Miyamoto on Crafting the “Perfect” First Level

Legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto walks us through Nintendo’s careful design of World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros., showing how they taught players by seamlessly introducing jumps, hazards and power-ups without a single line of text. By obsessively refining the level’s pacing and “geometry of motion,” they created an intuitive tutorial that still feels fresh today.

What looks like a simple 90-second romp is actually a masterclass in iterative game design—each block, enemy and gap was placed to teach, challenge and delight in equal measure. Decades later, World 1-1 remains a blueprint for how to hook new players and keep veterans coming back.

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