According to Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the well-known dash mechanic in Super Mario Bros. came about from a coding bug. Miyamoto shared the origins of how it came to be in an interview.
The mechanic has existed since the start of the series. When holding the B button while running, Mario’s speed increase and he can more easily navigate obstacles.
Miyamoto was speaking about the origins of the dash mechanic in an interview with Casa Brutus. He told the magazine:
“You know Mario’s B-Dash, right? If you hold the B button while running, he can cross small gaps without failing – that small cheat. Truth be told, that was actually a bug caused by flawed collision detection with the ground. When the programmer noticed it, he said, ‘Huh? He didn’t fall!’ and tried to fix it. But I said, ‘No, no! It’s fun if he can dash across – let’s leave it as is!’ [laughs]. So we kept it.”
Miyamoto would go on to talk about other elements that came about during the project’s development:
“There were tons of other fun techniques and hidden items born while developing Super Mario Bros. For example, a bug where coins appeared in midair where nothing existed originally became the official ‘Hidden Block’. As to the character Cheep Cheep, I don’t think I could have come up with it alone. The initial idea came from graphic artist Takashi Tezuka. He was young then, and didn’t yet have strong technical skills, but he offered interesting ideas, like wanting to have a fish that suddenly leaps out and plops back down, that could both fly and swim.
But Mario can dodge enemies that fall from above, not ones that pop up suddenly from below. So the idea was incomplete in itself. Still, my younger colleague’s idea had a certain appeal, and I wanted to accommodate it. On further reflection, I suddenly came upon the notion, ‘Aha- let’s raise the floor.’ If Mario is running on the lowest level they’ll appear unexpectedly, but if he’s on a some- what higher platform, players can see the fish fly up. That’s why World 2-3, where Cheep Cheeps appear, takes place on higher piers.
None of these things could have been done by one person alone. I believe it’s because we created it together, by discussion and argument as a team, that the game came about. I always want information to flow back and forth freely, so I even banned headphones in the office [laughs]. Rather than divide work strictly by specialty, we all helped shape the whole game together, and the fun was in doing that. Even now, I still work with people from that team: the graphic artist I just cited, Mr. Tezuka, programmer Toshihiko Nakago, and composer Koji Kondo. I think that in itself is pretty amazing.”
In the same interview, Miyamoto revealed the Mario games that have impressed him the most. We have more on that here.
Related