Super Mario

About

Super Mario (also known as “Super Mario Brothers” or just Mario) ^[1] is a critically acclaimed video game franchise published 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 arcade game Donkey Kong, released on July 9th, 1981. The side-scroller featured the protagonist “Jumpman,” who attempts to rescue his damsel in distress from a large gorilla named “Donkey Kong” (shown below, left). The game was the designed by Shigeru Miyamoto,^[4] who went on to work on several Super Mario releases. The Jumpman character was named “Mario” after Mario Sengale, 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 breath 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]

Online Presence

Super Mario Bros. Crossover

On April 27th, 2010, the flash game “Super Mario Bros. Crossover” was released on Newgrounds] by game developer Jay Pavlina of Expoding 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

On May 5, 2012, the gaming modification website Stabyourself.net^[12] released Mari0, a free downloadable game combining 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 or 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.”

Hotel Mario

Released in 1994 for the infamous Phillips CD-i game disc, Hotel Mario features Mario and Luigi working together to save the princess from Bowser’s hotels. It was negatively received by gamers due to the horrible controls of the CD-i, the game’s frustrating gameplay and poorly produced cut scenes which are often used in YouTube Poop videos.

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.