‘You’re going to be in a video game’: Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood theme park is a bold statement about the future of entertainment
- Representing many firsts for the US, Super Nintendo World will be the most participatory theme park universe ever envisioned
- Opening on February 17, it includes a Mario Kart ride that melds physical sets with movement-tracking augmented reality that responds to guest positions
In 1981, Shigeru Miyamoto created a video game character whose entire personality was contained in what the designer first described as “16 dots by 16 dots”.
As that character evolved, those pixels would comprise red braces, a pouch of a tummy, an oversized nose, a bushy moustache and eventually a whole lot of jumpy pluckiness, making him an unlikely but confident hero as he sought to rescue a damsel in distress.
Miyamoto at first called him Mr Video, a prescient and self-assured designation for a character who by 1985 would come to dominate home television screens.
It wasn’t long before Mr Video transitioned into Mario, the most recognisable video game character ever created.
Mario would become so popular that Miyamoto would look to the Walt Disney Company and its brand management of Mickey Mouse for direction.
“Mickey Mouse sort of grew and evolved alongside cartoons and animation,” Miyamoto once told The Los Angeles Times. “I felt it would be best for Mario to grow and evolve alongside video games. Whenever we introduced new technology, we always paired that introduction with a new Mario game.”
