Nintendo: Zelda Merchandising Could Not Beat Mario!

Imanishi: “I think another big factor was the birth of the character business. Super Mario Bros. truly was the start of that. At the time, we didn't have a department for licensing, so general affairs handled all that. Countless companies came with licensing requests – so much so that the person in charge couldn't do anything else. But at the time, Yamauchi-san told me it was okay to license Mario, but that we mustn't license Zelda. He said even if you license Zelda, there's no way it could beat Mario. That's why he said we shouldn't license Zelda. So we only licensed Mario back then.”

Iwata: “That is a direct manifestation of Yamauchi-san's idea that in entertainment, people's popularity centres around just one thing. Nothing could come of having Mario and Zelda compete with each other in the character business.”

Imanishi: “But that's how popular Mario was. One of the things that struck me when I first heard about Super Mario Bros. was how few pixels he was made out of. It would have been impossible to show his hair, so they had to make him wear a hat. In order to hide his mouth, they gave him a big nose and moustache. And made his clothes overalls."

Iwata: "The entire design is based on function, like making it easy to tell which direction he is facing.”

Imanishi: “That's the way it was at first, but even as games' visual capacities have increased, those basic lines have never changed. I think that may be why, even after 25 years, everyone still loves Mario.”