Super Mario as a refuge: how the Nintendo Switch has become the queen of consoles

It can be seen in bookstores, on movie billboards and in psychologists' offices: we live in dark times.

Philosopher Donna Haraway draws on Lovecraft's cosmic horror and argues that we have entered the age of the monstrous Cthulhu.

Dystopias have turned the future into trauma.

Imagination, like our bodies, is exhausted: writers have stopped inventing new worlds and are focusing on autofiction.

The cycles of nostalgia are shortening by the minute and pop music is becoming more and more repetitive.

As Layla Martínez points out in

, many young people believe that in the near future the ecological crisis will have worsened, workers will have lost their rights and democracy will have deteriorated.

In such a cultural context, it would not be unusual for best-selling video games to also be dark, complex and violent.

But the data does not point in that direction.

On the contrary.

According to Games Sales Data (an organization that provides sales figures in real time), in both 2021 and 2022, eight of the ten best-selling games in Spain were developed for Nintendo Switch (compared to two for Playstation 5).

In a fiercely competitive industry that is as obsessed with statistics as record labels were in the 1970s, this is a victory for Nintendo and, above all, the hegemony of its model.

A model that its detractors consider childish, not very serious and too colourful, but which has accumulated more than forty years of success.

old mario

The summer of 2016 we dedicated ourselves to catching Pokémon with our mobiles.

During the 2020 lockdowns, tens of millions of people (including popular Democratic Party congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortés) spent more time touring the

islands than the streets of their cities.

Virtually everyone born after 1970 has some good memories related to video games.

And, as the previous examples demonstrate, a very high percentage of those memories, one could say that they are collective, has to do with Nintendo or its characters.

It is a case only comparable to that of Disney: a single company capable of connecting with the public from all over the world, through a more or less stable formula, during very different decades.

What is that formula?

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, poses with his creation.Ralf-Finn Hestoft (Corbis via Getty Images)

"For Nintendo, gameplay is above all else," explains José M., a professional in the sector with years of experience.

to develop a new user experience

, they do it.

Innovating is essential for them and, sometimes, as happened with

, one of the most graphically iconic games of the company, they also do it in the visual aspect”.

Eneko Osaba, PhD in Artificial Intelligence and host of the

, agrees and recalls other innovations attributable to the company: “We have paradigmatic cases such as the Wii, with its motion sensors, or the Nintendo DS, with its two screens, one of which is touchscreen.

But if we go back in time, Nintendo invented things that we now consider to be industry standards, like the vibration on the controller, the directional pad, the L and R buttons… Things as simple as they are great that at the time were small revolutions.”

But, although it may be the main factor, the success of Nintendo cannot be explained only by innovation (which, by the way, has also produced some very notorious failures, most recently, that of cardboard LABO accessories) and that is that the brand also applies very high quality standards.

“They are excellent in terms of execution,” observes José M. “When the game is made by one of Nintendo's internal teams, the execution is at the highest level in the industry.

Everything stands out: art, design, audio, user interface,

… You may like what they do more or less, but very few companies reach that level of perfectionism in so many sections of a video game”.

In forums specialized in videogames there are often discussions that reach a level of verbal violence similar to that of a confrontation between soccer fans before a derby.

These scuffles between defenders of one platform or another (for example: Nintendo players against Playstation players or, more generally, console users against PC users) tend to divide, more or less explicitly, those who put gameplay before graphic spectacularity and vice versa.

According to the experts, although a priori they are not incompatible sections, in practice this dilemma can become noticeable: "A very novel gameplay usually involves risk, and making very sophisticated graphics costs a lot of money," says José M. "As a consequence , companies invest in what they believe gives them more guarantees of success”.

Nostalgia in a vein: Jason Priestley, from 'Feeling,' and Super Mario pose at the New York presentation of the video game 'Mario Kart Wii' in 2008.George Napolitano (FilmMagic)

Although, as Osaba comments, Nintendo fans are usually in favor of the gameplay over the technical and graphic side ("what I look for when I play a video game is to have a good time and have fun"), that does not mean that, with limited

hardware

(in the case of the Switch, because it can be used as a laptop), the company neglects the technical section

“

″, says José M., “is a delight on a graphic level, a delight on a technical level.

It runs at a constant 60fps, loads fast, responds fast…and has incredible art direction.”

Having put the focus on the gameplay has served Nintendo to, in addition to retaining, generation after generation, the most loyal buyers, expand its audience.

Thanks to consoles that offered an obvious novelty, like the Wii, the brand has reached consumers who otherwise would not have been interested in video games.

It is the phenomenon of the

, players who do not spend many hours a week playing but who explain why, once again, the Wii or the DS have sold more than 100 million units while a machine like the Nintendo 64, with a catalog of games unanimously applauded by critics, will not exceed 33.

In the words of José M., Nintendo tries to make its releases accessible to everyone and "even its most niche games, such as

, which is a third-person action game with puzzles and Camera movements are designed so that they can be enjoyed by many more people than games with similar themes and mechanics, such as

″.

Mario, that character character

If Peter Blake were to design a cover like

today , at least, he would have to consider including Shigeru Miyamoto in that selection of influential characters that accompanied the Beatles.

Miyamoto, Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities in 2012 and currently Nintendo's creative advisor, is known for having devised franchises such as

, or

.

“The company has been able to adequately manage its most successful franchises”, explains Osaba.

"It is very difficult to find a bad

or

in recent decades, precisely because of the respect that Nintendo has for its own sagas."

Making history: The team that created the 'Super Mario World' video game poses in 1992.Kaku KURITA (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Nor is it a lucky coincidence that the main characters of these franchises (Mario himself, Yoshi, Link or Pikachu) have become part of the collective imagination.

It was the mythical Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of the company from 1949 (when it marketed card games) until 2002 (when he released

for the Gamecube), who set his sights on Disney and directed many efforts towards creating iconic characters.

Nintendo's characters are simple and always tied to a few practical principles, typical of the mechanics of their respective games (Mario jumps, Kirby sucks and Link wields the sword).

They are, therefore, and according to the distinction established by Walter Benjamin, perfect "character characters", who, unlike the "destiny characters", only apparently thicker, are not entangled in a complex plot.

Perhaps for this reason, the new installments of the Nintendo franchises do not cause the saturation produced by those film

in which a tired hero must face, once again, "his destiny".

Mario lives in a simple, turbulent and inconsequential world (the plot of his games is just a fine support for him to explore and run from here to there), so it is not strange or repetitive that he also jumps from console to console (his games almost always coincide with the release of a new machine).

Character characters like him, like Charlot, or like the protagonists of comic strips, do not face tragic moral dilemmas, but, instead, they are never exhausted or exhausted when they manifest that comic trait that recurs in them.

Producer Steve Sanders during a game of Donkey Kong on an arcade machine in 2009. David Greedy (Getty Images)

If nostalgia (which in music or cinema is producing embarrassing episodes of retromania) does not have much to do with the success of Nintendo, it is necessary to go back to the beginnings of other mass media to find phenomena as massive and significant as that of the japanese company.

"I really like the analogy with the Beatles, because without a doubt, Nintendo has laid the foundations of the industry," concludes José M. "It is true that I believe that today the witness of innovation has gone to the side of the

games/studios

[those that are not under the control of large companies, such as Nintendo or Sony themselves], but I would say without fear that the industry we know is the direct daughter of many innovative decisions on the part of Nintendo ”.

It has something of an anomaly: in the forums the discussions do not soften, political polarization advances in all societies, and confidence in the future decreases from week to week.

Meanwhile, the Nintendo Switch, with its simple characters and bright, imaginative universes, is on its way to becoming the best-selling console in history.

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