Warp Piping: The genius of Mario's warp pipes
I can't count the number of times I've seen someone use a Warp Pipe in a Mario Bros game and thought, “It's so stupid that this is in the game”. Why would you ever want to give your player a chance to skip levels your team spent hard work to create. For the longest time this occurred every time I saw them being used or it was brought up in discussion. Finally after wondering for near 2 decades of my life, it hit me. I was watching a Video created by the Extra Credits Team about the design of the plumbers first level. Super Mario Brothers 1-1 is platforming genius and what every game designer should take into heavy consideration when developing the first level of your game. To see the video on what makes this level so great please click here.
(Click here to visit the Extra Credits Team's WebPage.)
So imagine this. You're an 8 year old Kid and it's 1985, You just got an NES for insert gift giving celebration here, and a copy of Super Mario Brothers 1/Duck Hunt. You're so excited to play it, and you are having so much fun learning everything you can about the game. You get through a few levels on your first try playing but you eventually game over before the first world is completed. You had a blast so you try it again, keeping everything you learned last time maybe you get through the first world. A few months later you are now breezing through the first 3 worlds and having trouble with level 4-X.
Stop and think. This is before the world of “Spoilers” and “Save points,” hell check points were barely a thing. There was no such thing as "Google it", So when you game over, it's back to 1-1. If it wasn't in Nintendo Power, you probably didn't know about it. Having to replay through 12+ stages to get back to that one you really wanna be at makes players want to give up rather then try again. So What gives! That's not fun at all, who would ever wanna play a game like that? That's why there are Warp Pipes in the game, that thought of going through 12+ stages made you want to be able to skip those levels. That's why they made a mechanic to jump worlds even. That's why Nintendo made this system, and they designed the first level that had them to give you many opportunities to find it.
Think back to the second or third time you were right here in level 1-2. I believe a majority of you had
the same thought. “I wonder if I can jump on the ceiling. Many games out in 1985 had ways to keep you from the corners of the screen, but this game was different. It had ways to get to the ceiling, and designed it to encourage your exploration. They wanted you to question rather or not you can reach the ceiling. Your reward for your exploration was the Warp Pipes. “Congrats you are thinking outside the box, please chose a stage closer to your preferred difficulty level. Now let's look at level 4-2
When you play through 4-2 after warping to that world, your first though might be to try the same trick again, skip right to world 8 right? Wrong. Nintendo had already thought of that, so while not trying to discourage your exploration the game still gives you a pipe straight to world 5. But that doesn't feel the same; I wanted to go to world 8 but the game won't let me right? Wrong again. There's a way to world 8 in level 4-2 you just have to be creative once more. What might have taken you 3 months to find the first set of Warp Pipes drives you to venture every inch of level 4-2 until you've found it. The bean stalk, luckily there's no Giant waiting for you. But instead a set of Warp Pipes Finally, I can get to world 8. I can get to the max difficulty in under 5 minutes.
I love that I finally have an answer to this now. It was a question in gaming I never fully understood till now, and I'm all the wiser for it. I hope you're enjoying reading my Logs, but until next time. I'm Frank Wak.
