MARIO SAGA

I just recently heard that a new Mario bros game have been released on the wii console and I was like ooOokay… probably because I’ve been seeing Mario on Nintendo consoles ever since time immemorial, I’m not really sure but I even think Mario was created even before I was born. Back when I was on kindergarten (which is about 18 years ago) and I remember having a Mario bros notebook with Mario holding a hammer chasing a ‘star power up’ a ‘green turtle riding a cloud’ (the one that keeps throwing more enemies at you) chasing behind, and a huge ‘power’ written on the background.

A hero sucked through a vortex into to a strange world, challenges countless obstacles, slays the monster, save the princess and the world. – The plot in fewer than 140 characters. Sounds like a common hero tale, but instead of being a knight, you’re an Italian plumber, and instead of a dragon you’ll be fighting a giant turtle, which aside from also being able to breathe out fire, can also pull out a lot of things from his shell, boomerang, bombs, you name it. And the weirder part, you don’t go through a scary gateway to get to this alter dimension, you just swim down the drain, yes the drain, which in real life could only get you to swim with shi…

Now aside from the gloomy Movie, which I vaguely understood and is lacking the candy colour theme of the game, and a television series that begins with real actors playing the part of Mario and Luigi, before being sucked into the pipe lines and then turning into 2d, I really don’t have any Idea of what the story of Mario bros series is. And so using the most powerful research tool known to mankind, namely Google search, I gathered some of the facts about Mario and other things he’s hiding behind his devious looking pixelated moustache.

(And just a reminder, not everything on the internet Is 100 percent true and reliable, so find a website you can trust when doing your school works.)

The birth

In 1980, Nintendo of America (NOA) released Radar Scope, an arcade game they hoped would kickstart a long reign of success. It flopped, leaving Nintendo stuck with 2,000 unsold Radar Scope units. To stay afloat, NOA desperately needed a smash-hit game—and fast. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president and CEO of Nintendo Co., Ltd. at the time, asked staff artist Shigeru Miyamoto to design a new game based on his own ideas. The result was a game entitled Donkey Kong, starring "Jumpman," a portly carpenter clad in red and blue. At first, Miyamoto called him "Mr. Video" because he planned to include the character in every game he made, inspired by the way Alfred Hitchcock appeared in the movies he directed. "Jumpman" did not have his name for very long. However, NOA had to prepare the game for American release, which included naming the characters. As the story goes, they were mulling over what to name Jumpman when the landlord, Mario Segale, arrived at the warehouse, demanding the overdue rent payment. When he left, the staff had a new name for Jumpman: "Mario."


The look

For the most part, Mario looks the way he does today because of 1981's immature graphics technology.

Hat - To avoid the difficulty of having Mario's hair move realistically, Miyamoto gave Mario a hat. Also, in Game Over, Miyamoto admits, "I cannot come up with hairstyles so good."

Moustache - Miyamoto gave Mario a moustache and oversized nose to make Mario's nose more noticeable.

Overalls - Mario's overalls make his arms and arm movements more visible. Mario started out with a blue shirt and red overalls outfit in Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., but the color scheme was switched to a red shirt and blue overalls when Mario Bros. hit the arcades. When Super Mario Bros. came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Mario had his original red overalls, but a brownish shirt. In Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario went back to his second color scheme—red shirt, blue overalls—and has not changed since.

The names

Donkey Kong

Simply put, "Donkey Kong" means "stupid monkey," so forget the silly rumors. Miyamoto got "donkey" from looking up manuke (Japanese for "stupid") in an English dictionary, while "Kong" comes from King Kong, obviously.

Luigi

The American team provided the name "Luigi" as something to go along with "Mario." Afterwards, the Japanese team noticed a happy coincidence: Ruigi means "analogous."

Koopas

The "Koopa" clan comes from "Kuppa," Bowser's Japanese

name. Miyamoto revealed that they were considering naming Bowser either Kuppa, Yukke (Yukka), or Bibinba (Bi Bim Bap), all Korean dishes.

Wario

Wario's name is a combination of Mario and warui, which means "bad" in Japanese.

Waluigi

Nintendo Power magazine Vol. 135 (August 2000 issue) enlightened us with the fact that Waluigi's name "comes from a rearrangement of the word [ijiwaru]—Japanese for 'someone who's bad.'

Here are things you may not know about our favorite video game character Mario:

• Mario and his younger brother Luigi are known as the "Mario Brothers." This means that Mario’s last name is also Mario, so his full name is Mario Mario.

• Mario is voice-acted by Charles Martinet, who crashed the audition for "an Italian plumber from Brooklyn" character.

• Mario’s nemesis is Wario (a combination of “warui”, the Japanese word for bad, and Mario). Similarly, Luigi’s rival is Waluigi. Both are also voiced by Charles Martinet.

• Mario has appeared in over 200 video games so far, has sold over 193 million units of games (all of the Mario series) and even has his own TV cartoon show. Super Mario Bros. 3 alone grossed over $500 million in USA.

• In 2003, Jonathan Mann of California Institute of Arts created The Mario Opera, a rock opera:

• Super Mario Bros. theme music, written by Koji Kondo, is known worldwide. It has inspired countless fan-renditions, including one played by Zack Kim on two guitars (viewed over 4 million times on YouTube!), played by Jean Baudin on 11 strings bass, beatboxed by Greg Patillo on the flute, and played by the Oregon Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra on the rombones.

• Mario is the most famous character in the history of video games, and perhaps is the most famous character ever. In a 1990 poll by Marketing Evaluations, Mario was found to be more popular (and recognizable) among children than Mickey Mouse.

• If you have a friend hold the Select + B buttons from the moment you boot up your NES console to the very end of a complete Super Mario Brothers 2 playthrough, you can laugh at him for wasting his time and his hands will be too cramped to retaliate. Enjoy !