Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 55)

Trigger Happy
57
themed shoot-’em-ups that were popular at the time.
But Miyamoto’s first game, called Donkey Kong (see
fig. 3), became an enormous hit, and invented a new
genre: the platform game.
9
The carpenter, known cratylically as Jumpman (for
it was his nature, uniquely at the time, to jump) in the
first game, was transformed by its sequel into a
plumber called Mario, who soon became the most
recognized videogame “character” of all, and most of
the innovations in the platform-game genre have been
made in games starring Mario, and written by
Miyamoto himself. Mario Bros. (1983) introduced the
plumber’s brother, Luigi, along with another paradigm
of platform gaming that stuck for years: enemies are
destroyed, not by means of projectile weapons, but by
the cartoonish method of jumping into platforms
underneath them to knock them over, then climbing up
and kicking them off the screen while they were still
dazed. Super Mario Bros. (1985) turned the platform
genre into a sideways-scrolling quest through a world
many times the size of one screen, and added powerups
(by eating a mushroom, Mario increased in size
_________________
9 In platform games, women are literally on pedestals, with men constantly
striving to attain their level. It is an interesting example of plinth ideology;
see, for the concept’s application in cognitive science, the rather eccentric
AndrÉ Tabrizifar, The Transparent Head, pp. 332–35.