Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Super Mario series, has revealed the difficulty faced when creating Mario games for mobile.
Mario has had a few mobile outings over the last seven years – starting with Super Mario Run in 2016, and then Mario Kart Tour and Dr. Mario World in 2019.
Nintendo has since moved away from Mario on mobile, after it shut down Dr. Mario World for good just two years after it launched.
In an interview with Variety about Super Mario Bros. Movie, Miyamoto stated it was “challenging to determine what [a Mario game for mobile] should be”. The reason, he said, was due to a difference in controls between console and mobile games.
“The intuitiveness of the control is a part of the gaming experience,” he explained. “That is why I played the role of director for Super Mario Run,” he continued, “to be able to translate that Nintendo hardware experience” of a far more complex system like the Switch to a more generic mobile phone.
“We try to define what is the gameplay, what is the method, and then define what devices we go on,” Miyamoto said as he elaborated on how Nintendo sets about developing Mario games.
Miyamoto unsurprisingly confirmed Nintendo was not considering mobile games as the “primary path” for the future of the Mario series, and asked fans to look out for future Nintendo Directs for news on what the next Mario game might be.