THE VIDEO SHELF · game design
Nintendo - Putting Play First
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.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as a concise video essay on why Nintendo games feel good and how the company iterates.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Game Maker's Toolkit
- Topic
- game design
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2017–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
I highly recommend Mark Brown's video "Nintendo: Putting Play First, [VIDEO] (and his other essays on Nintendo)
dmitriid on Hacker News · 2018-04
In Nintendo's secretive creative processOne 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 …
ecliptik on Hacker News · 2025-01
In Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]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 …
forkLding on Hacker News · 2017-08
In An Embarrassing Tale: Why my server could only handle 10 players
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.
