Super Mario Bros. 3 - Development

Development

Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by Nintendo EAD, and took more than two years to complete. Developer Shigeru Miyamoto directed the designers and programmers, working with them closely during the initial concepts and final stages, encouraging a free interchange of ideas. Miyamoto considered intriguing and original ideas to be key to creating a successful game.

The game was designed to appeal to players of varying skill levels. To assist less skilled players, bonus coins and 1-ups are more abundant in earlier worlds, while later worlds present more complex challenges for more experienced players. In the two-player mode, the players alternate turns to balance play time. The development team introduced new power-ups and concepts that would give Mario the appearance of different creatures as a means of providing him with new abilities. An early idea changed Mario into a centaur, but was dropped in favor of a raccoon tail that allows limited flying ability. Other costumes with different abilities were added to his repertoire, and levels were designed to take advantage of these abilities. New enemies were included to add diversity to the game, along with variants of previous enemies, such as Goombas, Hammer Bros., and Koopa Troopas. The real life experiences of Miyamoto and his staff provided the inspiration for new enemies. For example, the idea for the Chain Chomp enemies (spherical, dog-like creatures) came from a bad experience Miyamoto had with a dog as a child. Bowser's children were designed to be unique in appearance and personality; Miyamoto based the characters on seven of his programmers as a tribute to their work and efforts. The Koopalings' names were later altered to mimic names of well-known, Western celebrities in the English localization.

The character graphics were created by using a special graphics machine ("Character Generator Computer Aided Design") that generated a collection of all the graphical shapes used in the game. Shapes in the collection were assigned numbers that the game's code uses to access in real time, and are combined to form complete images on the screen in real time. The Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge uses Nintendo's custom MMC3 (Memory Management Controller) ASIC to enhance the NES capabilities. The MMC3 chip allows for animated tiles, extra RAM for diagonal scrolling, and a scanline timer to split the screen. The game uses these functions to split the game screen into two portions, a playfield on the top and a status bar on the bottom, allowing the top portion to scroll as the character navigates the stage while the bottom portion remains static to display text and other information.

During 1988, a shortage of ROM chips, along with Nintendo of America's preparation of a version of Super Mario Bros. 2 for Western gamers (since the Japanese SMB2 was deemed too difficult), prevented Nintendo from releasing SMB3 and some other games (including, according to the magazine "Nintendo Power", "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link") in North America on schedule. The delay, however, presented Nintendo with an opportunity to promote the game in a feature film. In 1989, Tom Pollack of Universal Studios approached Nintendo of America's marketing department about a video game movie; inspired by Nintendo video game competitions, Pollack envisioned a video game version of Tommy for younger audiences. Nintendo licensed its products for inclusion in what would become the film The Wizard. During the movie's production, the filmmakers requested and were granted approval from Nintendo regarding the script and portrayal of the company's games. Super Mario Bros. 3 was one of the products shown in the film, and was used in a final scene involving a video game competition. The film was released in December 1989, a few months before the game was released.