The Impact of 1980s and 1990s Video Games on Multimedia Cartography

Abstract

The video game industry revolutionized the game market from the 1970s onwards. Stationary video game machines, such as “coin-ops” and, later, consoles for home entertainment made it possible to experience and interact with new virtual environments. Based on technical innovations, early video games already included different graphic and auditory effects that were used to present and emphasize the spatial dimension of game stories. One of the most famous and successful video game series that “told” spatial stories and included many visualizations of virtual topographies was Nintendo's Super Mario series. Nintendo developed diverse video game topographies including different interactive and animated cartographic media throughout the Super Mario series. These maps were early and fundamental examples that were user-friendly and suitable for children. Moreover, they established a basis for future video game spaces, and the techniques used to create, animate, and visualize these maps have also found their ways into other applications of cartography and geomatics. It seems that the early worlds of Super Mario animated cartographers to animate cartographic visualizations. This article presents the characteristic spatial structures and cartographic techniques found in early Super Mario games, from the arcade classic Donkey Kong (1981) to the Super Nintendo classic Super Mario Kart (1992). The meaning of these structures and techniques for other cartographic applications is discussed.