Gaming Historian
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2021–2023
49:56 · 8.9M views · Dec 18, 2019
A Gaming Historian documentary on the creation of Super Mario Bros. 3, the hype around its release and why it is regarded as one of the greatest games. It runs about 50 minutes in three parts.
HN mentions it for the game design history it contains and as part of a list of good gaming history channels.
3 comments from Hacker News
Your comment got me thinking: "Wouldn't be nice if existed an 'awesome list' for this kind of content?" After a brief google search the best I could find is this [0] and it seems to be abandoned. Does anyone know a better source for this type of content? I'm leaving some random links to great channels that produce this kind of content: - CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought! [1] - DVD-RAM: The Disc that Behaved like a Flash Drive [2] - The Story of Super Mario Bros. 3 | Gaming Historian [3] [0] - [LINK] [1] - [LINK] [2] - [LINK] [3] - this video
Yes, it's rare, but they have. Game maker's toolkit has one on how they solved their open world problem for BotW: - [LINK] And at GDC, they talked about their Chemistry engine for BotW: - [LINK] - [LINK] Game historian has some tidbits of how they made certain design decisions for their successful games Mario Kart: - [LINK] Super Mario World: - [LINK] Super Mario Bro 3: - this video GMT, Snowman, and Extra credit does analysis of how Nintendo designs their Mario levels. - [LINK] - [LINK] - [LINK] - [LINK] - [LINK] Generally, it follows the ramp up and down of the Hero's journey in storytelling. 1. Introduce a new mechanic in a safe area where it's impossible to die. 2. Increase the challenge with the mechanic by adding variations 3. Ramp up challenge even more by combining with previously learned mechanic 4. Have periods of rest inbetween the challenges.
There is also some footage about digitization/level design in this SMB3 documentary (they might be using the same sources though): this video The mouse with the crosshair is a nice idea!