Nintendo’s Mario History

Nintendo's Mario History

Previously, you could go to the arcade to play as a popular plumber, and now you can play Super Mario Bros online from the comfort of your home.

In the arcade

The main character of the iconic video game series and of the whole Nintendo company, was invented by Shigeru Miyamoto, a graduate of the College, who at that time was only 24 years old. Miyamoto studied at the Japanese Kanazawa College of Art with a degree in industrial design.

Mario’s first appearance came with the release of the arcade game Donkey Kong in 1981. But the guy with the mustache was called Jumpman at the time. And with the popularity of the video game, the fictional plumber has gained fans.

Following this success, Nintendo US founder Minoru Arakawa named Jumpman Mario after one of his company’s employees, Mario Segale, who had Italian roots. A couple of years later, the Mario Bros game was released, in which the ex-Jumpman got the lead role.

Mario in the media

The character’s popularity was not limited to video games. For the first two years, Mario appeared on TV screens in the animated series on CBS, where he played the role of a circus trainer. But already in 1989, the fictional plumber played himself on the show Super Mario which got together live-action with animation. In the same year, the character popped up at the cinema in the film The Magician, followed by the release of Super Mario Bros where he played himself. The role of the Italian plumber went to English television actor Bob Hoskins.

Mario came to the houses

In 1985, the video game company from Kyoto surprised the world with its first Nintendo Entertainment System console, and among the first games was Super Mario Bros. Sales of this video game amounted to over 50 million copies worldwide. In addition, the plumber also hit the Game Boy screens in 1989.

Sales record

The new part of the trend franchise, Super Mario Bros 3, did not keep fans waiting long, and it has rapidly become the best-selling game not only in the US market, but all over the world. Following was the game Super Mario World, which revealed new characters from the Mario universe, which a team of 16 people worked on for more than three years. In this part, Mario’s friend, a dinosaur named Yoshi appeared. By early 1994, over 100 million Mario titles had been sold worldwide.

And now, with the release of Super Mario 64, which Next Generation called “The Greatest Video Game of All Time”, Mario will again remind the whole world of himself. Today, five games from the Super Mario series are in the top 20 list of best-selling video games worldwide.

Read also: The Nettworth Game – A Fun and Educational Way to Improve Financial Literacy

Nintendo’s Mario History

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