The Game Hideo Kojima Couldn't Stop Playing — And How It Launched His Career
On WIRED Tech Support, Hideo Kojima said Super Mario Bros is the game he’s played most—and without it, he might never have entered the industry.
Hideo Kojima jumped on WIRED Tech Support to field fan questions, and he ended up giving Mario the kind of credit you usually save for life mentors. In short: Super Mario Bros. didn’t just eat his time, it pointed him toward making games at all.
The Mario that made Kojima skip class
Asked which game he has played the most, Kojima didn’t hesitate: the NES classic. He says he was a college kid who literally cut class to keep playing, and that year-long obsession nudged him into the industry in the first place.
'Super Mario Bros., definitely. I played it for a year. I was a college student. I skipped school to play at home. Without Super Mario, I probably wouldn’t be in this industry.'
What hooked him wasn’t a big story or flashy cinematics. It was the feeling of adventure set up by dead-simple rules. No cutscenes, no monologues, just a little guy moving right and a world that kept surprising you. That minimalist spark clearly stuck with him.
How he sees it now
Kojima also admits he can’t really go back to it the same way today. By modern standards, Super Mario Bros. is as straightforward as games get: a side-scroller that sends you left to right, mostly jumping. The one deep-cut detail he called out: how the run button subtly tweaks your jump arc, which becomes your offense and your defense. That tiny bit of finesse was enough to feel like design magic in 8-bit form.
'It’s a side-scrolling action game. Mario just goes left to right. Basically just jumping. But there’s a dash button. Using that and jumping subtly changes the jump trajectory to attack or dodge. It had almost no story, but it felt like you were on an adventure. When I saw that, although it was pixel art with no story, I felt this medium would one day surpass movies.'
He still talks about it with respect: a small, technically limited game that did something outsized with almost nothing, and convinced him games could outdo film in how they make you feel.
What fuels Kojima’s brain
He also ran through the grab bag of influences that feed his work. The film names are the heavy hitters you’d expect — Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock — but it’s not just movies. He reads, he museum-hops, he keeps the input stream wide. The output is very Kojima: a remix of everything he’s soaked up, filtered through his own oddball sensibility.
- Setting: WIRED Tech Support Q&A with fan questions
- Most-played game: Super Mario Bros.
- When: College years; he says he played it for about a year and even skipped classes
- Why it clicked: It felt like an adventure without traditional storytelling
- How he describes the mechanics: Left-to-right side-scroller, mostly jumping; the dash button subtly changes your jump arc for attacks and dodges
- Big takeaway: That minimalist magic convinced him games could surpass movies
- Where he pulls ideas from now: Movies, books, museums, and a long list of creators, name-checking Kurosawa and Hitchcock