KoichiHayashida
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This is why 'Mario' levels are brilliant
For the past 30 years, if you wanted a masterclass in video-game level-and-objective design you needn't look any further than a Mario title from Nintendo. That didn't change any with 2013's stellar Super Mario 3D World or last year's spin-off Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, either. As Pocket Gamer's Mark Brown dissects in the video below, the ingenuity lies in how the former communicates wrinkles and tasks to the player -- not with a series of terrible tutorials, but gameplay. This is something the game's director Koichi Hayashida draws from four-panel Japanese manga. The structure's called kishoutenketsu, and it comes directly from Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto's time spent drawing comics; it's always been influential in how the company has approached game design.
Visualized: The lunacy of E3, live from Nintendo
Instead of its typical pre-show E3 press conference, Nintendo opted to open up its exhibition booth to journalists a bit early this year, teasing a few Wii U games, such as Pikmin 3 and the long-awaited Super Mario 3D World. Much to the amusement of attendees, Koichi Hayashida, the director of that latter title, joined journalists "dressed as a cat," as you can see in the image above. There were meows and everything. Such is our reward for an unusually long wait for the abbreviated event to kick off.
