User:Hiccup/Prerelease:Super Mario Bros.

Player

 * The player was originally a Super Mario sized square that could move in a wavy manner and couldn't jump.
 * The environment was just one screen.
 * At the time, this was groundbreaking.
 * Mario was chosen because of the consistently good sales of the Mario Bros. game and Miyamoto's desire to use the character in all his video games.

Levels
(This is near the start of the development process, but possibly a later build than described previously):
 * There was just the blue sky with white clouds and the ground. Nakago was surprised that the Famicom could produce such vivid graphics.
 * At first they thought that the levels would need to last about a minute, so they thought they would need sixty screens. But Miyamoto said "We're going to have all sorts of things going on in between, so twenty screens should be enough for a single level.".
 * Most levels in the final game is about 12 screens long. The longest level in the game is about 32 screens.
 * Miyamoto didn't have any level plans initially, but was confidant in what they would do next.
 * The levels were drawn out on huge pieces of graph paper, then the data was painstakingly entered by hand.
 * Any level modifications were a headache. They were often having to make changes to levels every day.
 * After the data was burned to the ROM, Tezuka and Miyamoto would play through the level and decide if anything needed to be changed.
 * They didn't start with the first worlds, generally starting around World 3 or 5.
 * When designing levels, they thought about the various outcomes the players actions would create.
 * World 1-1 was made towards the end, to cater for beginners.


 * They were going to scrap sky levels because they couldn't make levels "where Mario would climb on clouds." because of memory constraints. But they revived the idea with vines.
 * They used coins to show safe areas where the player could jump.
 * A lot of trial-and-error and tricks were needed to fit they game within the limitations of the hardware available at the time.
 * The clouds and bushes use the graphics, but with a different pallete. Some objects were made symmetrical, so they could be flipped and use half the memory, instead of having unique tiles for each half.

Enemies

 * The most common enemy in the game, the Goomba was implemented after the Koopa Troopa. They were created because the developers thought that the Koopa was too hard for such a common enemy. This is evident in the final games code as Goombas are sprite number.