Mario History

Mario is a character created by the Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the Mario franchise and the mascot of the Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario is an Italian plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom with his younger twin brother, Luigi. Their adventures generally center on rescuing Princess Peach from the villain Bowser while using power-ups that give them different abilities.

Mario first appeared as the player character of Donkey Kong (1981), a platform game. Miyamoto wanted to use Popeye as the protagonist, but when he could not gain the licensing rights, he created Mario instead. The graphical limitations of arcade hardware influenced Mario's design, such as his large nose, mustache, and overalls. Miyamoto expected the character to be unpopular and planned to use him for cameo appearances. Originally called "Mr. Video" and "Jumpman," he was renamed Mario after Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segale. After Donkey Kong, Mario starred in Mario Bros. (1983). Its 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System sequel, Super Mario Bros., began the successful Super Mario series. Charles Martinet voiced Mario from 1991 to 2023, when he was succeeded by Kevin Afghani.

After Super Mario Bros., Mario began to branch off into different genres and has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation. These include puzzle games such as Dr. Mario, role-playing games such as Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, and sports games such as Mario Kart and Mario Tennis. He has appeared in other Nintendo properties, such as in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games. Mario has also appeared in various animations, including three series produced by DIC Entertainment (voiced by Lou Albano and later Walker Boone). He was portrayed by Bob Hoskins in the live-action Super Mario Bros. film in 1993, and voiced by Chris Pratt in The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023.

An established pop culture icon, Mario is widely considered the most famous video game character in history. He has appeared in a variety of merchandise, such as clothing and collectible items, and people and places have been nicknamed after him. He has also inspired a considerable amount of unofficial media.

Concept and Creation Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario while developing Donkey Kong in an attempt to produce a bestselling video game for Nintendo; previous games, such as Sheriff, had not achieved the success of games such as Namco's Pac-Man. Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create a game that used the 1930s characters Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl. At the time, however, as Miyamoto was unable to acquire a license to use the characters (and would not until 1982 with Popeye), he would end up creating an unnamed player character, along with Donkey Kong, and Lady (later known as Pauline).

In the early stages of Donkey Kong, the focus of the game was to escape a maze, while Mario did not have the ability to jump. However, Miyamoto soon introduced jumping capabilities for the player character, reasoning that "If you had a barrel rolling towards you, what would you do?" Continuing to draw from 1930s media, King Kong served as an inspiration and Mario was set in New York City.

Name Though the protagonist was unnamed in the Japanese release of Donkey Kong, he was named "Jumpman" in the game's English instructions and "little Mario" in the sales brochure. Miyamoto envisioned a character to be used in every game developed by Miyamoto; a "go-to" character who could be placed into any game if needed, albeit in cameo appearances as Miyamoto did not, at the time, expect the character to become singularly popular. To this end, he originally named the character "Mr. Video," comparing what he intended for the character's appearances in later games to the cameos that Alfred Hitchcock had done within his films.[28] In retrospect, Miyamoto commented that if he had named Mario "Mr. Video," Mario likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth."

According to a widely circulated story, during the localization of Donkey Kong for American audiences, Nintendo of America's warehouse landlord, Mario Segale, confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument in which the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, they opted to name the character in the game Mario after him.

While it is implied by the title of the Mario Bros. series, in a 1989 interview, his full name was stated not to be "Mario Mario." The first notable use of "Mario Mario" was in the 1993 live-action film adaptation of the Super Mario series, and was further used in Prima's official video game strategy guides, in 2000 for Mario Party 2 and in 2003 for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.[33] In 2012, after Mario voice actor Charles Martinet stated that the character's name was, in fact, "Mario Mario" at the San Diego Comic-Con, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said Mario had no last name, with which Miyamoto agreed the month after.[36] Two months after Iwata's death in July 2015, Miyamoto changed his stance, asserting at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival that Mario's full name was indeed "Mario Mario."

Appearance and Profession By Miyamoto's own account, Mario's profession was chosen to fit with the game design: since Donkey Kong takes place on a construction site, Mario was made into a carpenter; and when he appeared again in Mario Bros., it was decided that he should be a plumber, because a lot of the game is situated in underground settings. Mario's character design, particularly his large nose, draws on western influences; once he became a plumber, Miyamoto decided to "put him in New York" and make him Italian, lightheartedly attributing Mario's nationality to his mustache. Other sources have Mario's profession chosen to be carpentry in an effort to depict the character as an ordinary hard worker, making it easier for players to identify with him. After a colleague suggested that Mario more closely resembled a plumber, Miyamoto changed Mario's profession accordingly and developed Mario Bros., featuring the character in the sewers of New York City.

Due to the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background, making the movements of his arms easily perceptible. A red cap was added to let Miyamoto avoid drawing the character's hairstyle, forehead, and eyebrows, as well as to circumvent the issue of animating his hair as he jumped. To give distinctly human facial features with the limited graphical abilities, Miyamoto drew a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need to draw a mouth and facial expressions. Omitting a mouth circumvented the problem of clearly separating the nose from the mouth with a limited number of pixels available.

Over time, Mario's appearance has become more defined; blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, a red "M" in a white circle on the front of his hat and gold buttons on his overalls have been added. The colors of his shirt and overalls were also reversed from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overalls. Miyamoto attributed this process to the different development teams and artists for each game as well as advances in technology.