What defines a ‘platform’ on a 2D Super Mario Game?

A “platformer game” must be the most well-known and loved video game genre out there. They are generally easy to understand and very approachable, with mechanics that kind of resemble real life physics interactions. Characters in platformer games can be moved around, run and crouch. If they jump, they will get dragged down by gravity and sit upon a surface that we call a platform. For most gamers, controlling plumbers and hedgehogs on crazy, colorful 2D virtual worlds have almost become second nature and all aspiring game developers have one day dreamed of creating a “platforming” experience. We all know how to define a “platformer game” — although the answers may differ from person to person and their experiences with indie games — but what exactly defines a ‘platform’ in those games?

In this article, I’ll try to answer this question going over some observations on basic and mechanical details of different platforms found 2D/2.5D Super Mario games, to try and develop a classification that can help you describe your own platforms for your games and help you to accomplish a more streamlined and better planned game and level design. I don’t claim this to be the best way to make a classification nor do I claim this to be the “official way” SM games deal with platforms, we’re just looking at a way to describe them. Since some platforms in 2.5D games can get pretty detailed, you may find yourself going into a realm of over complexity if you just want to make a game with simple flat surfaces.

First, let’s go over the basics and find out about what I think are the three primary properties you can use to define a platform.

Primary Properties

Shape

The first thing we should look into is shape, as platforms may present themselves in many different shapes. The most common shape types are rectangular and squared (seen on many instances as blocks). Collection of square or rectangular shaped platforms modularly organized can create greater more elaborated environments for the character to explore and where all objects and enemies can reside in. Circular and custom geometric shapes (like bridges and gigantic hollowed squares) have been seen a lot on games like New Super Mario Bros Wii and New Super Mario Bros U and provide a sense of novelty and experimentation on 2D worlds. The shape of the platform has a direct implication on a basic “contact surface effect” of the platforms, which we will see in a moment.

Hardness

I want describe hardness a property related to the “physical” interaction between an object and the surface of a platform. Super Mario games are well known for implementing platforms with two types of hardness: solid and semi-solid. Most of the platforms in Super Mario games are solid, which means that all of their surfaces are impervious of being traversed across in any direction. A solid platform can act as an obstacle or a wall, as the character cannot cross it. It can also impede the character of falling down across the y-axis into “the void” which commonly leads to death and which is basically the most fundamental property that defines a platform.

Semi-solid platforms are less common but they can be traversed across. They are mostly used to increase verticality on levels as they can be traversed horizontally and upwards vertically. It is like the platform has no “substance” when accessed from below. Once the character sits upon the contact surface he cannot traverse across downwards. Some games (like Kirby, for example) do let the character traverse across downwards on a semi-solid platform, but they usually do this after the player makes an input, signaling they want to go down (pressing down and the jump button is an example of common input).

Persistency

Now that a platform has shape and can be classified according to hardness, we need to define persistency. Persistency is a property that indicates whether a platform is permanently set on the stage or if there is a condition that makes them spawn or despawn. When deciding about the persistency of a platform, you should also note if you’re implementing destructibility — the ability to be destroyed by a character or by interactions with many other elements. If a platform is destructible, it can’t be considered permanent for obvious reasons. Most platforms in 2D Super Mario games don’t seem to despawn, even if the character is at the end of the level, away from most of the level elements and some of them get repositioned/replaced when despawn.

Persistency Types

Permanent platforms : They are non-destructible and can always be found in the same positions across the level even if they move around. They never despawn on the presence of a character, no matter what. The normal tiles that populate the ground area in Super Mario games are examples of permanent platforms.

: They are non-destructible and can always be found in the same positions across the level even if they move around. They never despawn on the presence of a character, no matter what. The normal tiles that populate the ground area in Super Mario games are examples of permanent platforms. Semi-permanent platforms : These can be destructible or non-destructible and there is always a condition that triggers their spawning/despawning. Red blocks in New Super Mario games and Super Mario Run can be spawned after the character triggers a button and exist only for a limited time. Donut blocks exist on levels pretty much exactly as any permanent platform but if the character stands upon them for more than one second, they start to descend and eventually despawn (being replaced afterwards automatically).

: These can be destructible or non-destructible and there is always a condition that triggers their spawning/despawning. Red blocks in New Super Mario games and Super Mario Run can be spawned after the character triggers a button and exist only for a limited time. Donut blocks exist on levels pretty much exactly as any permanent platform but if the character stands upon them for more than one second, they start to descend and eventually despawn (being replaced afterwards automatically). Destructible: At some point they despawn permanently which means you never need to bother about implementing a trigger for respawn. A brick block, for example, loads as a stage element right from the start of the level. It can be destroyed but never respawns after that (unless you reenter the level).

Secondary Properties

A normal platform, as described so far, does not have any features other than being a solid/semi-solid shape with a level of persistency. However, platforms do have other properties that can make them have a mechanical behavior, be more flexible and allow the creation of a multitude of challenges. The most common secondary properties I observed were dependency, contact surface effect, movement, rotation, size variation.

Contact Surface Effect

Once the character is in contact with the surface of a platform, it can be exposed to an effect relative to the said surface. This can be as simples as “stop vertical movement”, as the character jump and then touches the ground on a flat area. However, many different contact surface effects can be applied to a character once it collides the platform. For instance, platforms with a certain degree of inclination, will force the character to always slide away while in contact with the inclined surface. Some games allow Mario to perform a “butt slide” by pressing down on inclined surfaces while others will always make gravity speak louder. This is one of the most basic implementations of contact surface effects and since they can be quite different from one another, I decided to bring some examples, instead of setting them to stone. Truth be told, nothing here should be set to stone.

In Super Mario games you’ll find this being applied on:

Contact surface effects – as the name implies – are always related to the character suffering from the effect and are all activated by contact. From here on, when thinking a platform’s feature you should take in consideration the “activation methods”. What is it that activate a platform to move, rotate or change size/shape? Is it “self-activated” or does it need an input? What activation methods can be stacked?

Size Variation/Shape Variation

To add yet another layer of complexity to our analysis, platforms can change form and size. Size and shape variations have to take in consideration the character’s position on the platform and whether it implies any changes on the interactions between those two objects. NSMB games have retractable mushroom platforms, for example, they change their length in a consistent manner but a character sitting on top of them never gets thrown out or left to fall down by gravity.

Movement

Movement is one of the most basic features we will find in SM’s platforms. Ever since the very first SMB game you can find vertical lifts, horizontal lifts, scale platforms and falling platforms. A moving platform is one of the most basic ways to spice up a platformer’s challenge. As the ground moves, the player has to be more careful as he may not have control over the speed or direction that the character will assume while on top of a moving piece of land.

Speed in a platform’s movement can be uniform, variable and it can sometimes be controlled as it happens in many player-controlled and character-input platforms present in NSMB games. It can also be directed by special rules which is the case with Arrow Lifts com Yoshi’s Island (they spin around and move in the direction of the arrow when the character sits upon them) Motion can be linear, parabolic, radial or on-rails. On-rails motion is very peculiar in SM games as some platforms may walk in clearly visible “track” indications (the tracks themselves being items you can use in Super Mario Maker to create on-rails motion to objects and platforms).

As mentioned earlier, this kind of feature could be self-activated or could be activated by many different triggering circumstances. Other types of triggers for movement are: character-input, player-input, time triggers, weight pressure (some platforms move downwards in regards to the character applying “pressure” above them), weight quota (some platforms stop moving if a certain quota of characters are upon them).

Rotation

Although seemingly a “new” feature for platforms in SM games SMW featured a tilting platform in the fight against Iggy Koopa. Platform rotation takes in consideration that the platform has a center point and rotates around itself, sometimes independently and sometimes activated by weight pressure. As in movement, rotation speed can also be uniform or variable and although you can control the tilting of a platform in some instances, its rotation speed is seems to be always uniform. Tilting can sometimes be limited to certain degrees while other platform will rotate 360º.

Dependency

Finally (we’re almost at the end, I promise), supposing a platform has now a feature ability other than just “existing” in the stage, we know how it is activated and which effects are enforced into the character, we have to check if that platform in dependent or independent to other intances of platforms. This is also something we’ve been seeing this since the very beginning of SM history: scale platforms could be considered a set of 2 interdependent platform, as the effect applied to one generates an effect on the other. Independent platforms act and react on their own, not suffering or imposing any behavior change in any other platform, that’s the case with most of the platforms in Super Mario games. Dependent platforms suffer and imply changes.

Final Words

Still with me? Good. We extensively went across many different definitions and descriptions for the platforms. How do we describe them now? We need to recollect everything we’ve seen here and apply to what we see in the screen or what we want to see (in a case of a game being developed). Why? Because when we decide how we want the most important elements of our games to behave and react, we can easily make a more structured implementation of them, we already know the possibilities and we also know what we don’t want, what is not included in the ruleset of our game.

As you can see, even both images shown here being screencaps you can still clearly imagine the outcome of what has been described. Knowing the concepts for each definition presented gives you the idea of what exactly is going to happen to the instance we call platform at any given moment. Super Mario developers most certainly must have built a lot of descriptions for what they wanted their physics engines to replicate and even blocks and enemies can share some properties as platforms too, something we saw even back in Super Mario Bros 2.

Hope you learned something with new me today! Peace!

PS: I’ll be collecting feedback from a few communities on the internet so this article may change in the future.