How do we fly as high as Mario?
It randomly popped into my head that I had seen a video on reddit explaining the logic of Super Mario World's camera (what the player sees onscreen). Which then made me think of Nintendo's rise to dominance in the video game market as well as other stream-of-consciousness musings below.
Nintendo started as a playing card company, and gradually evolved to own the majority of the home gaming market with a broad series of iconic franchises (Mario and Zelda games being the most well known). But why did they succeed where others failed?
People. The world runs on people, and some rise to greatness. One such person is Shigeru Miyamoto. If there was a Steve Jobs of video games, this man would be him. In the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, we learn the impact that Steve's childhood had on his development. An instance I like is where he and his father are painting a fence, specifically the inside of it (where neither he nor the neighbors would see). The young Steve Jobs asks his father why they are painting the inside, and he answers "because you will know." This is clear attention to detail at a level that nobody beyond the creator would seem to care about.
The world runs on people and people succeed because of detail. This meticulous level of detail is clearly exhibited in Super Mario World's camera. The logic, while seemingly complicated, is meant to convey simplicity to the end user. It is meant to get the Television out of the way and let the user be "in the game" to the greatest extent allowable by technology of the day. While I'm skeptical of Miyamoto-san coding the game himself, I'd be willing to bet he had a role in directing the user's main feedback from the game, the camera.
For Nintendo things clearly worked out well during the 80's and 90's. Ask someone on the street to name a video character and they will probably reply "Mario." The likelihood of Master Chief of Halo, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Gordon Freeman of Half-Life being their reply is significantly lower.
We can take a few lessons from this iconic Japanese company's rise.
Lesson 1: Invest in people. Miyamoto-san could have gotten a job elsewhere and done well for himself and his employers. But he didn't get a job elsewhere, he worked for Nintendo. To use a cliche corporate buzzword, the synergy between Miyamoto-san and Nintendo couldn't be competed with.
Lesson 2: Pay attention to detail. If you do, someone else won't need to. We have a limited number of seconds to live. If you can create something with great usability, you save lives (in seconds) and as a bonus: you, and your product will be memorable (e.g. iPhone, car, Google).
Lesson 3: Be lucky. Everything doesn't happen for a reason, sometimes it just happens. Perhaps the right person knocks on your door, perhaps it's just the wind.