Miyamoto on what inspired Super Mario Run for iOS

When Apple announced the iPhone 7 at their Keynote this week there wasn't any eyebrows raised here on Gamereactor. A new iPhone is to be expected every year, after all. What we didn't really expect was a new Mario title to be unveiled for the platform.

In an interview with The Verge Shigeru Miyamoto, father of pretty much all things Nintendo, discussed what served as inspiration for the game and why the mobile platform was the right fit for it.

"Pokémon Go is obviously a game that uses your GPS and it's synced into the camera and Google Maps, so it's a piece of software that's really geared towards that mobile play experience," Miyamoto said. "So, similarly with Mario, what we're looking at is simple game play, one-handed gameplay; shorter play time, playing in shorter bursts; and then really bringing the joy of Mario to that much larger audience."

He notes that there was a time when the first device that kids interacted with often would be something that Nintendo had created, whether it was the Nintendo Entertainment System or the Game Boy. That is no longer the case and instead it's the parent's smartphone that has taken that place. Thus Nintendo wants to make Mario relevant on the relevant platforms.

The Verge asked Miyamoto if there was something in his life that inspired Super Mario Run in a similar fashion to how the idea for the original Zelda was famously born.

"It's a little bit less of my own experience and more of me witnessing other people," Miyamoto said. "A perfect example is my wife. When I give her video games or game systems, she doesn't play a whole lot. But I watch her on her smartphone, and she does a lot of those types of things on her smartphone."