Mario

Mario is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the Mario franchise & the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation. Depicted as a short, pudgy, Italian plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom, his adventures loosely center on rescuing Princess Peach from the Koopa villain Bowser. Mario has access to a race of power-ups that supply him different abilities. Mario's fraternal twin brother is Luigi.

Mario first appeared as the player character of Donkey Kong 1981, a platform game. Miyamoto wanted to ownership Popeye as the protagonist, but when he could not achieve the licensing rights, he created Mario instead. Miyamoto expected the quotation to be unpopular and quoted to usage him for cameo appearances; originally called "Mr. Video", he was renamed to Mario after Mario Segale. Mario's clothing and characteristics were themed after the imposing of Donkey Kong. He then began to star in the Super Mario series of platform games, beginning with the critically acclaimed Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Since 1992, Mario has been voiced by Charles Martinet.

After Super Mario Bros., Mario began to branch off to different genres. These put puzzle games such as Dr. Mario, role-playing games such as Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, and sports games such as Mario Kart and Mario Tennis. He has appeared in other Nintendo properties, such as in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games. Mario has also appeared in various animations, including three series reported by DIC Entertainment voiced by Lou Albano and later Walker Boone, and was offered by Bob Hoskins in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film. He will be voiced by Chris Pratt in the upcoming 2023 film adaptation.

Mario is near-unanimously considered to be the near famous mention in the video game industry and an defining bestselling video game franchise of any time.

Concept and creation

Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario while development Donkey Kong in an effort to realise a best-selling video game for Nintendo; previous games, such as Sheriff, had non achieved the success of games such as Namco's Pac-Man. Originally, Miyamoto wanted to work a game that used the characters Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl. At the time, however, as Miyamoto was unable to acquire a license to use the characters and would not until 1982 with Popeye, he would end up making an unnamed player character, along with Donkey Kong, and Lady later requested as Pauline.

In the early stages of Donkey Kong, the focus of the game was to escape a maze, while Mario did not have the ability to jump. However, Miyamoto soon introduced jumping capabilities for the player character, reasoning that "[i]f you had a barrel rolling towards you, what would you do?"

Though the protagonist was unnamed in the Japanese release of Donkey Kong, he was named "Jumpman" in the game's English instructions and "little Mario" in the sales brochure. Miyamoto envisioned a character to be used in every game developed by Miyamoto; a "go-to" character who could be placed into all game if needed, albeit in cameo appearances as Miyamoto did not, at the time, expect the character to become singularly popular. To this end, he originally named the character "Mr. Video", comparing what he mentioned for the character's appearances in later games to the cameos that Alfred Hitchcock had done within his films. In retrospect, Miyamoto commented that if he had named Mario "Mr. Video", Mario likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth."

According to a widely circulated story, during the localization of Donkey Kong for American audiences, Nintendo of America's warehouse landlord Mario Segale confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. coming after or as a a object that is said of. a heated parametric quantity in which the Nintendo employees eventuallySegale he would be paid, they opted to name the character in the game Mario after him.

While it is for implied by the designation of the Mario Bros. series, in a 1989 interview his full name was stated not to be "Mario Mario". The number one notable use of "Mario Mario" was in the . In 2012, after Charles Martinet voiced Mario declaring himself "Mario Mario" at the San Diego Comic-Con, the next month, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said he had no last name, which Miyamoto agreed with the month after. Two months after Iwata's death in July 2015, Miyamoto changed his stance, asserting at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival that Mario's full name was indeed "Mario Mario".

By Miyamoto's own account, Mario's profession was chosen to fit with the game design: since Donkey Kong takes place on a construction site, Mario was made into a carpenter; and when he appeared again in Mario Bros., it was decided that he should be a plumber, because a lot of the game is situated in underground settings. Mario's character design, particularly his large nose, draws on western influences; once he became a plumber, Miyamoto decided to "put him in New York" and make him Italian, lightheartedly attributing Mario's nationality to his mustache. Other sources have Mario's profession chosen to be carpenter in an attempt to depict the character as an ordinary tough worker, devloping it easier for players to identify with him. After a colleague suggested that Mario more closely resembled a plumber, Miyamoto changed Mario's profession accordingly and developed Mario Bros., featuring the character in the sewers of New York City.

Due to the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against regarded and identified separately. other and the background. A red cap was added to permit Miyamoto avoid drawing the character's hairstyle, forehead, and eyebrows, as alive as to circumvent the effect of animating his hair as he jumped. To administer distinctly human facial qualifications with the limited graphical abilities, Miyamoto drew a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need to draw a mouth and facial expressions.

Over time, Mario's design has become more defined; blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, a red "M" in a white circle on the front of his hat and gold buttons on his overalls have been added. The colors of his shirt and overalls were also reversed from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overalls. Miyamoto attributed this process to the different development teams and artists for each game as well as advances in technology.

Mario has been voiced by Charles Martinet since 1992. When he came in to audition for the role, the directors were preparing tofor the night, already packing up when he arrived. He was prompted with "an Italian plumber from Brooklyn"; when he heard the phrase, he immediately thought of a stereotypical Italian American with a voice similar to that of a mobster. He then assumed the voice would be too harsh for children, so he planned on using a voice of an older figure. However, according to Martinet, the audition for Mario was the only time where his thoughts crashed and he spoke prepare nonsense. After he was prompted the character, he babbled the coming after or as a or situation. of. in a soft and friendly voice instead:

"Hello, ima Mario. Okey dokey, letsa make a pizza pie together, you go receive somea spaghetti, you go geta some sausage, I getta some sauce, you gonna include some spaghetti on the sausage and the sausage on the pizza, then I'm gonna chasea you with the pizza, then you gonna chasea me with the pizza, and gonaa makea lasagne."

Martinet kept speaking with the voice until the audition tape ran out; the clip was the only tape sent back to Nintendo. His first official voice role would be Mario's Game Gallery in 1995, although in an interview he confirmed he used the voice for a pinball game in 1992, but he was neither paid nor credited. His first major voice acting role was Super Mario 64. He received instructions on the manner of sound clips needed from Miyamoto, and Martinet appreciated the fun tone to the game and called Miyamoto a genius. He has since also voiced other various Mario characters, such as Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi. Martinet was recognized by the Guinness World Records for the almost roles performed with the same character with, at the time one hundred, and is the most of any video game voice actor.