Iwata Asks, SMB 25th, Vol. 2 p. 4

Cite as: Iwata Asks, SMB 25th, Vol. 2 p. 4
Original: https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/mario25th/1/3/
sha256: a161a92c2bcb5730a62d937f0d98903c43ed70596c12c3200c0bccd4d6d4a0e5
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20250914222318id_/https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/mario25th/1/3/
Accessed: 2026-10-26
Licence: © Nintendo; quoted briefly for research and criticism
Credit: Nintendo Co., Ltd.; interview by Satoru Iwata with Masayuki Uemura and Izuhiko Imanishi.
Notes: Discusses the cartridge as the target format just before the Famicom Disk System, Imanishi's recollection that Miyamoto made SMB on cartridge on purpose, and the game's early sales.

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Miyamoto says that, a year before the Disk System, the team meant it to be their last cartridge game, and packed in as much as they could to show what Nintendo could do with one. In another interview Izuhiko Imanishi recalled him making it on cartridge on purpose against the expectation of the Disk System, and Masayuki Uemura disputed it.	`Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4`	Interview
Iwata recalled that the game wasn't released to great fanfare and didn't catch fire at once, but drew in everyone who played it. In January 1986 the Asahi Shimbun's Asahi Graph ran a feature on it that Uemura calls a strategy guide for adults, and a store sign in his photo from those days says it is sold out with no stock due. Iwata calls it a social phenomenon.	`Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4Vol. 2, p. 4`	Interview
Imanishi, then Nintendo's head of general affairs, recalled that before the game the Diet had taken up video games' influence on children and newspapers were mostly negative, and that Mario's bright atmosphere cleared away that prejudice against the Famicom.	`Vol. 2, p. 4`	Interview