Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto never imagined that the “little character I drew would become so big”, bouncing through the decades from pixelated New York sewers to a silver-screen space epic.
There were more technical constraints when the red-capped plumber made his 1980s debut, says Miyamoto, the design mastermind of Japan’s Nintendo, as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hits the cinemas this week.
In the earliest Mario arcade games, the character was only 16 pixels tall, a far cry from the rich visuals of the new film, a sequel to the 2023 smash hit The Super Mario Bros Movie.
