E3 Video: Miyamoto talks about creating Mario

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In 1980, a 27-year-old Shigeru Miyamotodoodled a caricature on a sheet of paper. It had overalls, an oversize head and a handlebar mustache. The character eventually became Mario, one of the most recognizable figures in video games. You can watch Miyamoto demonstrate how to draw his famous character in the video above.

“I wanted a character I could put in all my video games,” Miyamoto said in an interview today at E3. He cited Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy and regarded by some as the founding father of Japanese anime, as a source of inspiration. Osamu had a set of key characters that would appear in all of his comics, he said.

Miyamoto also drew on Popeye the Sailor cartoons, featuring the bumbling but lovable sailor, Olive Oyl as the female figure and Bluto as Popeye’s nemesis. With that in mind, Miyamoto simultaneously created Mario, Princess Peach and Donkey Kong as his core cast of characters.

But it was Mario who rose to stardom. His mug, which has remained largely unchanged in the 29 years since Miyamoto created him, has graced the covers of hundreds of Nintendo games that collectively have sold hundreds of millions of copies.

Miyamoto explained the origins of Mario’s appearance, which was not born out of market research or informed by art school theories. Instead, Mario’s look was driven by a combination of technology and Miyamoto’s penchant for comics.

In 1980, computer graphics were crude. The pixels and the palettes of what was known as 8-bit color graphics severely limited what artists and programmers could render on a screen. To make characters recognizable, developers opted for exaggerated features and bright, contrasting colors. Mario was no exception.

Miyamoto gave Mario overalls with a color different from his shirt so that players could better distinguish when he was moving his arms while running. With limited processing power, Mario’s hair could not move in a realistic manner. So he got a hat. And because his eyes and nose were so big, there was little room left to draw a mouth, chin and neck. Miyamoto solved that by plastering on a bushy mustache. Mario’s squat physique allowed him to be more easily spotted on the screen. And he got big white gloves that helped exaggerate his movements.

The character was first known as Jumpman in the original Donkey Kong arcade game that came out in 1981, but Miyamoto personally referred to him as “Mr. Videoman.” A year later, he reappeared in Donkey Kong Jr. as Mario.

Miyamoto dismissed the legend that the name came from Nintendo’s landlord in Redmond, Wash., where the company’s U.S. headquarters are. “Mario was named after the manager of our warehouse in New York,” Miyamoto said. “He had a mustache too.”

-- Alex Pham