ResearchA Brief History of Mario
Nintendo's trademark character has now celebrated his 25th birthday as of 2006. Mario is as recognizable worldwide as Disney's Mickey Mouse or Marvel's Spiderman. The world's most successful video-game character has sold over 275 million game copies to date, but there's no counting how many quarters were spent on his behalf in video arcade machines. A whole generation has had time to grow up with him.
Mario's first appearance was in 1981's arcade classic "Donkey Kong". Shigeru Miyamoto was a young graphic artist hired by the then-struggling Nintendo of America to create a coin-op arcade game. Miyamoto wanted to create a silly, loveable character that gamers could connect with. He made Mario a pudgy carpenter with a rounded nose, wide eyes, colorful overalls and shirt, and a large nose framed by a mustache. The incredibly low-resolution of video screens at the time constrained his design, so partly Miyamoto designed for high visibility on the screen, which was needed for an action character. Also, the reason for Mario's red hat was less a matter of styling and more because it would be difficult to create hair movement on the character when he jumped.
The Donkey Kong arcade game turned out to be the salvation of Nintendo's American market, and has proved so popular that Flash versions of the game are found on the web today. Donkey Kong spun off into another arcade game, Mario Brothers, which first introduced Luigi. Even though Mario was originally conceived as a carpenter, the two characters were deemed plumbers because the Mario Brothers game was a platform maze involving ridding a network of pipes of a series of increasingly challenging pests.
Mario would pop up next in Super Mario Brothers, which was an entirely different concept: here, Mario explores a series of hazard-ridden worlds in a scrolling platform format instead of being constrained to a single screen. Super Mario Brothers saw simultaneous release as both an arcade game and the original Nintendo entertainment system, and the port was completely seamless. A star was now officially born.
Mario has taken on many roles through his career, from doctor to race-car driver to role-playing character. Mario is a reliable stock character for Nintendo, since they have kept his background rather vague in order to have him be flexible enough to fit in a wide variety of roles. In addition, Mario has come to symbolize "kid-safe" games; parents may purchase anything with Mario in the title and know that the rating will be for a general audience.
Nintendo titles featuring Mario have earned the distinction of being the best-selling game series of all time. So synonymous with action games did Mario become, that he was even the butt of TV commercials by competing game companies. Most memorable of these is perhaps "Crash Bandicoot", the title character of a game launched by Sony Playstation. In this commercial, Crash shows up outside of Mario's purported office to yell taunts through a microphone: "Hey, plumber boy! Mustache man! Your worst day has arrived!" Fat chance.
Nintendo's planned future Mario titles include "Mario Hoops 3-on-3" and "Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis" for the Nintendo DS, "Super Paper Mario" on the Nintendo GameCube, and "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" and "Super Mario Galaxy", both on the Nintendo Wii.