About

Super Mario (also known as "Super Mario Brothers" or just Mario) ^[1] is a critically acclaimed video game franchise developed by Nintendo. The games typically feature Nintendo's mascot Mario and his brother Luigi as playable characters that venture through different areas in the fictional land known as the "Mushroom Kingdom."

History

Arcade Era

The character Mario made his debut in the 1981 side-scroller arcade game Donkey Kong, in which the protagonist "Jumpman" attempts to rescue a damsel in distress from a large gorilla named "Donkey Kong" (shown below, left). The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto,^[4] who went on to work on several Super Mario releases. The Jumpman character was named “Mario” after Mario Segale, the owner of several warehouses once rented by Nintendo.

In 1982, Nintendo released a sequel titled "Donkey Kong Jr,"^[5] in which the player controls a young gorilla attempting to rescue Donkey Kong from Mario by climbing vines and avoiding various traps (shown above, right). On June 1st, 1983, Nintendo released Mario Bros.,^[6] another arcade game that featured Mario and his brother Luigi as Italian plumbers attempting to exterminate creatures emerging from pipes by jumping on their heads and kicking them.

Console Era

On September 13th, 1985, the game Super Mario Bros.^[7] was released with the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) 8-bit video game console. The game was one of the first console side-scrollers with a panning screen and featured 8 worlds with 4 levels in each. The main antagonist is Bowser,^[8] a large snapping turtle with a spiked shell that can breathe fire and repeatedly kidnaps Mario's love interest, Princess Peach.^[9] The game features power-ups such as a mushroom that increases Mario's size and allows him to take an extra hit without being killed and the fire-flower which gives Mario the ability to shoot fireballs. Mario has since made an appearance in over 200 video games.^[13]

Spin-Offs

Mario Kart

Mario Kart is a multiplayer go-kart racing video game series which launched in 1992 with the game Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Over the next decade, seven additional titles in the spin-off series were released on a variety of Nintendo consoles.

Hotel Mario

Hotel Mario was a poorly-received game made for the Philips CD-I console in 1994 which is known for its cartoon cut scenes featuring Mario and Luigi. Many clips from the game have been featured in parody and YouTube poop videos online.

Mario Maker

At the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Nintendo released an announcement trailer for the Super Mario level creation and sharing game Mario Maker for the Wii U console (shown below). The sandbox game would allow players to edit and create their own levels for the original 8-bit Super Mario Bros. or the 3D Super Mario Brothers U.

Online Presence

On August 12th, 2005, the Mario Wiki^[17] was created, gathering more than 15,000 entries over the next decade. On May 31st, 2011, a Facebook^[16] page titled "Super Mario" was launched, which garnered upwards of 1.9 million likes over the next three years. Sites that allow viewers to play Flash versions of Super Mario games include MarioGames.be,^[18] Free Mario^[19] and Full Screen Mario.^[20]

Fandom

Several fanmade websites dedicated to news and information regarding the Super Mario franchise have been created, including Mario Fan Games Galaxy,^[21] The Mushroom Kingdom,^[22] Mario Universe^[23] and Super Mario Bros. HQ.^[24] Additionally, many Super Mario single topic blogs have launched on Tumblr, including Super Mario Brothers,^[25] Fuck Yeah Super Mario^[26] and Supper Mario Broth.^[27]

0.5x A Presses

SM64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x A Presses is a video uploaded by the Super Mario 64 glitch exploiter pannenkoek2012, where he obtains one of the game’s stars through tool-assisted superplay (TAS). After the narrated version of the video was released, it went viral on 4chan‘s video game board /v/ due to the complex nature of its analysis, as well as the narrator’s peculiar wordings and phrasings, most notably “But First, We Need to Talk About Parallel Universes”.

Super Mario World Big Boo Secret

On January 9th, 2017, the Super Mario Broth Tumblr^[29] page posted a previously undiscovered secret in the 1990 game Super Mario World, allowing players to easily defeat Big Boo enemies by sliding into them (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post gained over 3,300 notes.

The following day, a thread was created by NeoGAF Forums^[28] member DrFunk highlighting a GIF of the slide, to which many expressed surprise that it took so many years to discover the secret move. Additional GIFs of Mario defeating other enemies with the move were also posted in the thread, including a giant bubble and buzzsaw (shown below). On January 11th, Twitter created a Moments page for tweets reacting to secret move.^[31]

Fanmade Games

Supra Mayro Bross

Supra Mayro Bross is a series of Flash games made by Facepunch Forums^[1] user Eric95, which feature MS Paint-style Super Mario Brothers games with jarring electric guitar renditions of the theme song (shown below).

Kaizo Mario

Kaizo Mario is a fanmade Japanese ROM hack of the Super Nintendo game Super Mario World, known for its exceptionally difficult level design. Levels are typically completed in Let's Play videos by using a Super Nintendo emulator's "save state" ability to load specific points during a level's completion.

Super Mario Bros. Crossover

Super Mario Bros. Crossover is a Flash game released on Newgrounds^[10] in 2010 by game developer Jay Pavlina of Exploding Rabbit.^[15] The game modified the original Super Mario Bros. to include other well-known video game characters, including Samus, Mega Man, Link and Simon Belmont.

Mari0

Mari0 is a free downloadable game by the gaming modification website Stabyourself.net^[12] which combines elements from Portal with the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. The game allows players to use portal guns to navigate levels in the 2D side scroller game and use a level creator to make their own custom games.

Fanart

Mario has often been the subject of fanarts online, with over 148,000 image uploads on the art-sharing website DeviantArt.^[14]

Related Memes

But Our Princess Is In Another Castle!

The phrase "but our princess is in another castle" comes from the original NES Super Mario Bros. game. It has been used to caption image macros and inspired the creation of the snowclone "Sorry X, but your Y is in another Z."

Mama Luigi

Mama Luigi is a series of YouTube Poop videos featuring clips from the final episode of the 1991 television series "Super Mario World".

Weegee and Malleo

Weegee is a photoshop meme based on the avatar of Luigi in the DOS version of the educational video game "Mario Is Missing!" Edited images typically place Weegee in an awkward situation to add a sense of discomfort or use to create a facebomb. Weegee's counterpart is Malleo, a Mario version of Weegee.

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.

Creepy Mario

Creepy Mario is an exploitable photoshop meme featuring a cutout image of a man dressed in a Mario costume placed in the background of other base images to appear sinister, intimidating or perverted.

Mario Paint Songs

Mario Paint songs are musical compositions created by individuals using Mario Music Composer, an audio-editing tool included in the Super Nintendo game Mario Paint. Recordings of original compositions are often uploaded to video-sharing sites like YouTube and Nico Nico Douga.

Luigi's Death Stare

Luigi’s Death Stare refers to the odd facial expressions worn by the character of Luigi during gameplay in the eighth installment of Nintendo’s Mario Kart franchise. Upon the release of the game in late May 2014, the character’s creepy gaze quickly became the butt of many jokes and parodies among the fans of Mario Kart.

Western Show

Western Show on Super Mario World (Japanese: スーパーマリオでウエスタンショー) is a vocal remix song inspired by the "Overworld Theme" featured in the 1990 Super Nintendo video game Super Mario World. In between 2008, the song gained notoriety on the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga (NND) and spawned many fanart illustrations as well as hand-drawn animation videos.

Real Time Mario

Real Time Mario, also referred to as "Mario’s Head," is Mario's disembodied head from the PC game Mario Teaches Typing that became a prominent subject in YouTube Poop and YTPMVs in 2007.

Bomb-Omb Battlefield MADs

Bob-Omb Battlefield MADs are a series of MAD videos sampling a remixed version of the song "Bomb-Omb Battfield" from the Nintendo 64 game Super Mario 64.

Puzzle Plank Galaxy MADs

Puzzle Plank Galaxy MADs (Japanese: かくざいもくざいギャラクシー, Kakuzai Mokuzai Galaxy) refer to a series of remix videos utilizing the audio track “Square Timber” in Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Mario's Castle Calamity

Mario’s Castle Calamity is a series of animations featuring Mario's (or other Super Mario characters) failing to destroy a castle using a variety of comical methods.

Search Interest

External References