Miyamoto talks the origins of Mario’s famous dash mechanic

Legendary video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto has explained that Mario’s iconic dash mechanic which can be used to clear tight gaps when going at speed was the result of a coding bug back in the day. Mario wasn’t meant to clear the gaps using his dash as it was a result of flawed collision detection system. Miyamoto thought it was fun, so he said let’s leave it as it is.

“You know Mario’s B-Dash, right? If you hold the B button while running, he can cross small gaps without failing – that small cheat. Truth be told, that was actually a bug caused by flawed collision detection with the ground. When the programmer noticed it, he said, ‘Huh? He didn’t fall!’ and tried to fix it. But I said, ‘No, no! It’s fun if he can dash across – let’s leave it as is!’ [laughs]. So we kept it.”

“There were tons of other fun techniques and hidden items born while developing Super Mario Bros. For example, a bug where coins appeared in midair where nothing existed originally became the official ‘Hidden Block’. As to the character Cheep Cheep, I don’t think I could have come up with it alone. The initial idea came from graphic artist Takashi Tezuka. He was young then, and didn’t yet have strong technical skills, but he offered interesting ideas, like wanting to have a fish that suddenly leaps out and plops back down, that could both fly and swim.

“But Mario can dodge enemies that fall from above, not ones that pop up suddenly from below. So the idea was incomplete in itself. Still, my younger colleague’s idea had a certain appeal, and I wanted to accommodate it. On further reflection, I suddenly came upon the notion, ‘Aha- let’s raise the floor.’ If Mario is running on the lowest level they’ll appear unexpectedly, but if he’s on a some- what higher platform, players can see the fish fly up. That’s why World 2-3, where Cheep Cheeps appear, takes place on higher piers.”

“None of these things could have been done by one person alone. I believe it’s because we created it together, by discussion and argument as a team, that the game came about. I always want information to flow back and forth freely, so I even banned headphones in the office [laughs]. Rather than divide work strictly by specialty, we all helped shape the whole game together, and the fun was in doing that. Even now, I still work with people from that team: the graphic artist I just cited, Mr. Tezuka, programmer Toshihiko Nakago, and composer Koji Kondo. I think that in itself is pretty amazing.”

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