Since his introduction in 1981, Mario has become one of the most
recognized video game characters around the world, and Nintendo’s official mascot. Mario is the
short, portly plumber who spends his time saving the Mushroom Kingdom from the machinations
of the evil reptile man Bowser.
Mario made his first appearance as Jumpman in the
arcade game Donkey
Kong. Created by Shigeru Miyamoto and
supervised by Gunpei Yokoi,
Donkey Kong was a revolutionary game
of necessity. Nintendo was having trouble breaking into the American market,
and the newly-formed Nintendo of
America’s third attempt failed spectacularly when the game Radar Scope arrived long after its popularity died out in Japan and the
sounds proved displeasing to American audiences. Donkey Kong was able to be made using Radar Scope’s software and could be incorporated into the unsold
cabinets after modification.
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Donkey Kong cabinet art. |
Donkey Kong was
one of the earliest examples of the platforming genre, and one of the first
games to be built around a storyline that played out onscreen rather than the
story being an afterthought. Jumpman (renamed Mario in America after Nintendo
of America’s original landlord Mario Segale) had to
rescue his girlfriend Lady (renamed Pauline after the warehouse manager’s wife
Polly James) from the clutches of the giant gorilla Donkey Kong. The game was
inspired by a mixture of Beauty and the Beast, the
original King Kong, and the development of the Popeye game Nintendo failed to get the license for (although they would later).
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It's hammer time! |
To go along with the construction site setting of the
game, Mario was originally considered a carpenter. His design came out of
necessity, making use of graphical limitations at the time. To allow his
movements to stand out against his own body and the background, he was given
red coveralls and a blue shirt. The incorporation of a red hat was to avoid
drawing hair, which Miyamoto hated. As a mouth would be too hard to animate,
Mario was given a mustache and an enlarged nose to further establish his being
a human. Miyamoto had planned to use Mario as a go-to character for various
games he developed, mostly in cameo roles, as he felt Donkey Kong was the
strongest character in the game.
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Donkey Kong Jr. flyer. |
Donkey Kong became
a hit, moving over 60,000 cabinets within its first year of release. Nintendo
tried to duplicate the success with a sequel called Donkey Kong Jr., in
which the titular younger Kong had to rescue his captured father from the
clutches of Mario (the only time he would be depicted as a villain). In 1983,
Mario joined Donkey Kong and Pauline on CBS
Saturday mornings in the Donkey Kong portions
of Saturday Supercade for two seasons.
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Mario Bros. game art. |
Mario’s next appearance was in his own spinoff game
in 1983 called Mario Bros. In that game, Mario had
to combat a series of creatures as they emerged from pipes in an underground
setting by bopping them from below, and then jumping on them directly. It was
pointed out that Mario more resembled a plumber than a carpenter, and since the
game took place underground, Miyamoto changed his profession accordingly. After
that change, Miyamoto also identified the character as Italian due to his
mustache and large nose. The pipes were inspired by several manga which
depicted waste grounds with pipes lying around, and the unusual green color
came from the limited palette and Miaymoto’s desire to keep the game colorful.
Luigi as he currently appears. |
Mario Bros. also
introduced Luigi, Mario’s brother,
to allow for two players. Luigi was a palette swap of Mario, being depicted
with green coloring instead of red. Mario’s clothing also received a color
swap, with his shirt and coveralls switching colors due to a different art
team. A story persists that Luigi’s name came from the fact there was a pizza
parlor named “Mario & Luigi’s” near Nintendo’s Redmond, Washington
headquarters. It was also noted that the Japanese word “ruiji” means “similar.”
The game was only moderately successful and ported to several home consoles
prevalent at the time.
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Super Mario Bros. box art. |
In 1985, Nintendo released the first in the series of
games that would become well-known the world over: Super Mario Bros.
Released specifically for Nintendo’s home consoles (although later ported
to arcades), the game introduced the world to the Mushroom Kingdom which
Mario and Luigi had to defend from Bowser
and his Koopa Troopas.
Originally intended to be an ox based on Ox King from Alakazam the
Great, Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka deisgned
him to look like a giant, sinister turtle to match his turtle-like minions
(adapted from the previous game). Miyamoto considered several Japanese names
for Korean dishes for Bowser before settling on Daimao Kuppa (where the Koopa
comes from). Along with the turtles, Bowser’s minions included brown mushroom
creatures called Goombas, piranha plants that lived in
pipes (also carried over from the previous game and allowed travel around
worlds and levels), squid-like Bloopers
found in the water, fish-like Cheep
Cheeps and more sinister animal-like foes. Unlike the previous game, most
enemies could be defeated by being jumped on.
The ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario’s love
interest and frequent damsel in distress was Princess Peach. Designed by
Miyamoto and finalized by Yoichi
Kotabe, Peach was made to look stubborn but cute. In Western countries, she
was known as Princess Toadstool until 1993’s Yoshi’s Safari,
when the “Peach” name reached across the ocean. The majority of her citizenry
are mushroom-like people known as Toads (however, one of Peach’s loyal
retainers is named Toad). They were
designed to be simplistic yet cute and pleasing to everyone.
Aiding the Mario Bros. were a series of power-ups,
which would increase with each successive game. Mushrooms would either allow
the brothers to grow in size
or grant an extra life,
depending on their color (red and green, respectively). Fire Flowers allowed them to
shoot fireballs and also changed their coveralls to white while their shirts
retained their distinctive colors. Starmen
gave them limited invincibility, changing the game’s music for the duration of
the effect. Miyamoto wanted to give players a challenging experience,
incorporating the ticking clock device and having the overall difficulty
increase as the game progressed with new enemies and fewer power-ups.
Super Mario
Bros. was included with the Nintendo
Entertainment System (NES) upon its release, and became one of the
best-selling games of all-time; helping to alleviate the videogame slump
America was experiencing. The following year, Super Mario Bros.
2 was released in Japan which was an extension of the original game,
but with an increased difficulty level picking up from where the original’s
left off. Two-player mode was eliminated in favor of a player selection which
brother to play with. Each had their own gameplay differences: Luigi had the
ability to jump higher while Mario moved faster.
Believing it too difficult for Western audiences,
Nintendo of America chose to adapt the game Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic
into their own Super Mario Bros. 2. That game featured Mario, Luigi, Peach
and Toad as playable characters who plucked items out of the ground and enemies
and used them as weapons. Each character was given their own characteristic to
differentiate their gameplay: Luigi could jump the highest, Toad could pluck
the fastest, Peach could float over long distances, and Mario was the most
well-rounded. It also introduced a new character design for Luigi, depicting
him as taller and thinner than Mario (although his later gameplay sprites would
continue to be a pallet swap of Mario’s until Super Mario Kart).
Although it left players confused over the radical differences, the American
version continued to sell over ten million copies to become the third-highest
selling game released for NES at the time. The Japanese version eventually made
it to America under the name The Lost
Levels.
With Mario-mania at its height, Mario returned to
television in 1989 with The Super Mario
Bros. Super Show! Produced by DiC Entertainment
and Saban Productions, Super Show was a daily syndicated program that featured live-action
segments of Mario (Captain Lou
Albano) and Luigi (Danny
Wells) having misadventures in their Brooklyn basement apartment, typically
with a special guest star. Amongst those who visited the brothers were
television stars such as Nicole
Eggert, Vanna White, and Norman Fell; Albano’s fellow
wrestlers Rowdy Roddy Piper, Sgt. Slaughter and
Albano as himself; and even fictional characters with Ernie Hudson as a parody of his
Winston Zeddemore character from Ghostbusters and
voice actor Maurice LaMarche
as Inspector Gadget (another DiC property and a role LaMarche would assume from
1999-2005).
The live segments would bookend an animated Mario
adventure from Monday through Thursday that blended elements of both Super Mario Bros. and the American Super Mario Bros. 2. Music by Koji Kondo, sound effects
and power-ups from the games were featured, as were many of the enemies. On
Fridays, the Mario cartoon was replaced by an episode of The Legend of
Zelda, which was based on the games The Legend of Zelda and
The Legend of Zelda II: the
Adventure of Link, also created by Miyamoto.
The cartoon featured subtle differences from the
video games. A rap introduction written by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy, established the story of
Mario (also Albano) and Luigi (also Wells) being sucked down a drain from
Brooklyn into the Mushroom Kingdom where they help Princess Toadstool (Jeannie
Elias) and Toad (John Stocker)
fend off King Koopa (Harvey Atkin)
and his minions. Koopa was depicted as all green with a crown, whereas in the
game he had bits of orange on his body and a red mane. Koopa would usually wear
an outfit related to the theme of the episode or episode title, as would his
minions. Mario would introduce the situation to the audience via his “Plumber’s
Log” as a parody of Star Trek, and was often depicted as
always being hungry for pasta. Their battle cry was “Pasta Power!” and when the
going got especially tough, the brothers would engage in a patty-cake routine before
overcoming any situation.
As Mario-mania continued to grow through the home
consoles, it was only a matter of time before Mario made the super jump onto
Saturday mornings…
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