neoliberal economics—wasn't quite as weird to "westerners" at the time it was really at its height, I think, because we hadn't so entirely shifted our Overton window to put neoliberalism smack in the middle. But now, for sure, it doesn't look like what's usually promoted as healthy capitalism around here.

Instead of "my half-understanding of Ricardo means I'm sure this will make us all better off" free trade and laissez-faire domestic economic policies, they pursued lopsided (export-focused) trade, plus heavy government intervention and public-private partnerships aimed at accelerating technological development and reducing domestic technical competition among the zaibatsu, in order to make them more competitive in foreign markets. Their "miracle" economy spanning decades involved a ton of government guidance and spending and seemingly-weird shit like deliberately keeping domestic prices higher than they otherwise could have been—with the guidance part maybe being the most surprising bit, to those who've internalized certain limited ideas about what can and (surely!) cannot work well in economic policy.

It worked incredibly well and was the first draft of what would become the blueprint for the "Asian Tiger" economic strategy.

[EDIT] Big deviation in the postwar era and (kinda) up to today, I mean. Obviously it was doing some different stuff during and before WWII.

I'm talking about real-life meaning of the words. Real life communism and socialism is different from the books.

Then you're just describing your own experience. Unless you're saying your experience is the objective definition of a real life definition. Is there an objective definition you had in mind?

My experience is shared with millions of other people that lived in communism. To me (us), the difference between communism and the rest of socialist spectrum is that in communism, the state owns (100%, not just some shares) and runs (manages) the factories.

I big part of that is Japanese shame / honour. This means the 'worst' employee is not as big a negative than in Western culture.

Once upon a time, things weren't so different here. Maybe there wasn't an explicit value judgement but you could expect to work 30 years in the same establishment.

> japanese society and businesses don’t reward people that jump from job to job.

I can see why this is good and bad, but honestly, I wish more places in the West were like this too. I've had the same job for 7 years as a programmer, and it baffles me how many people find that surprising/unusual.

I seriously rather not look for another job, but I due to some upcoming changes at my work, I think I may have to.

Whereas in the US: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...

(from HN a few days ago IIRC)

I think that Japanese attitudes towards work have somewhat shifted, especially as young Japanese eyes look a bit enviously to Western tech companies, with their inflated pay and fun culture. Really, the protracted recession they've had for a few decades has sown the idea that nothing is really guaranteed anymore like it was from postwar to about the 90s.

Nevertheless, given that the five developers in question started work in the 70s or 80s, when the Japanese work ethic of "bust your ass for a company all your life and they'll take care of you" was very much a thing, it doesn't surprise me that they've all stuck with Nintendo, which itself seems in it for the long haul like a traditional Japanese company. The company has been very good about knowledge transfer from older generations to younger, in ways some developers (e.g. Sega) haven't. Mario and Zelda, for instance, are not being spearheaded by Miyamoto anymore. He pops in on conference calls to offer guidance, but the developers who worked under him have now taken the helm of these franchises, driving them in new directions while preserving their essence... and Miyamoto is free to pursue passion projects like movies and theme parks (thus actually becoming "gaming's Walt Disney").

Whereas US business execs make mass layoffs while cashing out hundreds of millions in equity. But at least they take “full responsibility”!

I feel like they are managing a tech company like you would manage a 300 old Japanese workshop and still be there for next 300 years.

Nintendo has a pretty massive war chest though. Increasing salaries by 10% is not likely to significantly impact their expenses/income.

I don't know of many companies that increase salaries or have executives take pay cuts while sparing employees during downturns, irrespective of how large their war chests.

Much to the opposite, I am more used at seeing companies layoff employees while posting record profits.

The falling Yen prompted many Japanese employers to give raises across the board. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/03/15/business/econom...

I think it was game makers toolkit that did an episode on Mario Odyssey. If I remember correctly it was a new (for the series) director and the theme of the game was “different and surprising”, so for example, every desert theme in Mario had been themed around Egypt but this time it was themed around Mexico (and cold!)

My hot take is odyssey was a success and the idea of “different and surprising” as a guide for a new 2D platform we is what gave Nintendo Mario Wonder.

>Can we talk about the Singing Piranha Plants in the second level!

I told a relative the following when I tried the game day one, I am just glad Mario is not a pilot.

Those jokes that Mario is tripping on mushrooms are made real in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. That is the easiest way to describe the game. You collect a "Flower" and pipes come to life, enemy plants start singing quartets to you. Otherwise the game reminds me a lot of SMB3+Super Mario World.

The singing piranha plants made me immediately fall in love with this wonderful game. My toddler now tries to play along too, can’t wait till he’s a little older so we can do two player mode.

Loved the singing piranha plants, but have to give credit to Rayman Legends who did something similar 12 years ago.

A music theme level isn't the same thing as a level where the monsters are singing and clapping. The piranha plants have lip synced singing and clapping which makes most of the music. When a new plant enters the scene you can here the new voice starting, kill it and that voice dies.

For example, in rayman legends they have music and then spawn monsters with the instruments of the music, but those monsters has nothing to do with the music since the music is a static track, killing them or them spawning doesn't change anything.

Are you...trying to say that they weren't potentially inspired by something else? Because they almost certainly were, whether it was Rayman or something else.

It's okay for them to seek inspiration and for all of their ideas to not be completely original. It's acting cult-ish otherwise.

That being the second level really set the tone for it.

My boyfriend was watching me play and "forced" me to replay it a few more times after that happened. We were both just shocked.

> It is also interesting to compare this to the stories that came out of breath of the wild of them specifically asking their newer developers for the crazy ideas and that leading to how great BoTW was. However given just how crazy Wonder is I have to imagine this was still the case here.

It's a double-edged sword, because Nintendo is also a top-down organization and much of their infamous "behind the curve" issues when it comes to online functionality has been attributed to the top brass not being familiar with it/not thinking it's important.

BOTW was kinda the exception that proves the rule. But maybe with its wild success they are finally starting to change.

>>I guess it kinda makes sense, they seem to have a vastly different culture than game developers have here.

I mean the place where I work still employs several people who worked on the original Driver game - couple of them already crossed the 30-year tenure threshold too. So I don't know where "here" is for you, but it's definitely not exclusive to Nintendo or Japan. 38 years is impressive though.

How much is corporate culture vs particular local culture?

Also helping is Japanese culture of working at the same company as sort of a badge of honour and also seniority seem like a huge thing

The "Bowser’s Fury" portion of "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury" is also a delight.

Also, the Bowser's Fury ride at Universal Studios. Idk if the same team worked on the design of that ride, but it's really incredible. The most immersive AR experience I've ever seen.

That makes me happy to read, as I bought a Switch (probably the last person to do so) to play "a little bit"...

Nintendo doesn't get enough credit for making games that are actually enjoyable to play. Most modern AAA games look great, but feel like a distraction (at best), and more often just like a chore.

Not only that, but enjoyable for all ages. They pay extra attention to details, and think about the experience from different age groups. For example on Super Mario Bros on Switch, when playing multiplayer you can tap both L+R to put your character in a safe bubble that floats and follows the rest of the players. This allows younger players to flee to safety in really difficult parts of levels, while older players can help them navigate to the next area before popping their bubble and bringing them back into the game. Such a small detail, but makes a massive difference when you're playing with the game with younger kids.

I've played so much Super Mario Bros on the Wii with my young kids and the bubble mechanic is excellent. We've just started playing SMB Wonder on Switch and one of the changes is that it's no longer a bubble but sort of like a shooting star and you no longer need to manually trigger it.

The new Nabbit character is also something that was added in the Wii-U game. This character isn't harmed by enemies, so can just run around only worried about environmental dangers. To balance this out, Nabbit can't pick up any power ups. It's a neat idea that returns again in Wonder, but now with more characters to select from you're not forced to have one of 4 players using it.

Exactly! Lots of shouting "bubble! bubble!" when playing that game with my friends of different video game skill levels.

It's great. 3D world had a helpful out for the young 'uns in the White Tanooki suit that appeared when you died enough times. =)

Yes, when I think small not at all overrated game studio producing very original gameplays I really think Nintendo

This used to be the reputation of Nintendo.

I think it was more true in the late 90s/early 2000s. Now that enough time has past, it seems like the GameCube was the last genuine quality system and genuine quality games.

After that it was just gimmicks and marketing campaigns. You can see this from both hardware and software sides. With TotK's flop, people were able to see BotW wasnt that great, and its getting people to take a more objective look at Nintendo 'Quality'.

I wonder if Nintendo will continue to keep loyal people repeating the line about 'good Nintendo games', but with Indie devs making games that are more enjoyable than Nintendo, how much longer can Nintendo keep giving people bare minimum? (Honestly my bet is forever, they will turn into a gambling company sucking the money from their IP devotes before Nintendo dies)

> With TotK's flop, people were able to see BotW wasnt that great

Uhhh, what? https://www.metacritic.com/browse/game/all/all/current-year/

While I don't agree with that poster, Tears seems hugely popular, many 3D Zelda games have gotten stellar reviews then people over time start to dislike it.

Compare the Skyward Sword reviews with the remake. The original saw massive praise while the remake got a lot of flak for not fixing enough of the issues with the original. No idea if that's started happening to Breath of the Wild, but I wouldn't be surprised.

There's objectively little to complain about in TotK, there's no realistic reason for it to age poorly. It's a perfected version of botw, which itself was a great game, and then they added a lot of new functionality and gimmicks to make things fresh.

Skyward, even at the time you could tell that some parts were not going to age well or weren't even really good. Skyward gestured towards a lot of stuff that was perfected in botw/totk, but was clearly limited by hardware and time.

You say that, but the reviews for Skyward also said things like "Every moment is a joy" and "All of the gameplay innovations, emotionally involving moments, beautiful little details, and purely blissful experiences in this game have me completely and utterly spoiled." https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-...

Maybe Tears is actually good enough to survive the test of time. From the outside, I can easily imagine people in ten years saying "then I needed to craft a slightly different car for the billionth time."

There's always poor quality reviews.

I'm just talking about from my own personal experience of playing Skyward and TotK both pretty soon after each came out, it was easy to tell which would age better.

> From the outside, I can easily imagine people in ten years saying "then I needed to craft a slightly different car for the billionth time."

Doesn't sound realistic, I mean there's a whole mechanic in the game to avoid that problem. I get that that's just an example, but it seems indicative of what I mean, you really have to work to find much to complain about beyond nitpicks. The devs clearly understood their game and worked hard to fix many of what otherwise would have been issues.

I liked it a lot but many friends who played it got lost constantly. The funnel for moving you along the game is big but if you fell out of it suddenly everything feels hard or impossible or inscrutable in the worst way (big example: many people trying to access a certain temple before they’re supposed to and then trying way too hard to get there)

It takes a little bit of a mindset change to adjust to how sprawling the game is. If you get stuck on something, move on to one of the hundreds of other quests and eventually you'll be ready for that big challenge again.

With TotK's flop, people were able to see BotW wasnt that great

What a strange, trivially falsifiable take.

18 million units sold in two months. What a flop.

Zelda didn't flop? Lmao.

But I do agree that without indie devs being added to Switch platform, it would be completely dead. Nintendo haven't really made any new IP for a very, very long time now. They release a new Mario/Zelda game every what 2-3 years now or something?

And yeah, the new Mario/Zelda games have interesting new things in them (and are super fun) but are still relatively cookie-cutter.

I've started collecting "retro" games from my childhood now and been buying GB/GBC/PS1/DS/PSP etc games and it's crazy to go back because I really am starting to notice how many new franchises and interesting gameplay elements older games had.

Even if those franchises didn't succeed/get sequels it still added fun/value and variety to the platform. But it seems like the game industry is playing it safe now, every x time we get a new Mario/Zelda/Halo/CoD/etc. Playing older games now it's just so much fun to see "oh this one they wanted to do x but with this weird y thing" even if y was annoying & it didn't work out, it still makes for an interesting/different game. Same thing with Nintendo, they're playing it safe now after the era of "what if we based our console around motion control" spawning many a Wii sports meme. Now it's "we so smart, our console is handheld and TV console"; bruh the PSP go did that (I suppose the detachable joycons kiiind of count?)

Sure there are indie games in between but I've also noticed that indie games...aren't as good as they used to be? Like the golden indie age was maybe 2010-2016 or so? There have been a few hits since then, but I really feel like indie games have become formulaic especially the "make something crazy & quirky by design" formula, as opposed to previous indie hits that turned out crazy & quirky, but weren't planned to be; it's just because the developers' personalities were that way and it really shows with how polished and loved some of the older indie games are.

I guess the slice of indie pie for people that start a game with "I'm going to make this game & sell it & it will be an indie hit" has grown larger compared to the "I'm gonna make this rad game that I've wanted to make since I was a kid and I'm making it for my friends & I if nobody else" which has become a smaller slice.

I am genuinely confused, is this post meant to be taken as a joke?

Kazuaki Morita was a programmer on Mario Bros., Zelda NES, Zelda SNES, Zelda Game Boy, Zelda 64, where he did the bosses and fishing game; among many others.

He was often assigned the most challenging programming tasks. His coding style is so specific that it even shows in disassembled or decompiled code ("Ha, this file is classic Morita").

Can you elaborate on Morita's coding style?

That is a resume.

I wonder how he feels about modern Nintendo. I feel like I'm second hand embarrassed for them.

Don't be.

I feel Nintendo is doing fine. "Their" biggest letdowns are the modern pokemon games, but those are somewhat outsourced.

… why? Nintendo’s arguably at its peak in a long time

> Back in the NES days, video games were small enough to be developed by absolutely tiny teams.

Ahem Stardew Valley. Wordle. Almost anything on itch.io. Heck, NES is still getting new games:

https://limitedrungames.com/collections/witch-n-wiiz

I think a better point of comparison is how much time it takes to create a game that receives acclaim now versus then.

Time is generally represented in person-hours, which correlate well to team size necessary to get a product out the door. Most individuals or tiny teams can't afford to spend multiple years working on something alone.

Yet a lot of very popular games have been made by individuals or very small teams. Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria, Hollow Knight, Braid, Vampire Survivors, Slay the Spire, Papers Please. I think you're right that the majority of games are made by larger teams, but there certainly seems to be something to the focus in vision enabled by smaller teams.

Stardew Valley was a guy living in his parents house for four and a half years working full time.

Googling says ConcernedApe spent about 10 hours a day, for 4.5 years, and let’s say he took a day off here and there, you’re looking at 10,000-15,000 man hours to deliver Stardew Valley.

So that’d be around $500,000-1,000,000 (likely higher) if you had a team working on it, paying them all $100,000 a year, to get that many hours out of them.

Making things on a team definitely makes things a lot more expensive!

I think they're arguing that those tend to take their creators more time. I recall that a couple decades ago small teams could publish games in very short time frames, but I could be wrong.

There's also Cave Story, which came out in 2004. I find it really impressive that the creator made the art, music, music editor, sound effect editor, music format, game engine, and stage editor, with only C++ and the Win32 interface, all while keeping a full time job (although he deliberately picked a low-key job at a printer company so he could work on Cave Story in his free time more). And halfway through, he got married and had kids, which slowed development.

> got married and had kids, which slowed development

Story of my life!

I’m trying to imagine myself crafting saas apps for 38 years.

Imagine running 'rm -rf node_modules' forever. Sounds like the 3rd circle of hell

If you expected to do this for 38 years, you would probably start building better tools. There was a time before Node, and there will be a time after it.

I'm a low level corporate drone -- you think I have any autonomy? 20MB React app? That's just the way things are!

I think you dropped a zero there.

`npm ci` does that for me. it’s fine.

> Peter Gibbons: What if we're still doing this when we're fifty? Samir: It would be nice to have that kind of job security.

From "Office Space" - welcome to the club.

I certainly wouldn't want to limit it to "SaaS apps," but I feel excited enough about the web to be making web sites for 38+ years.

If you don't enjoy your job at all then it's probably time to look for one that you do enjoy on some level.

Oh I enjoy it… mostly.

Original interview quoted in the tweet this article regurgitates: https://www.nintendo.com.au/news-and-articles/ask-the-develo...

Thanks—good catch! We changed to that from https://www.gamesradar.com/5-people-made-the-original-super-....

That's _wonder_-ful to see. I love the idea of being a "lifer" but I just can't see it happening for me. I like working on a variety of different things, but I think a lot of modern software won't have to make drastic changes the same way these devs did, moving from platform to platform and starting from scratch each time. Also, there's just too much financial reward in switching companies early in one's career (here in the US, at least).

I'd be interested to hear from some folks that have been with their employers for quite a while here in HN and what makes them really want to stick around.

I think at Nintendo they've probably worked on like 20 games over the years, which probably helps keep things fresh and interesting. If they were in the Super Mario codebase for 40 years, just adding features like 2FA and CSV Export using an "Agile" workflow, that would make it rougher for sure.

I feel so seen in such a bad way

Also completely swapping out the technology multiple times over as many years, so you're re-implementing 2FA or other features multiple times, without anything particularly new or different about it, just different tech.

This made me laugh out loud

This article indicates that the Super Mario Brothers game for the Nintendo console (1987) was the original title in the Super Mario Borthers franchise, but it's worth noting that there was at least one earlier game, Mario Brothers (not "Super") for the Atari 800 (among others?) from 1983.

Also, if we're getting into trivia, Donkey Kong (1981) was the first game to feature Mario, called Jumpman at the time, because he was a man who could jump.

Also also, Mario is supposedly based on someone who rented property to Nintendo.

always loved mario.glad everyone is enjoying the new wonder game

I mean they’ve been shipping the same game every year for all this time too

Not sure what you're getting at here. The amount of innovation in these Mario games is astonishing. It's not like "Madden" or "Fifa" or goodness knows annual franchises like "Assassin's creed".

In "wonder" for example every single level has some sort of crazy unique mechanic that is distinctive to that level. Videogame dunkey has a good summary of wonder showcasing these innovations specifically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXhfuicuUa0

So it's been almost 11 years since the release of the previous title, New Super Mario Bros. U.

Mouri: Yes. While Super Mario Maker (7), Super Mario Maker 2, and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe were released after the launch of the previous title, this is the first new 2D Mario game in almost 11 years.

I don't think "same game every year" is a fair characterization of what Nintendo is doing. They do the "yearly release" less than almost any major game company.

I think the original Mario brothers, then the 3rd one, then Yoshi’s Island, then 64, then Odyssey, then Wonder— that list (and probably some of the ones I left out) couldn’t in any sane way be considered a list of “same” games.

Yeah, you can see in the interview that they are LOCKED IN to the core Mario concepts. Really get the sense that Mario is an institution, a career at Nintendo.

Explains why the game feels subtly boring, at least from the trailers I watched. They are taking Mario and adding modifiers, not rethinking the foundation. You can't get the wonder + magic back by building off of what everyone already knows.

BotW + TotK were the really creative games, this is just lip service to creativity.

Nintendo is one of the few places where you can see ideas being iterated and improved from game to game. The quality may go down now and then, but they learn from mistakes and try to make the next game better and unique. The Switch generation especially has nailed all their big names.

This is getting downvoted, but I openly wonder how many ports and emulations releases Super Mario Brothers has received.

Down the bottom of the wikipedia page there's a good list;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.

  Super Mario Bros.
  The Lost Levels 1, 2, 3
  Land
  World
  Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
  World 2: Yoshi's Island
  New Wii
  New Super Mario Bros. 2
  New Super Luigi U
  Maker
  Run
  Maker 2
  Wonder

  Super Mario 64
  Sunshine
  Galaxy
  Galaxy 2
  3D Land
  3D World Bowser's Fury
  Odyssey

Spin-offs

  Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
  Super Princess Peach
  Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
  Super Mario Bros. 35
  Princess Peach: Showtime!

Remakes and compilations

  Super Mario All-Stars
  Advance 4
  64 DS
  3D All-Stars
  Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.

I was specifically talking about things like the gameboy advanced release of Super Mario Bros, the 3DS release, the Wii Virtual Console release of Super Mario Bros, and Nintendo Online release of Super Mario Bros, the NES Classic Edition, the Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.

Where literally the exact same game as the 1985 classic is resold.

That's not relevant because if literally the exact same game is resold the dev team won't be involved - it will just be an emulation/port team.

I think it's very relevant to the line "I mean they’ve been shipping the same game every year for all this time too" because every year they literally resell their old games.

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