Super Mario — The Story Of One Of The Most Popular Video Game Characters

The significance of a game character such as Mario cannot be overstated, and it would be difficult to find anyone who has never heard of him.

This moustachioed Italian plumber, who was originally conceived as a sailor or carpenter, has conquered every conceivable and inconceivable platform, appeared on television and clearly demonstrated that princesses can be rescued by more than just knights.

In this article, we analyse the Mario phenomenon and talk about the best games featuring the world’s most popular gaming mascot — just in time for the release of the new Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Who is Mario?

Every character starts with their name, and many people immediately ask themselves — what is Mario’s real name? Is Mario a first name or a surname? Both.

If you are even slightly familiar with the history of the series or simply played games about the moustachioed plumber as a child, you must have heard of the game Mario Bros., where the main characters were, in fact, two brothers — Mario and Luigi.

But why ‘Mario Bros.’ and not ‘Mario and Luigi Bros.’? It’s simple. Mario is both a first and last name. Yes, you understood correctly, in the Mario universe, the game character is called none other than Mario Mario.

Despite the fact that Mario visits a huge number of kingdoms, planets and even universes in his adventures, he also has a homeland. The stocky plumber of Italian-American descent lives in a certain Mushroom Kingdom, and one might get the impression that Mario’s only daily activity is fighting various villains.

And so it is: perhaps the main character once did plumbing work for a modest fee, but now his job is to stop the villain Bowser from stealing the Mushroom Kingdom’s princess, Peach. Other Nintendo characters, such as Donkey Kong or Mario’s evil counterpart, Wario, also often decide to cause trouble, and they too must be knocked out.

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As mentioned earlier, Mario has a younger brother, Luigi, who was originally created as an optional character for the second player in two-player games, but later acquired his own personality and story, and in some games he even acted as the protagonist. And yes, Luigi’s profession, like Mario’s, is also a plumber.

History of creation

Few people remember, but Mario Bros. is not the first game in the series that started Mario’s story. It’s hard to imagine, but Mario made his debut 42 years ago, in 1981, on arcade machines in a simple game called Donkey Kong.

There, on a single screen, the hero had to climb up platforms from the bottom to the top, where Donkey Kong, a silly and aggressive gorilla, was rampaging, throwing all kinds of life-threatening debris at Mario.

The reason for fighting the gorilla was, of course, to rescue Princess Pauline (not yet Peach), whom Donkey Kong was holding captive for unknown, but clearly not very noble reasons. Mario did not have his usual name at the time and was simply called Jumpman.

Jumpman appeared only as an alternative, as the original plan was to make the spinach-eating sailor Popeye the protagonist, but obtaining the rights to the character did not work out. It turned out for the best.

The documentation for this simple arcade game stated that Jumpman was not a plumber, but a carpenter, although the hero’s profession had no influence on the gameplay, of course.

The jumping carpenter turned out to be so ‘juicy’ and memorable only because of the developers’ attempts to circumvent the limitations of arcade machines, which had too few colours: they had to make the main character bright and colourful.

The blue and red spot on a dark background helped to keep the character from getting lost in the pixelated mess. Once you see him, you will never forget what Mario looks like.