Platformer

Introduction Kirby’s Adventure was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the NES in 1993, directed and designed once again by Masahiro Sakurai with lead programming by Hiroaki Suga and production input from Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Takao Shimizu. Sakurai had originally been asked simply to port the Game Boy original, Kirby’s…

Introduction Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by Nintendo EAD under director Shigeru Miyamoto and lead designer Takashi Tezuka, with development beginning right after 1986’s Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and running roughly two and a half years before its Japanese release in October 1988; North America had to wait until February 1990. Miyamoto…

Introduction Mega Man was developed and published by Capcom, released for the Famicom in Japan in December 1987 by a small six-person team working under a project supervisor who reportedly pushed for perfection in every detail despite the tight crew size. Fresh Capcom hire Keiji Inafune, credited on the game as ‘Inafuking,’ designed and illustrated…

Introduction Castlevania was developed and published by Konami, first released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan in September 1986 before reaching the NES on cartridge the following year, alongside a same-premise MSX2 sibling title called Vampire Killer that shipped with different level design around the same time. Character designer Akihiko Nagata built the game…

Introduction Donkey Kong began as a 1981 arcade platformer built by Nintendo R&D1 under Shigeru Miyamoto, assigned by Gunpei Yokoi to rework unsold Radar Scope cabinets into something with wider appeal. The result introduced a carpenter hero originally called Jumpman, his captured love interest Pauline, and the giant ape Donkey Kong, wrapped in some of…

Introduction Super Mario Bros is a side-scrolling platform game directed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka for Nintendo’s in-house R&D4 team, released for the Famicom in Japan in September 1985 and for the NES in North America shortly after. Miyamoto had joined Nintendo as an artist and toy designer and originally pitched a game built…