Super Mario

About

Super Mario (also known as Super Mario Brothers or just Mario) ^[1] is a popular video game franchise published by Nintendo since 1983. Mario, a plumber, is the main character of the series, and also acts as the mascot of Nintendo^[2].

History

Arcade Era

In 1981, Nintendo released the arcade game, Donkey Kong ^[3]. The game was a single screen game with the player controlling “Jumpman” attempting to avoid being hit by barrels that the antagonist, Donkey Kong threw at him whist trying to reach Kong to rescue his damsel in distress. The game was the designed by then first time video game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto ^[4] who would work on all major Mario games from that point. During the design stages of the games promotional media the playable character Jumpman (who was a carpenter rather then a plumber) was named “Mario” after the owner of the warehouses Nintendo was renting at the time, Mario Segale.

A year later in 1982, Nintendo published a sequel to Donkey Kong titled, Donkey Kong Jr. ^[5] The game featured the player playing as Donkey Kong Jr. attempting the rescue his father, Donkey Kong from Mario by climbing vines whist avoiding various traps.

Another year later, Nintendo released Mario Bros. ^[6] another arcade single screen video game that featured Mario (Now a Italian-American plumber) and his brother Luigi attempting to exterminate creatures emerging from pipes by knocking them on their heads and kicking them.

Console Era

Mario’s first original console video game came in 1985 with the classic launch title for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Mario Bros. ^[7] The game was one of the first console side-scrollers with a panning screen. The game featured 8 worlds with 4 levels for each. The main antagonist is Bowser ^[8], a large koopa with a spiked shell that can breath fire whom had kidnapped Princess Peach ^[9], Mario’s love interest. The 4th level was of Bowser’s castle at the end of which Mario battles a clone of Bowser with the last being the real Bowser. The game featured power ups such as the Mushroom which would increase Mario’s size and allow him to take an extra hit without being killed and the fire-flower which allowed Mario to shoot fireballs out of his hand allowing him to kill enemies at a range.

Mario has since been in hundreds of games varying in genre, but most console releases keep to Mario’s basic tropes of being able to jump on enemies to kill them and various power ups.

Main Console Titles

Internet Relevance

Mario has dominated a large portion of the internet. There are many Super Mario flash games across the web. In terms of Internet memes, there are several memes that have originated from games and other media featuring the famous plumber, i.e Super Mario Super Show, Hotel Mario, Super Mario Bros.. Mario is also claimed to be ‘overrated’ by several users of the Internet. Nevertheless, the plumber has made a significant effect on the web.

Fanart

Super Mario Bros. Crossover

On April 27, 2010, The Flash game “Super Mario Bros. Crossover” was released on Newgrounds^[10]. The game took the original Super Mario Bros. game and edited it to include other well-known characters, such as Samus and Mega Man. The game had strong positive reception, and was therefore moved to explodingrabbit.com^[11] to be updated. Many characters have since been added.

Mari0

In May 5, 2012, Stabyourself.net made a cross-over with Portal and the origanal Super Mario Bros. The Game mash-up was called Mari0^[12]. (Mario with the “o” replaced by a zero.) The game featured that players can change Mario’s apperence and able to put on up to 30 hats on Mario. The game also allows Mario to go to the Portal testing rooms and go to other user’s levels. The game incudes a Level Creator that allows players to make their own Mario/Portal levels. Mari0 brings back the old Super Mario Bros. but with a modern twist.

Related Memes

But Our Princess Is In Another Castle!

The famous phrase from the original Super Mario Bros. game has led to a meme of the same name that covers several examples of image macros, as well as images and videos in general. It usually places Mario in a humorous situation.

Mama Luigi

Mama Luigi is a series of YouTube Poop videos that use clips from the 1991 TV series “Super Mario World”. The clips are from the final episode of the series, also called “Mama Luigi”.

Hotel Mario

Released in 1994 for the infamous Phillips CD-i game disc, Hotel Mario is a game that involves Mario and Luigi having to save the princess from Bowser’s hotels. It was negatively received by gamers due to the horrible controls of the CD-i, the concept of the game having to close doors and most famous of all, its crappy cutscenes, which are now one of the most commonly used materials in YouTube Poop. A famous quote from the game was: " I hope she made Lotsa Spaghetti! ".

Weegee and Malleo

Weegee is a photoshop meme based on the avatar of Luigi found in the DOS version of the educational video game “Mario Is Missing!” Placing Weegee in an image creates awkward situations and a sense of discomfort. He is also often a subject of facebombs, as his stare will turn anyone into a replica of himself. Weegee’s counterpart is Malleo, a Mario version of Weegee. While Weegee is known to kill and turn other people into him with his stares, Malleo stares at somebody and says “Fire Flower”, then that person turns into a fire flower.

Automatic Mario

Automatic Mario is a subgenre of remix videos that emulate popular songs and soundtracks through gameplay footage of customized level stages in Super Mario World. Mostly created by fans using Super Mario ROM editors, musical compositions in Auto-Mario videos are carefully prearranged by the architectural design of each level and thus rarely requires any input from the player. However, there are other types of Super Mario MOD levels that can be played manually or semi-manually with musical accompaniments.

Search Interest

External References