3 HN users recommended this explainer4 months2017–2025score 5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as a concise video essay on why Nintendo games feel good and how the company iterates.
Game Maker's Toolkit examines Nintendo's design approach of starting from a core play mechanic, making it fun, and building around it. Examples include Mario's jump and Luigi's Mansion's vacuum.
“I highly recommend Mark Brown's video” (HN, 2018)
One of my favorite video essay's on this is "Nintendo - Putting Play First" by Game Makers Toolkit [1]. It goes into when making a game, Nintendo first determines the mechanic they want to focus on; jumping, throwing a hat, shooting paint, etc and finding out how to make it fun, then building and iterating on the idea. It's how they can keep putting out essentially the same games but are completely different. 1. [this video]
Nintendo picks a mechanic, makes it fun, then iterates.
Quick suggestions on usability, maybe start off the game with players on a slower speed so they get used to moving around first and then gradually speed up by accomplishing actions that you want them to do in a training sort of manner so that players start learning and don't get confused. Side note: I subscribe to Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit on Game Design and Game progression, here is an example: [this video] I think it would definitely help
Game Maker's Toolkit on game design and progression.
There's a Game Maker's Toolkit video [1] that does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first. "That's how we make games at Nintendo, though: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow" - Shigeru Miyamoto 1. [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
4 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.