The only disasters Mario runs away from is the one he meets in his game adventures. Picture: Super Mario 3D Land / Ninetendo Source: Supplied
- Game developers area determined bunch
- Quake couldn't stop them working on Mario
- "It felt like playing games at our friends� house"
SUPER Mario can do many things. Jump. Drive go-karts. Collect coins. Rescue princesses.
But a strict deadline combined with a natural disaster of devastating proportions is one challenge you'd expect him to give a miss. But then game developers are a determined bunch.
In the latest issue of Wired magazine, Koichi Hayashida, director of Super Mario 3D Land, says that when the 9.0 earthquake struck Japan last March, he was giving a pep talk to his team about Nintendo's game philosophy and the need for them to meet the release date.
"I heard this horrible sound inside the walls, like something breaking. This was so shocking that for a moment we weren?t sure what to do," he said.
What they did was hide under their desks and then flee their Tokyo office. As the disaster took hold, and the nuclear plant at Fukushima went into meltdown, Japan got scared and decided to stay at home.
Hayashida said: "Every time we left the house, there was this question of, are we in danger of radiation? So I didn?t leave the house very much. Of course, there was nothing to do at home."
So he decided the best way to get through the disaster was to get his programmers and developers back into the office and play video games with them. The days after the disaster struck were spent sitting in the office common area playing Super Mario 3D Land and testing the levels.
"Once we had the earthquake I think that we started to encourage each other? to try and work with each other in a slightly new way. It felt like playing games at our friends? house when we were kids."
Super Mario 3D Land was released last November. Hayashida said it gave Japanese gamers something to hold onto.
"This game has been like a light finally shining into what has been such a depressing time. I feel like this game has given me the power to go on living. It?s something like a miracle," he quoted one fan as saying.
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