I love this show, and the new episode is one of my favorites. Using basic sentence structure, this video describes how complex a game about jumping can be, and how more emergent gameplay can happen when multiple things can happen with a single verb.
Taking the powerups out of the equation, everything Mario does is running and jumping, and the sheer amount of effects that come from jumping is amazing, even in the original Super Mario Bros.
Taking the powerups out of the equation, everything Mario does is running and jumping, and the sheer amount of effects that come from jumping is amazing, even in the original Super Mario Bros.
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It's interesting to see how JUMP was so central to SMB, and then how different SMB2 was when GRAB was introduced. SMB3, SMW, etc went back to the original JUMP (with some GRAB, but not as central) and they felt like closer games to the original.
(And yes, I assume we all know SMB2 wasn't originally a SMB game, and that's why it's so different)