The Secret of Mario's Jump (and other Versatile Verbs)

Super Mario is famous for his jump, but it wasn't always so great. In his very first game, Donkey Kong, Mario's leap was incredibly simple. You could do one jump while standing still, and another while running. You can't move in mid-air, and the animation is the same every single time you press the button. When it comes to verbs - which are the actions that a player can perform in a game - this jump is pretty basic. The standing jump, for example... is no more complicated than 'press A to do B'.

But in more recent games, like Super Mario 3D World, the plumber's jump is way more interesting. You can change the length, height, angle, and landing zone. You can transition in and out of different moves. And spring off walls and bounce on koopa shells. Far from 'press A to do B', this one verb can lead to a massive number of different outcomes. Mario's jump is just one example of, what I call, "versatile verbs", which is where one action can have multiple uses - depending on how you perform it.

And these are a great starting point for action-orientated games. Because, as I hope to show you in this video, it means interesting gameplay - full of tricky choices and player expression - can be derived from the most fundamental interactions with the game. Plus, they often make the game more satisfying, and reduce the number of buttons that a game needs to have. So, on this episode of Game Maker's Toolkit, I'm going to look at a number of terrific games, to find different ways to design versatile verbs.

Because verbs are driven by buttons, it's useful to think of the different ways that a button can be used. For example, what's the difference between pressing a button, and holding it down? In some games, not much. In others, like Owlboy, you're actually at a disadvantage if you hold the button because the hero's fire rate is slower than if you hammer the button in rapid succession. There's no choice to make. But in Mega Man X, you can press the fire button to shoot a tiny low-powered pellet, or hold that same button down to charge up a bigger and more powerful blast.

If you've unlocked this piece of armour, you can hold the button down for even longer to charge up even more deadly shots. To fire, you let go of the button. With this set-up, we get an interesting tactical choice between doing a small amount of damage immediately, or doing a large amount of damage in the future - and risking getting hurt while the shot charges. A more modern take on the charge shot, is the cooked grenade.

You can throw a grenade immediately and it will bounce around a bit before exploding - or you can hold onto a grenade for a couple seconds, and then throw it, so it explodes in mid-air, or upon impact, or in your hand. Whoops. This time the decision is about risk versus reward. How far are you willing to push it, and how well do you know the invisible timing window of the grenade? And in Mario, you can tap the button for a short hop, or hold the button down for longer to give yourself more height.

But here's a different way to think about holding buttons. In the game Luftrausers, you hold a button down to fire your gun - but the only way to repair your ship is to release that same button. This means you have to make a choice between offence and defence, and you'll swing between the two throughout the battle. When you're shooting, you're terrified of getting killed, and when you're healing you're anxious to get back into the fight, giving the game a feisty back-and-forth feel.

Also in Luftrausers, you need to let go of the throttle if you want to make sharp turns, so you can pull off that sweet move where you whip around and blast away at the bogies on your tail. Developer Vlambeer really knows the thrill of letting go of a button. Or how about in Dark Souls, where your stamina meter restores more slowly if you're holding your shield up. So to get your energy back sooner you've got to drop your shield and put yourself at risk for a few seconds - your eyes will be darting back and forth between the stamina meter and the enemy who's about to kick your arse.

And then you've got Motorstorm - which is a bit like the cooked grenade of racing games. You hold a button to boost your car forward - but hold it too long and your car will explode. So you've got to release that same button to let your engine cool. You spend the entire race nursing this button, trying to push your car to its absolute limit and then letting go for a quick cooldown at the optimal time, like around corners or in mid-air.

A button can also be pressed more than once. Not like this! I'm talking about verbs where pressing the button once leads to one action, and pressing it again leads to another - almost certainly with a timing window on that second press. So you've got moves like the double jump, where you have to choose the perfect time to fire off that second leap. Throw in a few more mid-air jumps, and you get the manic thrills of Ms. 'Splosion Man.

Or how about the reload button in Gears of War. Press it again when the line is in the right spot on this bar and you'll get a damage boost on all your next shots. It takes one of those super basic 'Press A to do B' type verbs, and gives it this satisfying, tactical bite. And, of course, there are combos in action games. A simple punch can transition into a more powerful attack if you follow it up with two more jabs of the same button.

Things get much more interesting, however, if you start adding in more buttons to your combos. Because verbs can take on whole new meanings when you combine them. Look at Psychonauts: you've got a basic attack, and a jump. But perform the attack after jumping, and you unleash a devastating palm bomb move. That's an example of using one verb directly after another - within a specific timing window - to transition into an entirely new move.

It's a lot like the previous example, but this time with two different buttons. This sort of combination requires timing, and a skilful understanding of how and when different verbs interlink - whether that's a simple transition or a much more complex move set that players will need to learn and memorise. Aim down sights in a shooter works slightly differently: you can press the trigger to fire wildly in a general direction, or you can hold down the aim button to fire with more accuracy - but usually at the expense of player movement.

It doesn't work for every game... but, hey, it's a good example of how you can hold down one button, to modify another verb. Combining two buttons is one thing - combining a button with an analogue stick - or some other fine-grain input device - opens up a whole new world of fun. Now, in any game about moving around a space, you're going to have a relationship between movement - and many of the game's key verbs. Because, Kazuma's punch is just a pointless swing at thin air, if you haven't first moved him next to an opponent.

But games can forge an even deeper connection. Which brings us back to this guy. The angle and distance of Mario's jump, is directly connected to his horizontal direction and speed before you press the A button. The only way to clear a massive gap, then, is to start with a run-up. You can also move in mid-air, and perform different jumps by starting with a spin, or an abrupt turn. So, back in Donkey Kong, you could effectively just turn Mario's left and right jumps into dedicated buttons on the arcade cabinet.

But in every other Mario game, the d-pad or analogue stick allows for such a nuanced modification of your leap, that the two must be kept separate. Mario's jump can also combine with the crouch button for all sorts of new moves. Crouch and then jump for a tall backflip, or crouch while running before jumping for a long-jump. Or crouch in mid-air for a ground-pound... which can transition into another springy leap. That might sound complicated.

But there are a few things to note. One, is that the moves feel like the natural outcome of the combined verbs. So, this isn't an excuse to squeeze yet another action onto the controller, by having it be the outcome of pressing two, unrelated buttons. Instead, by thinking of it in terms of combining verbs - instead of combining buttons - it's easier to think about what move would intuitively arise from their combination.

The other thing to note is that you almost never need to do any of these advanced moves to get to the end of a Mario game. They're just extra skills for pro players who want to express themselves, or collect certain secrets, or reduce their completion time. So, these are all different ways to make verbs that are incredibly versatile. And with these, you can make actions that force the player to make loads of rapid-fire decisions - or give the player really expressive verbs that can be used to overcome all sorts of situations.

There are other benefits too. In Luftrausers, for example. you could heal your ship by pressing a dedicated button, or by picking up health packs. But by linking heal to the shoot verb, the game gets rid of a lot of clutter and complexity. Basically, versatile verbs let you do more, with less. These verbs are also quite satisfying to use. Whether that's the tactile thrill of squeezing your NES controller to make Mario jump higher; or the breathless tension of letting go of the shoot button in Devil Daggers, to make gems attract to you; or the thumb gymnastics of linking up combo attacks in your favourite brawler.

But there are drawbacks to keep in mind, too. These versatile verbs can be troublesome for those with discomfort or disability issues, that can arise from holding buttons, pressing multiple buttons, or repeatedly tapping buttons. I'd recommend checking the game accessibility guidelines for more on this. So, by looking at Mario's jump through this lens, we can see how this one verb can be modified, depending on whether you press or hold the button, whether you transition from or into different verbs, whether you're holding the run button before you hit jump, and depending on how you move the analogue stick before and during his leap.

Plus, if you're wearing the raccoon suit, you can choose to hold the button to float, or release it to drop immediately. And in Mario's other games, like Super Mario 64, you can even press the jump button repeatedly, with good timing, to unleash a ridiculous triple jump. This intense level of versatility means that before Nintendo even designs a single level, Mario's jump is fun, satisfying, and expressive - and it does all that with just a tiny handful of buttons.

And so, is this the secret to Mario's jump? Well, sort of. It's definitely a big part of the equation. But there's a bit more to it than that, and more things to consider when making engaging verbs. So, consider this video a 'part one', of sorts, and I'll be back in the future with more ways, to make more interesting actions for your games.. If you like this sort of video, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Special thanks to the people on screen, who donate five dollars, or more, per episode of Game Maker's Toolkit.

All done! Okay! Good stuff. Right, I'm about to leave the internet for about two weeks while I go play Zelda non-stop. So, see you around.