Nintendo on story in Mario games, considered at the very end of development

According to well-known Nintendo developer Yoshiaki Koizumi, story is added to the Mario titles “at the very end of the game development process”. As a franchise that is much more known for its gameplay, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Koizumi told The Washington Post in a recent interview:

“… we think about it at the very end of the game development process, just as we are completing it. When we create a game, Mario, the enemies and the stages come first, and the story is there to wrap things up neatly into one world. By story here, I don’t just mean what the characters say and what happens to them. In fact, everything that people feel when they play as Mario is part of the story. So there is not just one ‘story.’ In fact, I think it is different for everyone.”

Longtime Mario developer Takashi Tezuka also spoke about the story in Mario games. During the series’ earliest days, plot understandably wasn’t much of a focus.

Tezuka said:

“As long as there was a reason for Mario to go from left to right, the player could happily defeat enemies and move forward. More than that, because it was a game where Mario stepped on enemies, it was more important for us to create designs that made the rules intuitive, for example, shaping Buzzy Beetle’s shell so that it looked like it would hurt if you stepped on it.”