Miyamoto Reveals Favorite Mario Game

Nintendo's resident genius dishes about his favorite Mario...and it's not the one you think.

Among video game developers, none is as famous or as well-respected as Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox. He ranks among game designers and directors like Sid Meier, Hideo Kojima and Will Wright, although he surpasses them all -- at least in my humble opinion. When Miyamoto speaks, the gaming world and millions of fans listen. And it's especially interesting when he shares stories about the glory days at Nintendo, or about the peculiar history of a famous game.

When gaming website IGN caught up to Miyamoto at this month's Electronic Entertainment Expo, they asked him about his favorite Mario game.

"I guess as a developer that might have to be the very first Super Mario game, for me, because I have so many memories tied up in it," said Miyamoto. "Perhaps as a player, I might go for what was, at least in Japan, we referred to it as Super Mario USA, which was a game that just had a very different sort of feel. I think we had such a loose approach to it, we really came up with something interesting."

The first Super Mario Bros. game, routinely listed as one of the best and more influential games of all time, is hardly a surprise. But Super Mario USA, or Super Mario Bros. 2 as Americans know it, is quite a shocking answer. A little back story: after the success of the first Mario Bros., Miyamoto and company worked on a sequel that was graphically similar but far more difficult. Nintendo of America was convinced that the high level of difficulty would turn off American audiences, so Miyamoto helped transform an existing game -- Doki Doki Panic -- into what American audiences know as Super Mario Bros. 2. Because it's based on a re-purposed game, Mario Bros. 2 looks and acts unlike any other Mario game; it's perceived by many fans as the black sheep of the franchise.



That's why it's so curious that Miyamoto would choose it as one of his favorite Mario games. It's certainly not as revolutionary as Super Mario 64 or as innovative as Super Mario Galaxy. Yet, I can't fault Miyamoto; everyone has his or her own favorite, and those favorites often have very little to do with greatness.