Nintendo - Putting Play First

Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit examines how Nintendo designs its games by starting from a core mechanic and finding what makes it fun before building a game around it. He draws on Miyamoto's comments and examples from Nintendo's games to show this play-first, iterate-on-the-fundamentals approach.

HN people use it as the go-to explanation of Nintendo's mechanic-first, iterative design philosophy.

“does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first”