14 'Genius' Video Game Features That Were Total Accidents

12. Mario's Loveable Character Design

What you think: That Nintendo's fairytale workforce had a dedicated vision for Mario that was born - at most - from trying to salvage a character from a discarded Popeye game.

What actually happened: Now-legendary artist and conceptual genius Shigeru Miyamoto was more than aware of the technical limitations of the time, looking to Western shores and seeing how many American or English designers were basing their characters on that of stick-figures or un-detailed form factors. He thusly decided Mr. Video (Mario's first name, read about it here) should be far more recognisable, and although he only had a 16x16 pixel grid to play with, cobbled together a way to make him stand out.

As such - and you can see this by really looking at the original design - every aspect of the character was crafted through technical limitations. There literally weren't enough pixels to do a detailed face from the side (after the body was done, Miyamoto noted he only had a couple left for the face) so his moustache was used to represent and 'cover' the area it would go. He was then given a hat to disguise not being able to animate hair, and his costume was designated as overalls so his limbs could be different colours in a believable manner.

Whilst not an accident entirely, you just have to hand it to Miyamoto in being to maximise the cards he was dealt to not only create something memorable, but a design that would come together to genuinely revolutionise the industry.