What is Mario’s origin story?

Introduction

Have you ever heard of Mario? Mario is a video game character owned by Nintendo who has been in over 200 games that vary from Mario Kart, and Super Mario.

Origin

(This info all comes from CNBC and ign.) A little background information about Mario is that Miyamoto (Mario’s creator) wanted to create a game based on the iconic cartoon sailor Popeye, but Nintendo wasn’t able to land the rights to those characters, so the artist had to come up with a new idea. But Mario was introduced properly as the protagonist in a Donkey Kong game in 1981. Also, Mario’s name was not made up yet so his original name was “Jumpman” because he jumped over Donkey Kong’s barrels. In addition, Mario’s name was made after workers in Nintendo’s Washington warehouse had started calling the character “Mario” because he resembled the property’s landlord, a man named Mario Segale. Miyamoto gave Mario a sibling, Luigi. Luigi is also popular and has had many games such as “Luigi’s mansion” and ”New Super Luigi U” which is a spin off of “New super Mario U.” Additionally, he plays many of the games he is in like “Super Mario Bros Wii.”

Fun facts

So now that you know a little about Mario, I will be telling you some fun facts about him. All of these facts come from iMore. Did you know that Mario has had 12 occupations? They were carpenter, plumber, doctor, racer, martial artist, baseball player, soccer player, basketball player, pro golfer, tennis player, construction worker, and Olympic athlete. Another fact is that Miyamoto originally envisioned an ox being Mario’s biggest enemy after being influenced by an animated cartoon called Alakazam the Great. However, fellow designer Takashi Tezuka thought the ox character’s drawings looked more like a turtle. After that, the two worked together to iron out a nefarious turtle-like Koopa leader who would go on to become Bowser. A final fact about Mario is that Mario won world records, the most notable being the longest running video game character.

Why does this matter?

This is important because Mario isn’t just a character, he played a very big role in people’s lives and might even have in yours too. He has had great success and has prospered throughout the years and it seems as if there are no signs of it slowing down. With Mario moving coming soon we will see how he changes over time.