Why Does Mario's Jump Feel So Awesome? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios

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Mario jumps. This may seem insanely obvious, but it's more significant than you may know. For such a ubiquitous game mechanic, it's not such an obvious movement to include. Humans, for instance, are TERRIBLE at jumping. But Mario is, like, CRAZY good at it. So what is it about Mario's jump that inspired hundreds of games to follow? Watch the episode and find out!

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ASSETS

:48
Stan Lee Parkour

:52
Jumping over a chair like a gangster (Bill Gates)

:58
Nine Year Old Jumps Over Catcher to Avoid Tag

1:51
CRACKER BARREL GAME STRATEGY Triangle Wooden 14 Peg Game - Jump All But One

2:29
What If Everyone JUMPED At Once

3:35
Super Mario Super Dance

3:39

3:55
Super Mario Brothers Parkour [In Real Life] (HD).mp4

4:54

5:12
How not to jump over a puddle of mud

5:14
Frog Jumps Caught in Slow-Motion

5:21
Andrea Bargnani epic dunk fail

5:29
Lebron James highest jumps NBA

5:51

5:55
Nike Basketball 1989 - 'It's Gotta Be The Shoes - Commercial

6:09
Soulja Boy Provides His Thoughts On Braid

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COMMENTS

Ivory Oasis

YOGSCAST Will

Ana Paula Lopes

Cyrus Bufkin

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MUSIC:

"Oh Damn!" by CJVSO

"Digital Sonar" by Brink

"Mindphuck" by Known To Be Lethal

"After Hours"

"Lakes" by Chooga

"Beautiful Days" by Extan

"Spectrum Subdiffusion Mix" by Foniqz

"Good Way Song" by Electronic Rescue

"Alice y Bob" by Javier Rubio and Parsec

"Sleet" by Kubbi

"Toaster" by Kubbi

"Patriotic Songs of America" by New York Military Band and the American Quartet

"Lets Go Back To The Rock" by Outsider

"Run" by Outsider

"Fame" by Statue of Diveo

"Freedom Weekends" by Statue of Diveo

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And regarding my glasses:

[Noxrad]

I was expecting him to say "But hey, that's just a theory..."

[RobertHeadley]

If you are into game design at all, you need to watch Game/Show.
It largely takes the formula made awesome by  Idea Channel and applies it to video games and game design. Despite the hosts insistence on glasses without lenses, he does a great job of explaining what is going on.

[JRSportBrief]

People jump in games because they can't muster a jump in reality... 

[heerotomoe]

Such a great video editorial. Jump, jump! Honestly, all that Mario in my childhood may be why I'm addicted to jumping in real life, too...

[Butterworthy]

"If putting 20 hours a week into gaming is the bar for being a gamer, then I'm not a gamer, and I host a TV show!" I totally get that sentiment, and understand that plenty of people have real world obligations that prevent them from putting a ton of time into games. I don't know what it says about me that I have a full time job, with a serious relationship (getting married next month in fact), and put 35 hours into Smash Brothers on 3DS over the weekend. I put 40 hours into Hyrule Warriors the week before that. I feel that more criteria should go into being a "Gamer" than just hours played. There's a lot of other variables that could be accounted for.

[CocoandZee]

Maybe Mario is secretly wearing Chell's Long fall boots?

[AshtarteD]

I'm totally in agreement with that last comment Jamin made in response to the last week. The "20+ hours" bar is 1) stupid. 2) a survey by a college that is predominantly male in the first place. That's not a good sample method, and it's a ridiculously high bar in reality. I'm most definitely in the "hardcore gamer" group, as I often spend vast amounts of time in games, in the past few weeks replaying Skyrim to do the DLC and quest mods, I've put in 30 hours a week. But this was after months and months of less than 5 a week due to work and nothing that I fancied playing. Does that mean I have my Gamer Card this week, but those months I didn't? Or are people trying to average it out, then I wouldn't get it either as my yearly average likely far below 20 hours.

[TheJahn]

Gravity itself is an intuitive phenomena, we deal with it every day. Even if the physics are exaggerated, they're still very familiar to us - we don't need to learn anything new to understand how to use gravity.

In other words: It's an additional mechanic, adding lots of complexity to the paths we can take (or the paths that can unfold dynamically), without much additional burden. One extra button: Jump, B. By holding down that button, you can also jump a little higher (also very intuitive, it's a bit like putting more force into your jump IRL).

But that's the limit of your control, vertically speaking. Gravity will eventually do its gravity thing no matter how many B buttons you press.

What really made Mario shine was not that jump. It was the fact that you maintained full control over your *horizontal* velocity mid-air, just as if you never left the ground. That's just as physically impossible as the high jump, I'd say even more so.

But not in SMB, and mastering that wholly new level of control, completely outside of reality (while somehow still being so intuitive, it goes completely unnoticed by most) before gravity shoves you into some lava is intense. It's something truly special.

Mario's air-running is the *real* meat of the franchise, but it sadly doesn't get the credit it deserves.

[tedbendixson]

When I started getting into freestyle snowboarding a few years back, I remember thinking about how similar it was to playing video games. Some of these terrain parks have jumps bigger than a small house, and if you practice enough at the sport, you will hit them one day. Game Show is quite right at pointing out how much we all suck at jumping. But man is it awesome when you use snow and a downward slope to give you an assist! I feel fortunate to have experienced what can only be described as superlative, the exact thing we aspire to feel when we create and play games like Super Mario Bros.

[chickensangwich]

Well also through a game design lens, Jumping just opens a door to lots of different interesting puzzles. It's a clearly defined action--go up, reach top, come down--so the designer has a sense of generally what the player will be limited to in tackling a problem. Especially in games where you have absolute control over the absolute highest height a player can jump, it's just a motion that loans itself well to designing challenges. It's a way that people travel through space, so you can really clearly tell when you've succeeded, and it feels good. You get to advance to the next area. You can create challenges beyond the obvious "jump as high as you can" and into "jump past this, jump around that, jump to here and from there to here." Running just doesn't have quite as many problems associated with it, which is probably why evolutionarily we favor it. But from a game design perspective, where your goal is to create challenges, jumping has got a nearly infinite number of ways it can go wrong, which makes it interesting. 

[CypherActual]

I think that the prominence of jumping in video games is more because of the necessity of 2D movement. Jumping has been a prominent feature since the days of Pit Fall and Mario's origination (donkey Kong). It is of necessity that you jump in a two dimensional video game, and that necessity in turn has shaped our imagination of video games, leading to it's current usage in 3D. Mario just happens to be a popular video game that falls into that paradigm.

[pauls]

That's why Journey feels so satisfying. It plays into our dreams of flying. And when we dream of flying we actually dream of jumping and floating.

[TheSocialGamer]

I remember my first experience with running and jumping left and right in Pitfall on the Atari 2600.!

[MrVariant]

Cool breakdown of mario's jump physics. I wonder how the triple jump made him jump higher

[ThisIsMyFatSushi]

This video makes me think of the games Uncharted. Recently my friend and I have been playing through the series and we just can't help but comment on how ridiculously badass Drake is. He can jump like nobody's business. Stuck on some crazy ledge on the side of some ancient building, hundreds of feet in the air? Not sure where you're supposed to go next? Well, see that little groove in the face of the rock over there, across that huge gap of empty space? Try that. Afraid you just can't possibly make it because that's just crazy talk? Try it. 
Chances are you'll make that insanely impossible jump, and when you do, it feels like you, not just Drake, are at the top of the world (or on the side of a building).

[ChristopherBatson]

Without question, jumping is my favorite thing to do in video games. I'm not sure if it personally started with Mario, but it definitely played a part (and Spider-Man 2 closed the deal). Even without video games, when I had super power fantasies as a kid, the one recurring power that I wanted was the ability to jump to extreme heights and distances - as opposed to flying, the usual go-to answer. Besides the reasons listed, I believe jumping specifically has played such a prominent role in both personal and video game fantasies because of the challenge it represents. It offers a person a sense of unbridled freedom that they wouldn't likely get on a regular basis, while simultaneously providing mechanics that fit our general concept of how the world works. It invites exploration by using (conservation of) momentum to reach places not thought easily possible. It's a fantasy that's still very grounded in human understanding.
To put it in another way: I've idolized Superman forever, but I've always wanted to be Spider-Man.

Also, I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who could see how long they could "jump" around a planet in Galaxy. Fun video as always!

EDIT: Nerdy thought - I think it should be noted that even in his first appearances, Superman only ever actually jumped great distances. I believe this where the "...Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, " shtick originated from. 

[ewade]

0:52

I literally went back 5 times to watch this bit. No idea Bill had a hidden fly guy inside. Buried deep, obviously. 

[owoderaya]

Interesting video. For me, its kinda like something to just do with my fingers, if I'm not really doing anything in the game (cutscene or quest) I just jump for no reason, I just press that button :P Its like in osu! and Guitar Hero where I spam strum or my two buttons before the song even starts.

Probably just me though

[thedavischanger]

Jumping and executing gymnastic maneuvers is extremely satisfying, particularly in 3rd person.  In first-person (such as in Mirror's Edge) not as much.

[TaraRaeDev]

I think jumping is also prevalent because it covers so much ground in terms of the different elements of game design and interactivity.
It's often 3rd person which is more relatable/projectable. It has thrill and visceralness arising from controlling something uncontrollable--Gravity and momentum. That gravity is pretty universally understood. It provides instant feedback. It allows for interactivity in a second dimension from an angle--side view--that is an almost primal viewpoint for depiction. And, as you said, it's so embedded now, it's just straight up universal.