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Trigger Happy
246
Miyamoto says: “Mario was born of rational design in
the days of immature technology.”
More generally, both with Mario and with later
characters, such considerations meant that, since the
face and eyes are the richest physical loci of
“personality”—we concentrate on them in real life
when talking to people; we commend portraits when
they get the “look” and expression right—it was natural
to devote more resources and more space to them over
the more purely functional parts of the physique.
Videogame characters thus grew up
megalocephalic: with big heads and short bodies. This
was also useful in terms of rich gameplay because most
games of the era that featured “characters” were two-
dimensional platformers (or side-scrolling character-
based shoot-’em-ups such as Metroid). So a squat body
for the main character allowed more vertical “room” to
play with in the screen area—and as we observed in the
last chapter, the type and amount of space available
heavily influences gameplay possibilities.
What is interesting, however, is that this deformed
style persists even in modern videogames, where it is
perfectly possible with increased graphic muscle to