What Mario Left Behind
Nintendo’s 125 years old today. Started as a playing card company in Kyoto—the kind of origin story that would seem too neat if you invented it. The whole arc, from cards to owning a generation’s childhood to somehow still mattering, almost writes itself.
But it’s Mario. This short, angry plumber who became the most recognizable video game character ever made. What you realize looking back is that Miyamoto and his team understood something fundamental about how movement and space work together. They cracked it so completely that everything since just follows their playbook.
Fell down a Did You Know Gaming rabbit hole the other night and there’s genuinely strange stuff in those old games. Design choices that seemed intentional and turned out to be accidents. Details no one was supposed to find. It’s the kind of thing that reminds me why I still care about looking at how games are actually built—not for nostalgia or because Mario is some sacred text, but because the thinking that goes into making something that simple and durable actually work is valuable. That’s where the craft lives.