Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

Miyamoto says: “Mario was born of rational design in the days of immature technology.”

More generally, both with Mario and with later characters, such considerations meant that, since the face and eyes are the richest physical loci of “personality”—we concentrate on them in real life when talking to people; we commend portraits when they get the “look” and expression right—it was natural to devote more resources and more space to them over the more purely functional parts of the physique.

Videogame characters thus grew up megalocephalic: with big heads and short bodies. This was also useful in terms of rich gameplay because most games of the era that featured “characters” were two- dimensional platformers (or side-scrolling character- based shoot-’em-ups such as Metroid). So a squat body for the main character allowed more vertical “room” to play with in the screen area—and as we observed in the last chapter, the type and amount of space available heavily influences gameplay possibilities.

What is interesting, however, is that this deformed style persists even in modern videogames, where it is perfectly possible with increased graphic muscle to

246