Everyone loves Super Mario, but what do we really know about the man behind the mustache? What are his hopes, dreams, and fears? Why is he like 2 feet tall but has an 82-inch vertical? Where’s he putting 30+ years of gold coins? What’s he doing to relax? Well, if you want the answers to those questions and more, you’ll have to find another website because Mario is a video game character with no soul… other than the one Bob Hoskins made for him in the ’90s, but we’ll talk more about that.
Let’s ride.
Super Mario was created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and was first introduced in the 1981 arcade game “Donkey Kong.”
The character of Mario was originally known as “Jumpman” in “Donkey Kong,” and was renamed to Mario in the game’s sequel, “Mario Bros.”
Super Mario is known for his red hat, blue overalls, and bushy mustache, but in early concept art, he was depicted with a bald head and no mustache. I’ve watched Carl Elwes cut his foot off in “SAW,” and the image below by far more terrifying.
Super Mario is a plumber by trade, but he has also been known to moonlight as a carpenter, doctor, and athlete. We also think he dabbles in crypto, and I wouldn’t doubt he would be a talented multi-level marketer. His whole life literally levels, so…
The signature sound effects for Super Mario’s jumps and power-ups were created by Japanese composer Koji Kondo using a small synthesizer. The original Synthwave master.
The first Super Mario game to feature Princess Peach (then known as Princess Toadstool) was “Super Mario Bros.” She has been a recurring character in the series ever since.
Super Mario’s arch-nemesis is Bowser, the King of the Koopa, a giant turtle-like creature who constantly tries to kidnap Princess Peach. Where’s Chris Hansen when you need him?
The Super Mario series has sold more than 330 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.
In 1993, Nintendo released a live-action Super Mario film called “Super Mario Bros.” starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. The film was a colossal disaster, leaving confused adults, kids, gamers, hussies, and charlatans contemplating the meaning of cinematic achievement, finances, creativity, hopes, and dreams.
In 2005, Super Mario was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Game, a now-defunct attraction located on the sidewalk of Sony Metreon in San Fran. Neato. I don’t believe the star below is the actual star, but we want you to get the feels of greatness. If greatness was a spray-painted star on a cracked sidewalk of shame.
Super Mario is one of the most iconic and recognizable characters in the world. He has been featured in more than 200 video games, as well as various television shows, films, and merchandise. With all of this, he still remains humble af.
Super Mario has a younger brother named Luigi, who is often featured as a playable character in Super Mario games. Luigi is taller and thinner than Mario and is known for his green hat and overalls that he hasn’t changed or laundered in 30 years. I can smell that in the Blockchain.
In the original “Super Mario Bros.” game, players could enter a secret level by pressing the “Up” and “B” buttons on the second controller while standing on the flagpole at the end of a level.
In the Super Mario series, the character of Bowser is often accompanied by his children, the Koopalings, who each have their own unique appearance and abilities. Bowser, you’re such a rascal.
The Super Mario series includes a number of unique and iconic power-ups, such as the Super Mushroom, which allows Mario to grow in size, and the Fire Flower, which allows him to throw fireballs and regenerate unlimited overalls, elbow pipes, and that purple stuff all plumbers have.
In case you know nothing about gaming, history, or life…and are too embarrassed to ask your friends, loved ones, bosses, significant others, or random strangers at the gas station stuff about one of the most iconic games in the history of time…We got you. The Super Mario series features a number of memorable and iconic enemies, such as Goombas, Koopa Troopas, and Piranha Plants.
Super Mario is known for his jumping, and noise-making abilities, and in many games, players can use his jumps to perform a variety of acrobatic moves, such as wall jumps, backflips, and long jumps. Who knew plumbers could be so agile? Teachable moment, kids…Learn a trade. And if you can’t do that, get stoned and find a way to play Mario on Oculus.
And if you have nothing else to do for the next 15 minutes to 6 days, we’ve compiled a mega spectacular list of Mario facts for your reading pleasure. Most are new, and some are reinforcing the facts above, but rest assured, they’re all made with love. Enjoy!
- Mario has appeared in 200+ video games.
- At least one Super Mario game has been released on every single major Nintendo video game console in the company’s history including handheld platforms.
- To date games in the Super Mario series have sold over 327 million copies worldwide easily making it the best-selling video game series in history with Pokemon in second place at 234 million copies.
- The original Super Mario Brothers game sold over 40 million copies and is critically acclaimed as one of the best video games ever made of all time ever. In 2005, IGN declared it the greatest game of all time citing its role in the resurrection of the video game industry after it crashed in the mid-80s.
- Mario serves as the principal mascot for the entire Nintendo brand above other Nintendo characters like Pikachu and Donkey Kong.
- Super Mario and the larger Mario franchise was created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto is known for creating Super Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Starfox.
- Miyamoto was born in 1952 in a rural Japanese town called Shinobi. Growing up, he loved Japanese comic books aka manga for all you weeaboo Japanophile out there. Miyamoto wanted to be a manga illustrator but ultimately gave up because he felt like he would never be as good as the artists he admired.
- So, who is this Mario dude? Mario is a short pleasantly chubby, cuddlable Italian plumber who retired to the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures generally involve maneuvering through several themed Devils to rescue Princess Peach from a big spiky turtle named Bowser.
- Mario is often joined by his younger, yet taller brother Luigi, who tends to serve as his sidekick. Although Luigi has been featured in several of his own games too, the most prominent of which features poor Luigi being frightened out of his wits by ghouls and ghosts in Haunted Mansions.
- Luigi’s name is a pun from the Japanese word rui-zhi, which means “similar” get it? because they’re similar… it’s also the most Italian name ever.
- The main antagonist of the Mario games is Bowser or sometimes King Koopa. Bowser is arguably the most popular video game villain of all time having appeared in over 60 games to date. Interestingly, while Bowser did show up in the Japanese version Super Mario Brothers – he didn’t make it to the American version.
- Before the Super Mario series, Mario debuted in Donkey Kong on July 9th, 1981. He then appeared in other minor games for Nintendo. The Super Mario series was the first Mario game to feature the now famous side-scrolling format and introduced several elements now considered Mario staples such as power-ups goombas and Bowser’s constant Princess Peach kidnappings… Seriously peach needs to do something with her personal security it’s getting ridiculous at this point.
- Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create a video game with characters from Popeye, however, Miyamoto was never able to secure the rights to use the characters and so Mario was born.
- In fact, Super Mario Brothers didn’t even star Mario to begin with. When Miyamoto and his team were making the game, all they wanted was to create a side-scrolling action game. The main character was initially represented by a blank featureless rectangle 16 pixels wide by 32 pixels high.
- Mario was unnamed in the Japanese version of Donkey Kong but was called Jumpman in the game’s English instructions.
- The history of Mario’s name doesn’t end there. The former director and general manager of Nintendo, Hiroshima Menisci, before Mario Jumpman or mister video, called the company’s famous mascot Osan, which roughly translates to middle-aged guy in Japanese.
- But enough about boring names, let’s now move on to the exciting world of surnames. Game titles like Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers would suggest that Mario & Luigi’s last names are in fact Mario, making their names Luigi Mario and Mario Mario, even though this name has been used in official strategy guide games like Mario Party 2 and Mario Luigi superstar saga, and the 1993 Super Mario film adaptation. Miyamoto has stated that the brothers have no surnames like Bjork or Stevie Wonder… oh no he does.
- However, during an event held in Japan to mark the 30th anniversary of the Super Mario Brothers Miyamoto seemed to confirm that Mario’s full name was indeed Mario Mario.
- Miyamoto also originally conceived Mario as being a carpenter not a plumber, like Jesus.
- Since 1990, Mario has been voiced by Charles Martinet. He was originally going to give Mario a raspier more stereotypically Italian American New Yorker accent but decided against it believing it could scare children.
- Prior to that, Mario had been voiced by Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime. He took on the role of Mario in the 1983 show Saturday Supercade, an animated series featuring characters from the Golden Age of arcade video games.
- Incredibly, no one knows for sure when Super Mario Brothers was released the United States.
- The image of Mario and the Super Mario Brothers box art is taken from Donkey Kong.
- The main theme music in Mario known simply as Ground theme was created by Nintendo composer koji kondo and is one of the most recognizable pieces of game music in the world today.
- In fact, the charming tune stayed in the Billboard ringtone charts for an insane 125 weeks; that’s over two years people.
- In 1998 – video game designer Cliff Basinski, known for his work on Gears of War, appeared in the very first issue of Nintendo Power with the Super Mario Brothers’ high score of nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty, all at the tender age of thirteen.
- Japanese video game programmer designer and producer Yuji Naka stated in an interview that he was inspired to create Sonic the Hedgehog because of Super Mario Brothers.
- Unlike the very mild cartoon vines were used to seeing in Mario games, our plump Italian buddy was originally going to be packing some serious Heat. The initial plans showed Mario riding a rocket and carrying a beam gun and rifle. Show of hands, who knows what a beam gun is?
- Very early versions of the game Mario attacked with A and ran with B.
- Super Mario Brothers drew a lot of inspiration for The Legend of Zelda which seems odd given that Zelda didn’t come out until years after Super Mario Brothers.
- So, what did Super Mario Brothers borrow from Zelda? The rotating bars of fire were created for Legend of Zelda but were later transferred to Super Mario.
- The bushes and clouds you see in the game are actually the same sprite.
- The goombas were the last enemies added to the game at a very late stage in the game of development.
- In Japan, Goombas are called Kuriboh which basically translates as chestnut people. See, that just sounds sweet. I don’t want to kill chestnut people with a beam gun or otherwise.
- Most seasoned Mario players will know about the turtle hopping trick that allows you to gain a metric load of extra lives. Basically, you trap the moving turtle shell by jumping on it close to a wall. Many assume the turtle hopping trick is a mistake or a glitch, Miyamoto has said unambiguously that it was put in the game intentionally.
- If you get greedy and give yourself more than 128 lives in the game using the infinite lives trick, the next time you die you’ll get an automatic game over this is due to something called a buffer overflow error.
- The absolute minimum score that has been achieved on a full run of Super Mario Brothers is 500 points. Turns out this is extremely difficult as it requires you to specifically steer clear of all enemies’ coins and the flagpole at the end of the levels as such doing this becomes a feat within itself and some people have proudly uploaded videos themselves doing it to YouTube so others can bask in the glory of their non-win.
- Some people take pleasure in trying to beat the game as fast as possible these people are known as speed runners, which is far too friendly a term for people sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons, but there you go, some speed runners emerge to complete the entire game in under five minutes.
- With success comes access, and with the luxury of hindsight I’m sure names we’ll realize that the Super Mario Brothers ice capade show should have been shut down long before was brought to fruition. The Super Mario-themed ice-skating extravaganza aired in 1989 and incredibly starred Alyssa Milano and Jason Bateman.
- The Guinness Book of World Records 2011: gamers edition states that Super Mario Brothers was remade on the Nintendo 64 which is incorrect. The happy Mario games made on the Nintendo 64 did not include Super Mario Brothers.
- Many gamers will have tried in vain to jump over the flagpole at the end of the level only to fail miserably because we all suck at being human beings if you try hard enough it is possible to jump over the flagpole in some levels after which Mario found himself stuck in a barren featureless landscape until the end of time… the end of time being that literal end of the timer.
- Super Mario was finally made portable, but it was brought to the Gameboy in 1989 in the form of Super Mario Land incidentally this was the first major Mario game to not be developed under the watchful eye of Miyamoto, but Nintendo needn’t have worried, Super Mario ended up selling around 18-million copies.
- The game also introduced a new brand spanking new female character, Princess Daisy.
- There is a version of Super Mario Brothers released called Super Mario Brothers special which was developed by Hudson soft to be played on the NEC and Shop computers in Japan.
- John Leguizamo wrote in his autobiography that he and Bob Hoskins both hated working on the Super Mario film and knew it was going to suck big time as such they would frequently get drunk together to make the experience bearable.
- Leguizamo claimed that the reason the film turned out so bad was that the directors were trying to make an adult-orientated action comedy while the studio was looking for a jolly adventure film aimed at kids.
- Super Mario also had an animated series that suffered the same fate as the feature film.
- The animated series also committed further crimes – as you will have seen by now surely Mario wears blue, I’ve rolled with a red shirt underneath but in the cartoon, Mario wears red overalls with a blue shirt underneath, which just seems wrong.
- Super Mario Brothers 2 was released three years after the original in 1988 incidentally this is the first game in the Super Mario Brothers series to feature toad and Princess Peach as playable characters. Super Mario Brothers 2 is one of the earliest games to feature a playable female character.
- Super Mario Brothers 2 was also a commercial success and is in fact the fourth best-selling NES game of all time with 10 million copies sold.
- Super Mario Brothers 3 is widely considered to be one of the best Mario games if not the best until this day remains the best-selling video game of all time that wasn’t bundled with the console, having sold an incredible 17.28 million copies.
- A survey carried out in the early 90s showed that Mario was more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse
- a climactic scene in The Wizard, a terrible movie for the late eighties all about a traumatized gaming Wizkid, features footage from Super Mario Brothers 3. The movie effectively served as an advert for the game and into G’s many people in North America to the Super Mario franchise.
- Super Mario Brothers 3 also went a bit nuts with enemies with over 30 new foes being added to the game, including the flying para goombahs, the fearsome Chain Chomp, the spooky booze, a huge red fish called a Big Bertha, and angry sun which is just the sun that hates you for some reason.
- The Chain Chomp enemies first seen in Super Mario Brothers 3 were inspired by an incident in Korea Miyamoto’s childhood when he was chased down by a neighbor’s dog before it was stopped by a chain wrapped around its neck.
- If you stand in place and allow the chain chomps to lunge at you 49 times, on the 50th attempt the evil black ball will break free and provide you with a gentle nibble of death.
- On The N64, the ghostly boo enemies are hilariously based on the wife of the game’s designer Takashi Tezuka. Apparently, tezuka’s wife was ordinarily very quiet but on one occasion she flew into an uncharacteristic rage about how much time he was spending at work. The spooky characters mimic this polarized behavior stopping and covering their eyes when Mario is looking at them then moving into attack when his back is turned
- Super Mario Brothers 3 was going to include a center suit powerup in the game that would turn Mario into a half-man half-horse hybrid however this idea was ultimately rejected because the world isn’t fair and everything sucks.