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| A Super Mario Bros. NES gameplay scene paired with Hideo Kojima, reflecting how Nintendo’s early platformer influenced his journey into game development. |
By Jon Scarr
There’s a familiar kind of story you hear from famous game developers. A complex game. A huge world. Something ambitious that flipped a switch and changed everything. It usually sounds impressive. Sometimes a little rehearsed.
This one doesn’t. In a recent WIRED Tech Support video, Hideo Kojima was asked what game he played the most. His answer was Super Mario Bros. Not briefly. Not casually. He says he played it for about a year. He skipped school. He stayed home. And without Mario, he admits he might never have entered the game industry at all.
We’ve also been following Kojima’s work more closely, including his upcoming appearance at the GDC 2026 Festival of Gaming.
That lands a little differently when you hear it from someone known for long cutscenes, heavy themes, and big ideas. Even more so when you listen to what he actually focuses on. Not memory. Not childhood comfort. Design.
It Was Never About Nostalgia
Kojima doesn’t describe Mario as something warm or sentimental. He talks about it like a problem being solved. Super Mario Bros. is straightforward. You move from left to right. You jump. You avoid enemies. You reach the goal. That’s the whole thing.
But within that structure, Kojima points to something more specific. The way Mario accelerates. How jump height changes based on how long you hold the button. How small inputs lead to different outcomes. Movement itself becomes expressive.
There’s almost no story. No dialogue. No explanation. And yet, Kojima says it still felt like an adventure. That feeling didn’t come from narrative framing. It came from how it felt to play.
That clarity stayed with him.
A Game That Taught Through Feel
Mario doesn’t explain itself. You press right and Mario moves. You press jump and he jumps. You fall into a pit once and learn fast.
The game teaches through action, not instruction. Every idea builds on the last without overwhelming you. Momentum matters. Timing matters. You feel improvement before you can name it.
Before long, you aren’t thinking about buttons anymore. You’re reacting. Adjusting. Expressing yourself through motion.
That mattered to Kojima. It showed that games didn’t need elaborate storytelling to pull you in. They needed rules that made sense and controls that felt right.
Clarity Over Complexity
This is where Kojima’s comments start to feel relevant to modern games. A lot of games today lead with scale. Bigger maps. More mechanics layered on top of each other. Before you understand how a character feels, you’re already choosing perks or managing upgrades.
That isn’t a complaint. It’s just a shift. Mario asked you to learn feel first. You didn’t shape Mario to fit your playstyle. You adapted to him. That relationship is different.
Kojima’s point isn’t that games should be simpler. It’s that complexity doesn’t automatically create depth. Sometimes depth comes from a jump that responds exactly the way you expect it to.
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| A Super Mario Bros. NES gameplay moment that shows how movement and timing, not menus or upgrades, shaped the experience. |
Learning Games Through Feel
If you grew up with Mario, you probably remember learning games without being told how. You pressed buttons. You failed. You adjusted. Then something clicked. I remember learning games that way too, failing over and over until the controls finally made sense.
That kind of learning still exists today, but it’s easier to miss. Tutorials explain everything upfront. Mechanics compete for your attention. Mastery can feel secondary to setup.
Kojima isn’t saying games should rewind the clock. He’s talking about what made games feel alive to him in the first place. A sense that the medium was still figuring itself out.
Mario showed him that games could do something film couldn’t. Hand over control and let meaning come from interaction.
A Simple Game With Lasting Impact
Super Mario Bros. is small by today’s standards. No voice acting. No lore. No branching paths. Just movement, timing, and space.
And yet, it was enough to change a life. Enough to convince a young player that games could be more than toys. Enough to push him toward a career that would later reshape how games communicate ideas.
That’s the real takeaway from Kojima’s answer. Not that Mario was famous. Not that it was influential. But that it trusted the person holding the controller.
With games growing larger every year, that lesson still feels worth holding onto.
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