Super Mario's Invisible Difficulty Settings

Nintendo has been trying to  solve the exact same problem, for the last 30-odd years: how do you  design the difficulty of a Mario game? Because here’s the thing: Mario means  different things to different people. On the one hand, he’s a cultural icon, a Hollywood  super star, a pudgy plumber mascot for kids.

And so his games must be  approachable to absolutely everyone - even to someone who has  never played a video game before. But on the other hand, Mario has gathered  a rabid fanbase of gamers who have been playing his adventures since 1985 and now have  expert, muscle memory skills for triple jumps, ground pounds, and infinite 1-UP shenanigans. And so they expect Mario’s games to  keep pace with their advanced skillset.

How on earth do you make a game that’s suitable for both of those players  - and everyone in between? “No matter how hard you try,” says  Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto, “it just isn't possible to settle on a  difficulty level that will satisfy everyone”. Now, in another genre this might be  fixed with a difficulty select screen.

You know… do you want to play on  easy, medium, or hard? But these features are usually created by tweaking some  numbers, like the amount of health you have, the damage you do with each attack,  or the number of enemies that spawn. But in a meticulously hand-crafted  platformer, with extremely distinct interactions between enemies and the  player… well that stuff just wouldn’t fly.

Which is why, in more than 30  mainline Super Mario games, only one has anything even  resembling an explicit “easy mode”. And besides: that’s just  not really Nintendo’s way. Miyamoto says ”one way is to add an  “Easy Mode”, but I think the best method is when the player can adjust the  difficulty [themselves] while playing”.

How does that work? Well,  that’s what I wanted to find out. In order to do this, I played through  a bunch of different Mario games.

I mean, I'm talking a lot of Mario games. I mean, every single mainline entry  in the Super Mario Bros. series.

Let's just put Super Mario Land  on top, just for good measure. That is not going to stay there. All of this in order to figure  out how Nintendo designed Super Mario's invisible difficulty setting.

So, for the 200th time, I'm Mark Brown, and this is Game Maker's Toolkit,  a series on video game design. Okay. So I think the best metaphor  for Mario’s difficulty design is to think of three pipes, placed on top of each other.

The central pipe represents the path  you must take to finish the game. To go from A to B. In a level, that’s from the  starting line to the goal pole.

And in terms of the game itself, it’s from the opening cutscene to  the final showdown with Bowser. This is the critical path - and it’s designed  to be a pretty average level of difficulty. But then there’s the other two  pipes - in the lower pipe the game is easier and more forgiving for new players.

And in the pipe up above, the game is harder, and  designed to test the skills of expert players. And then within the game’s design there are  ways to shift between these three pipes. If the game is proving too difficult, you can accept some help and drop into  the bottom pipe and have an easier time.

But if the game is a little too easy, you can rise to the top pipe and take  on the game’s more challenging content. Now this is an idea that Nintendo has used  in, well, just about every Mario game. From World to Wonder, and from Galaxy to Odyssey.

But the exact ways that players can move between  the pipes has changed a lot throughout the years. We’ve seen these methods evolve and change as  Mario has bounced between different systems, eras, game directors, and meta-level structures. So let’s look at them all - by breaking  them down into different categories.

I’ll start by looking at the top pipe, with the stuff that allows the player  to make the game more difficult. And that starts in the levels themselves, with  one-off rewards that encourage you to take risks. Take this block in the first underground  level of Super Mario Bros.

When Mario bops it with his bonce, a 1-UP mushroom appears  and starts to saunter across the ceiling. If you want it then you’ll need to speed up,  manically dash through the next group of enemies, and make a daring leap to grab the extra  life before it disappears into the void. Mario levels are absolutely  filled with this stuff.

Whether that’s runaway power-ups, those  coloured coins that disappear after a few seconds, or the final tricky  leap to the top of the flagpole. These are all entirely optional, meaning that if you’re not confident  then you can just ignore them entirely. But if you’re feeling skilful then you can  push your luck, and get a reward for it.

This is never more obvious than the star coins, which were formally introduced  in New Super Mario Bros. on DS. Every level has three special coins which require  extra skill - or even more advanced moves.

A Nintendo designer said “all of the courses  can be cleared without dashing or wall jumping, but you can't get Star Coins without doing  those things or making use of special items. ” These star coins have become a recurring motif and now show up in just about every Mario game  - perhaps in a slightly different guise, like the green stars and Miiverse stamps in  3D World, or the comet medals in Galaxy 2. Again: these things are entirely optional and - in many games - you can finish the game  without picking up a single one.

But, to an advanced player, they transform  an easy level into a challenging obstacle course where you have to risk life and  limb to walk away with all three coins. Another idea is to reward the player if they  can finish a course under specific criteria. Yoshi’s Island is one of the  easiest Mario games thanks to a very generous regenerating health system  that lets you take, well, infinite hits.

So it’s entirely possible to limp through a  level in the most ungainly way imaginable. But - the game will score your  performance at the end of the stage, and one of the criteria is how much life you  have left when you cross the finish line. So if you want to max out the score card you’ll need to finish the level with  almost perfect performance.

Score has always been part of the Mario games,  of course - a weird relic of its arcade roots. But Super Mario Bros. Deluxe gives each level a  par score to hit, as an optional challenge - which is a more concrete goal than simply “get  a lot of points”, or “beat your friends”.

And in Super Mario Maker’s 3DS port, every level comes with two medals which  add special conditions to the stage - like fishing it while holding  on to a certain power-up, or speed-running through a level  under a super strict time limit. These are actually a lot of fun - I’d like  to see them come back in a future game. So those are ways to place optional  challenges within the levels themselves.

but what about if we zoom out  and think of the game as a whole? In Super Mario Odyssey you can finish the  game after collecting 124 power moons. This unlocks the climactic final battle with  Bowser on the moon - which wraps up the story.

Roll credits. The game is over. Except, of course, it’s not.

Doing this unlocks access to new moons  which are now scattered throughout the game. And tricky additional post-game levels that  will put everything you’ve learned to the test. Basically: the most difficult content in Mario Odyssey doesn’t even exist until  after you’ve finished the game.

So if we think about the game’s difficulty curve, Nintendo could have forced players to  reach the very end before offering closure. But instead, they stop the story  long before the curve hits its peek. This means that pretty much everyone  can see the game through to the end, and wrap up whatever little  storyline there is in the game.

But those wanting more  challenge can keep on playing. This is a common refrain in the Mario series - heck, the very first Super Mario Bros. ended  with an invitation to start a new quest, which is like a B-side remix of the entire  game with harder enemies and level layouts.

Plus, if you find all 120 stars in Mario Galaxy, you’re rewarded with the chance  to do it all again as Luigi. Finishing Super Mario 3D World unlocks three more worlds filled with difficult courses  - and the infamous Champion’s Road. And all of the New Super Mario  Bros.

games have bonus worlds with more difficult courses,  hidden after the credits roll. Of course, this does mean that expert  players have to go through an entire game’s worth of pretty easy content to  finally get to the challenging stuff. So other games don’t make you wait until the  very end to access these bonus harder levels.

In Super Mario World, certain levels have secret  exits that open hidden pathways on the map - some of which go to a mysterious place called Star Road, which hides a bunch of bonus  levels that will test your mettle. There’s even a secret world within  this secret world: a Special Zone, filled with bizarre dream logic levels  with the most 90s names imaginable. “Tubular”!

“Groovy”! “Way Cool”! Other examples include the challenge  mode in New Super Mario Bros.

U, which is unlocked gradually as you play the game. And the odd extra difficult courses that are  peppered throughout Mario Wonder’s campaign. But how about we go one further, and make the entire game be designed just  for those who were experts at the previous game?

Shortly after the release of  the original Super Mario Bros. , the designers put together a sequel that  was full of extra challenging stages - with nonsense jumps, BS enemy  placements, absurd wind physics, poisonous mushrooms, and warp pipes that  can send you backwards to earlier worlds. The entire game is a nightmare  joke for Mario experts - so much so that it was hard to market it properly.

Miyamoto has said “we were certain that this was a lot of fun for those who  played Super Mario Bros. immensely. But we thought it would be  hard for first time players, so we put a sticker on the package  that said ‘For Super Players’.

” That wasn’t enough for Nintendo of America  who refused to localise the game - which is why we got a completely different  Super Mario Bros. 2 outside of Japan. Anyway - this idea makes a lot more  sense in the age of downloadable content.

So, if the old eShop still existed then you could grab some stupidly hard levels  for New Super Mario Bros. 2. Or, even better, the excellent New Super  Luigi U expansion pack, which is designed for platforming experts thanks to its tricky  stage layouts and super short time limits.

So, those are all ways that Nintendo  can make Mario games more challenging. Risky one-off rewards. Optional star coins.

Challenging bonus criteria. Post-game content. Bonus levels.

And expert-level DLC. But what about the opposite? What can Nintendo do if the  central pipe is proving too difficult and players need a helping hand?

Well, one very effective solution is to simply  let players choose which courses they take on. Super Mario 64 features 120 power  stars, littered throughout a number of difficult levels - but you actually  only need 70 of them to finish the game. This means that outside of a few mandatory  stages, the player is able to pick and choose the levels they feel comfortable  playing - and skip others entirely.

And because you can access multiple  levels simultaneously you can put off a tricky level for the time  being and come back to it later. This has become a common  structure in Mario’s 3D outings - you never need all of the stars, shines, or  moons to finish these games, and so you get to decide which levels you want to play,  and the order you want to play them in. But we also see the option to skip  levels in some 2D games - whether that’s using the warp zones in Super  Mario Bros.

to skip past tricky worlds, using the map screen in Super  Mario Bros. 3 to bypass courses, or using the job list in Super Mario Maker 2 to pick out the levels with the  lowest difficulty ratings. Another solution is to change the  layout of the levels themselves.

In Super Mario World there are  these switch block palaces. Hit the big coloured button and  it will populate the world with new blocks that fill in tricky  gaps or provide useful power-ups. This makes levels much easier to play -  which is a bit like activating an easy mode.

Though, because you can’t undo  the action… this doesn’t really let you move back and forth between the pipes. Press the button and you’re now stuck in  the lower pipe for the rest of the game. Luckily, this idea would be revisited  more effectively in Super Mario Wonder with a badge that makes some extra blocks appear.

But only as long as you’re wearing the badge. Take it off and the game goes back to normal. Nintendo can also change the difficulty by  letting you switch to a different character.

In the western version of Super Mario Bros. 2, Princess Toadstool is arguably the  easiest character to control thanks to her floaty jump that makes it less  challenging to land on small platforms. Same goes for her appearance  as Peach in Super Mario 3D World.

This is taken even further in  New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, where Toadette and Nabbit are dedicated  as easier characters to play as, thanks to tighter physics,  faster movement in water, and - in Nabbit’s case - the dude doesn’t  even take damage from enemies. Changing the difficulty is as  easy as changing character.

In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Nintendo wanted  to do something for players who kept dying, over and over again, on the same level. These players are obviously getting stuck  and probably quite frustrated - so how can they be helped?

The solution is the Super Guide. Activate this box and Luigi will show  you how to finish the level - notably, without getting secrets or star coins. When he’s done you can either take  the, uh, take the L and skip the level.

Or use what you just saw to try  the level again for yourself. This feature would appear again  in New Super Mario Bros. U, and in certain parts of Mario Galaxy 2  as the slightly unsettling Cosmic Spirit.

You could perhaps put the assist mode for  Mario Odyssey in this category too, as one of the primary features of this system is to show you  exactly where to go using these handy blue arrows. A slightly different version of this  system appeared in Super Mario 3D Land. You’ll still get an optional box  if you fail a certain number of times - but in this game it provides a power-up: an invincible tanooki suit which lets you float  forever and smash through enemies and obstacles.

If that’s not enough, then dying 10  times lets you skip the level altogether. The invincible tanooki suit is actually a  callback to a power-up in Super Mario Bros. 3.

Finishing a castle can sometimes net you a P-Wing  for your inventory, which can be used to give you infinite flight and soar over an entire level  like you’ve activated a broken Game Genie code. A similar assist system appears  in New Super Mario Bros. 2, and there’s a clever twist on the idea in  Super Mario Maker 2’s story mode where you can open a toolbox of items and blocks  to paint into the level as you see fit.

And finally… if you’re stuck in a game, sometimes the best solution is to ask a  friend to jump in and just do it for you. But what if they could actually  play alongside you and help out. That was the idea behind Super  Mario Galaxy’s co-star mode, where a second Wii Remote can be  used to collect and shoot star bits.

In Galaxy 2, the second  player can even kill enemies. There’s also a particularly clever version  of this in New Super Mario Bros. U, where a second player can plop temporary blocks  into the world by tapping on the Wii U gamepad.

And, of course, the multiplayer modes in  various Mario platformers let an advanced player help out less their skilled  friends as they chill out in a bubble. So if Nintendo wants to help  out novice players, they can… Let players choose which levels they take on. Change the stage layout to be more forgiving.

Introduce other characters  who are easier to play as. Help out players who repeatedly die with  a guide, a power-up, or a level skip. Or allow players to get a  friend to jump in and help out.

So as we can see, simply getting  through a Mario level - or an entire Mario game - is supposed to be of a  pretty standard level of difficulty. It might change from title to  title - some are slightly easier, others are a little tougher - but on the whole,  this should be suitable for an average player. But as you play, there are all sorts of  ways to change that difficulty level.

Intimidating trials like enticing extra  pick-ups, super hard bonus levels, and tricky optional conditions are there for  those who demand a greater level of challenge. Whereas generous assists like invincible  player characters, co-op modes, and skippable stages are there to help out players who  find the baseline difficulty too hard. And so, ultimately, Mario games do have difficulty modes - because we can think of these  three pipes as easy, normal, and hard.

But they’re very different to a  more traditional difficulty setting. There, these pipes are separate and siloed. A player is sorted into one of  the three at the very start of the game - and typically stays in it  for the duration of the adventure.

But in a Mario game, the pipes are all connected, and so the player seamlessly  shifts between them as they play. Perhaps accepting help when  they become frustrated, but then pushing themselves to take on more  challenges as they become more confident. And so instead of asking the player to predict  their level of skill before the game even begins, Mario games let players opt in  and out of challenges midway through the game… or even midway through a level.

At every step of the journey, players  get to ask themselves… “can I do this”? And Nintendo wants them to say “yes”. Because even though Nintendo adds in all of  these features to help out beginner players, it still understands the value of difficulty.

In an interview about Star Fox Zero,  Miyamoto said “part of the fun of taking on a challenge is that the challenge  has to be a hurdle that you overcome. Simply lowering the hurdle doesn’t necessarily  mean that the challenge will be fun. What’s fun is you mastering the  skill and having that sense of accomplishment—of achieving  something that’s difficult.

” So part of this three pipe design is making  sure that players are always encouraged to move up - to stop using assists and  to try taking on harder challenges. And this is done in a number of ways. For one, assists are usually a one-off, temporary help - a thing that helps you  get through that one specific level.

But then it goes away and you  have to do the next one yourself. Also, using assists usually means  that you don’t get a true reward. In Mario Galaxy 2, using the Cosmic Spirit nets  you a bronze star instead of a proper power star.

You’ll need to come back to get the real deal. In Super Mario Bros. 2, you won’t unlock World  9 if you got to the ending by using warp zones.

And playing on easier mode in Super Mario  Run means your purple coins aren’t saved. Plus - Nintendo often hides the assists  altogether until players truly need them. On New Super Mario Bros.

Wii, the  developers spent a long time deciding on exactly how many times you have to  die before the Super Guide shows up. Late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says “it's  fine if it appears when you're on the verge of tears, but [not] if it pops up when you're  still brimming with determination to do it. Getting that timing right is extremely important”.

Nintendo also encourages players  to tackle greater challenges by letting them proudly display their achievements. Ever since Super Mario Bros. 2, the games  have used shining stars and medals on the file select screen to let players show off that  they’ve finished the game’s hardest challenges.

Further still, in some games, if  you ever use those assists then the stars on the file select  screen will no longer shine. It’s a way to stop expert players from giving  in to temptation to use an assist tool. And finally, Nintendo makes  sure that being skilful doesn’t inadvertently make the game easier.

What I mean by that is… in early Mario games, completing optional challenges  would net you useful rewards. in Super Mario World, finding all  five dragon coins gives you a 1-UP. And in New Super Mario Bros.

, the star coins let  you unlock toad houses with 1-UPs and power-ups. This means that showing skill -  and proving that you’re an expert player - rewards you with stuff that  actually reduces the difficulty level. It’s a nasty negative feedback loop that  inadvertently pushes you out of the top pipe.

In more recent games, then, those expert-level challenges are instead  used to unlock even more difficult stages. They reward skilled players with even  more chances to show their skill. All of this means that players are  put off from using the assists, and encouraged to seek out  ever greater challenges.

But, then again… players don’t actually need all  that much encouragement to make a game harder. Provided it’s fun, of course. Just look at how players create self-imposed challenges like speed running, no coin  collection, or the Mario nipple% run.

It’s good to track the player’s achievements to  provide a sense of progression, but players will often surprise you in how they find ways  to wring out more difficulty from a game. So let’s finish by looking at how all of  this comes together in Mario’s latest game: the wonderful Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Things start with the character select screen -  Mario, Daisy, Toad, and so on all play the same, but Nabbit and Yoshi are cordoned off as easy-mode  characters who can’t take damage from enemies. However, you can switch character at any time  from the menu - and you may be enticed to do so, when you learn that these easier characters  can’t make use of the game’s fun new power-ups. There’s no “Elephant Nabbit” for instance.

You can also change the difficulty  by using the game’s new badge system. Some make the game easier - like,  one saves you from falling into pits, another gives you a mushroom  at the start of every level. But other badges make the game more  difficult, letting advanced players take on a self-inflicted challenge like going  invisible or forcing Mario to continuously hop.

You can only wear one at a time, and you’re encouraged to change  your current badge whenever you die. The game’s structure is designed to let players  pick and choose the levels they want to play. To finish a world you’ll need to own  a certain number of wonder seeds - in Pipe-Rock Plateau you’ll need 14  of them to tackle the end boss.

But, between the levels, secret exits,  and even the shop, there are more than 30 of them in this hub - meaning you can  skip some stages entirely if you choose. This also allows Nintendo to  drop in a few harder stages that advanced players can enjoy -  and beginner players can ignore. Nintendo game designer Koichi  Hayashida says “up until now, 2D Mario games have been in a format where  players complete each course in sequence.

But in this title, players who want a  challenge can start with a difficult course, and beginners can start with an easier one”. Each hub also hides a secret exit  which takes you to a special world, filled with the hardest levels in the game. And, again, they’re entirely optional.

There’s even the customary end game level which you can only unlock if you’ve  aced every level in the game. That involves getting every wonder seed,  picking up all of these 10 flower coins, and getting to the top of every flag pole. This stuff is all represented  by medals on the title screen so players can proudly track their  progression throughput the game.

Also: the game is multiplayer, so  you can get a friend to help out. And the new online standee system lets you  place down checkpoints ant any point in a level. And in each level, there are lots of opportunities  to push your luck - including the 10 flower coins, which are this game’s version of the star coin.

They don’t confer any advantage on  the expert players who get them. In fact, in this game, it’s the less  skilled players who are rewarded. If you die you’ll unlock a special  bonus “Coins Galore” level which gives you a chance to earn some more  1-UPs and cash to spend in the shops.

So Mario Wonder perfectly shows  off this excellent bit of design. The main path through the game is of  a reasonable level of challenge - but Nintendo offers plenty of ways to make  things easier if the player needs it. And, on the other hand, the game keeps  offering ways to make things harder.

Enticing little challenges  to keep expert players happy. And it’s entirely up to the  player which path they’ll take. But I don’t think this shows that Nintendo has  finally solved that decades long problem - and I expect they’ll still be experimenting with  ways for players to change Mario’s difficulty.

In an interview for Wonder, a Nintendo  staffer explained that long time Mario designer Takashi Tezuka wanted  a system that could change the difficulty level of the entire course,  in real time, at the push of the button. It proved too complicated for Wonder  but, says Tezuka, “you never know, right? Maybe it’ll be in the next game”.

Thank you so much for watching this  200th video on the GMTK YouTube channel. That is quite the way to begin this 10th  calendar year of running this YouTube channel. And to celebrate this milestone, I have  made some brand new GMTK merchandise.

Let me just, let me just. . .

*Struggle* new GMTK t-shirts featuring this, if  I dare say so, rather spiffy design. Let me find another one. So it's got the GMTK logo and little  symbols representing various games and franchises and videos that I've made.

And then on the back of the t-shirts you've got little icons representing the five  main prongs of the GMTK empire. You've got a Mario question mark block  to represent GMTK videos, a boss key, obviously, a magnet for Mind Over Magnet,  the Flappy Bird from the Unity tutorial, and a dice from the GMTK Game Jam. If you fancy getting one of these, please head  over to gamemakerstoolkit.

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Oh, and one more thing. No, I'm not retiring. Unlike a lot of YouTubers at the  moment, I'm not going anywhere.

I still have so much I want to do. Speak to you soon.