[dagheti]

In an interview between Miyamoto and Iwata the genius of this first level is discussed

http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp

"But if you avoid the first Goomba and then jump and hit a block above you, a mushroom will spring out and you'll get a shock. But then you'll see that it's going to the right so you'll think: "I'm safe! Something strange appeared but I'm okay!" But of course when it goes against a pipe up ahead, the mushroom will come back! (laughs)" ... "At that point, even if you panic and try to jump out of the way, you'll hit the block above you. Then just at the instant where you accept that you're done for, Mario will suddenly shake and grow bigger!"

It turns out they panned it so you cannot avoid picking up that first mushroom that makes you big. They expected the first players to see it as an enemy, so they wanted to trap you into picking it up and then showing you that it made you more powerful.

Barely anyone notices that this was forced, but now everyone takes it for granted that the the mushrooms are good!

[Sukotto]

  the mushrooms are good

And they are easy to make: http://www.annathered.com/2009/06/21/how-to-make-a-radish-mu...

[sketerpot]

Be careful if you try using actual mushrooms, though; the species that the Mario mushrooms are based on is hallucinogenic and mildly poisonous. If you want to eat it, parboil it first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria

[jcl]

Actually, you can avoid or accidentally miss the mushroom. The game design simply makes it less likely, but it's not impossible.

[jacobolus]

I guarantee you that no statistically noticeable number of new Mario players ever managed to play for 5 minutes without figuring out that the mushroom made Mario more powerful.

[jcl]

I understand that. However, the parent post (among other online sources) says that they made it impossible to avoid the mushroom, which is not true.

I think this is an important distinction, since they clearly could have put the player in a situation where the mushroom is both unavoidable and necessary to advance. They could even had done something as heavy-handed as tutorial shown in the article. Instead, they chose to put the player in a situation that was indistinguishable from regular gameplay, but biased to educate the player. This, I feel, is a more subtle approach to game design than forcing the player to a prescribed route.

[jacobolus]

You’re taking it too literally. The point was that they made it so that players would necessarily quickly learn that the mushroom wasn’t an enemy, even though other things that looked nearly like mushrooms were enemies (as was learned the first two or three plays by dying to them). If it was easy to avoid the mushroom, some players would spend many plays through carefully avoiding it. “Force” is relative.

[eru]

You could have tried jumping on mushrooms.

[hnal943]

That may be true, but my mother managed to miss the mushroom the first time she played. I was in shock.

[pavel_lishin]

> now everyone takes it for granted that the the mushrooms are good!

Especially on college campuses.