Leaps and Bounds: The Design of Super Mario 3D World

Here's a question you might not like: Is Super Mario 3D World a 3D Mario platformer? It sounds open and shut. The acrobatics of Mario 3D World span three axes of movement, and it's an official platformer in the Mario series. Yet, here's another question that makes that argument sound less salient: Is every game in which we play some role an "RPG", or, despite the name, are RPGs only games that underscore stats describing character attributes? Terminology is often aliteral, and in addition to the literal use of the label "3D Mario game", the term has also become shorthand for Mario titles in the style of Sunshine or Galaxy, and 3D World could never be mistaken for one of those. Implicitly, we can conclude that adventures like Galaxy and Sunshine are not just defined by being 3D and Mario vehicles but that there's some secret sauce that locks in their particular flavour. 3D World must, therefore, be slathered in its own slop. But what slop is that? By finding the disparity between 3D World and the "true" 3D Marios, we can learn about their nature.

Camera

Where to start? How about the obvious disagreement between camera placement in Mario 3D World and the mainline 3D Marios, or the less apparent implications it has for interactivity?

In games, a first-person camera or close behind-the-back camera gives the player the impression of being in the centre of the action. It confers a more precise view of their character's location relative to elements of their surroundings. The closer the designer brings the camera to the protagonist, the more precise visual information about the level in front of the player the player gets. The only region of the screen they won't get an eyeful of is the one that's blocked by their avatar. The closer the camera is to the avatar, the less the audience can ascertain about the environment behind their character and the more that character can obscure. In comparison, a distant camera allows the developers to situate the avatar within a broad setting and lets us see threats meters behind the protagonist. If the camera is elevated or side-on, you might be able to see hundreds more meters in front of them, too.

Within the sector of third-person cameras, side-on views of the protagonist give us the optimal view of entities' positions and movement on the Y and Z axes but a very hazy impression of events on the X-axis. A camera that is directly above our avatar gives us the ideal perspective on the X and Y axes but little information about what's happening on the Z-axis. With these trade-offs in mind, we can explain why 2D and 3D games use the camera angles that they do. In 2D, it is fine to have a side-on or top-down camera because there is no third dimension that the player needs to pay attention to. However, in 3D games, the player does need to track what's happening on the X, Y, and Z axes, necessitating an alternative.

There's no camera that can give you a perfect view of everything happening in three dimensions at all times. Still, developers working in third person can (and mostly do) use a camera angled somewhere between a top-down and side-on view to provide some perspective on all three axes. We can also apply this knowledge to answer why we have the ability to move the camera in 3D action games more often than 2D action games. The camera in 2D games covers all the axes the action happens on, but the 3D camera does not. Therefore, developers let us "make" the camera we need for each challenge by translating and rotating it. The position and velocities of entities relative to the player will change throughout play and require different cameras to monitor.

We have arrived speedily at the first divider between regular 3D Mario and the eccentric Mario 3D World. Mainline Mario mostly uses a mid-distance camera that often favours behind-the-back views and allows full 360 rotation, while 3D World rigs a camera that sits further out from its subject and can only be rotated within a roughly 90-degree slice to roughly 30-degree notches. 3D World's camera is almost as fixed as those of the flatland platformers on the NES. However, as all play in 3D World takes place in the theatre of the 3D, there are rudimentary variances between its gameplay and the gameplay of 2D platformers. Unfortunately, I've not been able to find them. Oh wait, here they are:

1. In Mario 3D World, there are more different directions in which levels and sections of levels can flow. A 2D level can flow left, right, up, or down, but with a third axis, we can move into or out of the screen or even traverse the X and Y axes simultaneously. And levels can branch off in more different directions. Some districts of 3D World's cities wind back and forth, Lombard Street-esque, across the X or Y coordinates.
2. More dimensions mean more nooks in which the game can hide collectables or crannies in which you can interact with entities to bring you closer to those collectables. This is beneficial for Nintendo as the primary objective in this game is to obtain collectables: Stars.
3. And this is related: a third dimension means a greater depth in how you can be expected to move and the threats you can be expected to react to in a single area. You might be commanded to not just jump along the X-axis, but also the Y, or you might have to pay attention to Bullet Bills flying at you from the side while worrying about the Thwomp in front of you.

Snip out the word "Stars", and that list is a solid explanation of why popular action and environmental exploration games today are overwhelmingly 3D rather than 2D. That is, beyond just because 3D looks high-tech. We expect more to do and to win in games today than we did in the 80s, and the third dimension lets you stuff more for the player to perform and possess into one cavity. Mario 3D World also enlightens us on why 3D games don't typically attempt to provide this density of activities and rewards with a distant, angled, and barely articulating camera as it does. Without a close-up perspective or better depth perception in 3D World, you can't make pinpoint jumps onto platforms or enemies' heads. You also can't tell when a foe is about to bump you.

Stars

While our first impression of camera design may be that it is an isolated discipline in game development, we can now appreciate how the view we have on the board is intertwined with the design of levels, objectives, and player abilities. As we evaluated these connections in 3D World, the differences between that game and the Odyssey-type Marios snuck up on us. Almost all stages in the Wii U/Switch game have a main path that flows through them with short detours, and scattered across these stages are three Stars. The camera intrudes on our search for the Stars through the fourth wall. In Super Mario 64 and its heirs, levels don't have a single direction they flow in but are sandbox areas. Collectables are not sprinkled over these levels. Instead, players pick an episode or select a Moon they would like to pursue within the sandbox, with the Star/Shine Sprite/Moon situated uniquely in each mission. The location of the collectable will define their path or possible paths through the level.

There are more distinctions. In the 3D Mario games from 64 to Galaxy 2, we don't get our objective item until the end of the level, whereas in 3D World and Odyssey, we can continually pick up objective items as we move through the environment. In that sense, we may see 3D World's reward system as a prototype for Odyssey's. Giving out one shiny trophy at the end of a mission focuses the gameplay like a highly trained samurai. It further makes the Star feel monumental, but there are also advantages to splitting Stars up into smaller trinkets the player may collect over the course of a run:

1. It increases episode replayability. Players might have to go back to harpoon Stars they missed.
2. It makes major rewards, on average, more frequent.
3. Even if the player doesn't have an interest in collecting a certain goal item or the skillset to grab it, there will be other goal items within the same stage they can or want to add to their trophy case.

I'd prefer that the hubs in 3D World told us how many Stars we need to advance to the next, like the castle doors in Mario 64 did. I know I'm being productive when I put a little stardust in my pocket, but I also want to feel like I'm closing in on a goal and can put my productivity into some context. Sunshine also wasn't forthcoming about the number of keys you needed to unlock the next world, but then, I feel like I'm getting more out of the platforming in that vacation so I can cut the macro-level progression some slack.

Cat Suit

I don't want to be delusionally nostalgic. 3D World whiffs it on the camera, but there are times it does something classic Mario would never have done and is more resplendent for it. The Cat Suit, for example, was love at first sight. In its gameplay design, this costume could be roundly overlooked as a retreat to the same intentions behind the Cape Feather or the Super Leaf. One of the cardinal tasks of Mario is navigating the level to reach objective items or the level goal. Directly, running across the X or Y-axis is simple, but whenever we try to ascend up the Z-axis, jealous gravity pulls us back down to Earth. The Cape Feather and Super Leaf already make a mockery of gravity, so why would we need the Cat Suit, another grip for mountaineering on the Y-axis? There is a case for it.

In a platformer, a super jump is a potential Thor's hammer. Therefore, Nintendo has to subdue your flight. All the flight power-ups constrain with different ties. The Cape and Racoon Tail can only be used where you have enough tarmac for a running start, and they push you in the direction of the plumber's bulbous nose whether you want them to or not. With the Cat Suit, you can speed up a wall from a standing start, like the family pet scaling the curtains. Yet, because you can only sink your claws into vertical surfaces, the designers can make sure you only get to use the fursuit where it would not be too immense an aid for you. They do this by carefully and thoughtfully placing walls. Different constraint.

Clear Pipes

The Clear Pipes, like Warp Pipes, allow the creators to swiftly move the player from where they are to where they need them to be. However, unlike the Warp Pipe, the Clear Pipe is a subway train that retains the contiguous nature of the levels by keeping the camera on for the entire transit from A to B. Nintendo struck a similar chord in the level design of Pikmin 1. In classic Mario elegance, the alternating paths of the Clear Pipes also allow the developers to set out maze minigames and let the player seek multiple exit nodes from the network.

Level Design

My favourite newborn aspect of Mario is 3D World's casting of "guest mechanics". This Wii U wonderland is a game designer's game, introducing a new idea, running through all its possible permutations and then discarding it to pick another from the box. In 1-5, Switch Scramble Circus, we must step foot on panels in the correct order to light them all. In 3-2, Chain-Link Charge, bobbing mesh fences try to knock us out of the sky, and we must either jump over, duck under, or climb them to stay aloft. 4-3, Beep Block Skyway's platforms appear and disappear on an audible timer. To reuse as little as Nintendo does is a triumph of productivity.

Moving Mario

This could be the paragraph where I say that in addition to all of the incipient toys in 3D World, we also have the enduring ballast of the series, elements that have subsisted from the start. But we can't just distil the mechanics like that. Whether you're climbing a flagpole in the Cat Suit or sprinting off of a fading Beep Block, you're still engaging the base climb and jump models that have undergone little fundamental change since their debut on the N64. In some ways, since their debut on the NES. You don't have new player abilities and the old movement model. Instead, the new powers are applications of the old movement. Re: the purpose of this article, we're now covering dissimilarities between different castes of "3D Mario" rather than similarities.

The most economical touch in the original Super Mario Bros. was combining the jump with the attack. Enemies become platforms, with the combat capitalising on the smoothest facet of the controls. It's the kind of invention that is obvious after it's been tried but not before. However, it would take a whole other kind of ingenuity to rehouse these mechanics in three dimensions. A solid rule of thumb is that the first iterations of a technology will be ramshackle and dysfunctional, and by modern standards, that's what even most of the celebrated platformers of the PS1 era would be regarded as. With that, I'm bowled over that Mario 64 managed to hit the 3D platformer out of the park on the first try. It's all the more amazing when you realise that Mario's mechanics weren't designed for this many axes; the fundamentals of the series were meant to screw into 2D fittings. There's a reason that there's a fervent community still playing 64 to this day and a lineage of Nintendo releases made in its image.

Return home to Nintendo's third console, and you'll notice Mario neither starts moving too fast when you tilt the directional stick, nor becomes so fast once he gets going that he's unwieldy. Hitboxes fit their objects like they were plaster cast for them, and the jumps are made to measure. Let me tell you, I went back and replayed the first couple of Crash Bandicoots recently, and the same does not apply to them. In another early 3D platformer, Tomb Raider, we have a protagonist who is meant to be lithe and limber but who we must constantly stop to turn and who wheels about like a swivel chair. Mario, meanwhile, has more continuous movement and can reverse direction without uncomfortable pivoting. He's our true 90s femme icon.

The camera of Mario 64 requires more babysitting than I'd like to see but less than that of the cameras in Tomb Raider or Spyro. Even in "free" mode, Spyro's camera is too stiff for us to view all the incoming fireballs and rocks hurled our way. Tomb Raider, meanwhile, often has us put Lara's back against a wall to line up a jump, but when the camera comes between her and a wall, it slips to the side. As our adventurer's running direction is bound to the camera direction, it means setting up the jump all over again. Yet, like an impressionable child, 3D World imitates 64's base movement closely enough that all that compliments I can pay to 64, I have to pay it too.

Synthesis

Remember when I commented on the development of sequels a couple of months ago? No? It doesn't matter. One of my observations was that finding that sweet spot between old and new is no mean feat. In video game terms, Nintendo is palaeolithic, and therefore, they have a long internal history that can educate them on how to make a Mario or zest a Zelda. Still, when your series stands astride decades, being both a traditionalist and a revolutionary can be brutally difficult, even for a seasoned developer.

Nintendo wants their games to honour classic mechanics of the 80s and 90s, creating this jagged-glass risk of their work being outdated. I don't think the company has always been able to toe the line between classic and novel. In the early 10s, Zelda: Skyward Sword and New Super Mario Bros. U looked out on a crowd of sincere smiles, but there was a quiet acknowledgement that the industry's Disney might have gone back to the well one too many times. In due time, this would likely be the inflexion point that led Nintendo to a more radical attitude when developing first-party Switch titles like Mario Odyssey and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But just a year after Mario Bros. U, they released Super Mario 3D World, a bridge between their platformers of old and the Mario of the future. It is what most sequels in long-running series strive to be: Recognisable as a childhood friend while taking aptly to an adulthood of original mechanics. Thanks for reading.

Notes

1. Cartesian Coordinates by Christopher Stover and Eric W. Weisstein (2002), MathWorld - A Wolfram Web Resource.