SUPER MARIO TURNS 30

It's been 30 years since Super Mario Bros., captivated audiences with his intuitive controls and physics-defying jumps on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and helped revitalize an industry many thought dead. Since dragging the video games business out of the crash of 1983, the humble mustachioed plumber has appeared in more than 200 video games, selling more than 262 million copies worldwide. "That was the game that launched the modern era of gaming, in a lot of ways," video game site Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann told CBC News. "It was a cultural touchstone in a lot of ways that I think you have a lot of people that are now of a certain age that played that game then. It was very formative for, I think, a lot of people that are making games today." To celebrate the plumber's pearl anniversary, Nintendo is releasing Super Mario Maker on its Wii U home console today, which allows players to create levels of their own and unleash their creations online for everyone to play.New players are given a fairly simple set of tools to make their first levels, such as the question blocks and Koopa enemies you see in Super Mario Bros.' first level, World 1-1. As you spend time arranging them into a level using the Wii U's tablet-like GamePad controller, more options become available, easing players into getting comfortable with a small selection of creation tools at a time."I wish Mario Maker was coming out today so that I could bring it to my class," game designer and instructor Benjamin Rivers said Thursday. Rivers, who teaches conceptual game design at OCAD University in Toronto, says Super Mario Maker presents a unique opportunity to use the lessons players might have been unconsciously learning about level design and put them into practice. "You can't just slap some stuff on a screen and expect people to have a good time. There's a huge amount of psychology and design thinking that goes into every piece of interactive design," he said. Part of the charm of Super Mario Maker, and what makes it an odd game in the Mario canon, is that it allows players to break all of the rules longtime players have learned about Mario games. The video game industry is a $8.9 billion per year market.