Mario has been an integral part of gaming history for the past 30 years, and the iconic plumber’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, says he believes that, no matter where Mario’s future takes him, technology will play a highly influential role. [Thanks, PowerUpGaming.]
During a Super Mario Run event at the Apple store, Miyamoto was questioned on what kind of path he sees the Mario franchise headed down in the coming years, to which he replied, “It’s impossible to know the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen in five years.” He went on to reference a character popularity poll that had been conducted three years after the launch of Super Mario Bros., in which Mario had surpassed Mickey Mouse in popularity. Miyamoto went on to say that it was at that point he realized that “Mickey Mouse was a character that had evolved with the evolution of cinema and animation,” and that if he wanted Mario to continue to survive as a character, then Mario would have to “evolve with technology and video games.”
Here is Miyamoto’s full commentary:
“There was a point just a few years after we released Super Mario Bros. where somebody had done a character popularity poll, and Mario had become more popular at the time than Mickey Mouse. And people said, ‘Well, how do you feel about that?’ To that I replied, ‘But Mickey Mouse has been around for 40 years; Mario has only been around for three!’ And that was when I started to think that maybe what I should do is worry about what is happening with Mario 40 years from now, and then we’ll see how he’s doing against Mickey at that point in time.
“At that time, I realized that Mickey Mouse was a character that had evolved with the evolution of cinema and animation, and so it was then when I felt that if I want Mario to continue to survive as a character, then Mario needs to evolve with technology and video games.
“That’s why when we were making Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64; that’s why it was such a fun project for me. And it’s why when we made Super Mario Maker – and all of you could then become Mario game designers – that was a fun project for me as well.
“As far as what’s going to happen in five years, it really depends on what new technology I come across, and then at that point in time I’ll partner that technology with Mario – or maybe Link – and create something new.”
Super Mario Run will release for iOS devices on December 15th and sometime in 2017 for Android.
