Mario (character)

Mario is the title character of a popular series of video games developed by Japanese electronic manufacturer Nintendo. Since Mario's creation in 1981, millions of players have guided the mustachioed plumber through virtual obstacle courses designed to test their hand-eye coordination and justify the character's improbable acrobatics. In the process, Mario has become a popular culture icon and Nintendo's most treasured intellectual property, inspiring television shows, film, comics, and a long line of licensed merchandise. In 1990 a Fortune magazine columnist judiciously asserted, "Just as Mickey Mouse helped pioneer the animated picture in the 1930s, so might Mario help establish a new medium called interactive entertainment."

Creating a cultural icon

Mario debuted in Shigeru Miyamoto's first game, the arcade hit Donkey Kong, as a carpenter named Jumpman. Jumpman's design, little changed since, was a function of technological limitations. A mouth wasn't visible enough, so the character got a mustache; the programmers couldn't animate hair, so he wore a cap; and to make his arm movements visible, he needed white gloves and colored overalls. The character was dubbed Mario by colleagues who said the nose, mustache, and overalls resembled the Italian caretaker of the small New York hotel where Nintendo employees stayed in the United States.

The 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. was the first to feature Mario as the title character and introduced his brother Luigi. And, owing to a colleague's comment on Mario's appearance, Miyamoto gave his character a new occupation: The Mario brothers became plumbers, whose jobs are to exterminate the various pests that come out of pipes—pipes that became the trademark method of travel in subsequent Mario titles.

Later that year Nintendo released their first home console in Japan: the Family Computer, or Famicom. Evaluating Famicom operations, company president Hiroshi Yamauchi realized that a video game system, like any other computer, is only as useful as the software available for it. Yamauchi prioritized the home console market and in 1984 he assigned Miyamoto to lead R&D 4, a new development group within Nintendo. Their assignment was to create the most imaginative video games ever, and one of their first titles took Donkey Kong's plucky hero and placed him in a new world.

Game design

Super Mario Bros. began with a simple idea: Miyamoto wondered what it would be like to have a character bouncing around under the background of a clear, blue sky. He took his idea to a programmer, and they started working on it. Kazuaki Morita, one of the game's three programmers, described the working relationship between its designer and programmers: "In the NES era, the designer and programmer would sit side by side, constantly discussing what the game design should be, and the programmer would actually try to program the design right there on the spot while the designer watched."

At the time, division of labor was an emerging concept in the video game industry. Before Donkey Kong, programmers were responsible for creating every element of their games—the same person who created the concept was also responsible for the coding, the art, and even the sound effects. But Miyamoto is not a programmer, he is an artist. As one journalist tells it, "the games he designed were so different from everything else simply because he didn't really know what he wasn't supposed to do. That left him free to explore, and exploration soon became a part of his games." Super Mario Bros.'s progression is linear, but its hidden items, rooms, and shortcuts encourage exploration and experimentation.

The game's scope and sophistication were unprecedented. Pong, one of the earliest commercial video games, is set on a single screen; Super Mario Bros. spans more than 200 screens. The seamless transition between these "screens" as Mario advances from left to right gives the game its smooth "side-scrolling" style of play. The full playing field isn’t immediately visible; it only unfolds with progress, fostering a sense of discovery and a spontaneity that’s complemented by the game’s whimsical architecture: bricks and platforms hang suspended in mid-air, green sewer pipes protrude from the ground, bottomless pits space the bedrock. Guiding Mario around, over, and under these obstacles and conquering the game’s colorful villains—which include marching mushrooms, flying turtles, and man-eating plants—are the primary challenges. These challenges require quick reflexes and considerable hand-eye coordination but are alleviated by the precise control afforded to the player. The ability to alter the distance, height, and hook of the character’s jump is one of the game’s main innovations.

As large as the game is, its objective is as simple as Donkey Kong's: Players control Mario or his brother Luigi in their quest across the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue its missing monarch, Princess Toadstool. The rules are likewise straightforward: Complete all four levels (linear, self-contained courses) of all eight worlds (collections of levels) within each level's 300-second time limit and with the player's allotted number of continues. The fourth level of each world is a castle, and at the end of every castle is Mario's nemesis and Princess Toadstool's kidnapper, Bowser, a fire-breathing dragon reminiscent of Godzilla.

Before the advent of timesaving tools like Character Generator Computer Aided Design, animating Mario’s movements was a laborious process. Miyamoto had to paint each character; the colors in the painting were assigned numbers and programmers input the numbers into a computer. He also showed programmers not only how a character looked but also how it moved and what special traits it had. Line of code by line, the programmers reproduced Miyamoto’s designs as faithfully as they could. During this process the team developed programming techniques allowing them to create a larger character than they thought possible, so they planned to make the game so that the player was always "Super" Mario but eventually conceived a magic mushroom to double the character's size, an idea Miyamoto attributed to Alice in Wonderland. Other "power-ups" were added to aid Mario in his quest: a flower that allows him to shoot fireballs, a flashing star that imparts temporary invincibility, and a green "1-UP" mushroom that rewards the player with an extra continue.

Synchronizing game music with game control

When Mario’s star-induced invulnerability is wearing off, the music fades out; when the time limit is critically low, it speeds up. The game's composer, Koji Kondo, believes that Mario's music should enhance or highlight the action on the screen. Because Mario is an action game, Kondo said, "it’s vital that the music sync up directly with game control." Kondo works closely with the rest of the development team to achieve his envisioned synthesis, a sharp contrast to the scoring procedures of many other big-budget titles whose developers usually hire an outside contractor to create the background accompaniment. Kondo revealed that the famous main theme of Super Mario Bros., a lilting, Latin-flavored tune which counts Paul and Linda McCartney among its admirers, initially underwent significant changes to match new developments in its design.

And so, "like most classic toys, Super Mario Bros. was based around a handful of small elements joined with an elegance that allowed the sum to far exceed the components." The formula was established, and it was a recipe for success.

A formula for success

Super Mario Bros. premiered in Japan in September 1985; by the end of December, Nintendo had produced 2 million units of the game. Its phenomenal sales helped Nintendo command over 90% of the Japanese video game market. Soon afterward the company's nascent North American branch packaged Super Mario Bros. with its game consoles to test its product in New York City; the system's stunning success prompted its nationwide distribution. The NES, along with Super Mario Bros., is credited with reviving the moribund North American video game industry after the crash of 1983, a crash blamed on oversupply and poor quality control.

Nintendo quickly capitalized on the game's success, using its design as a template for countless sequels. Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in Japan less than a year after the original's debut; Nintendo of America employees personally disliked the game, finding it frustratingly difficult and otherwise virtually identical in gameplay to Super Mario Bros. Consequently, another Nintendo game unrelated to Mario, titled Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, was modified to use sprites and music from the Mario series and rebranded as Super Mario Bros. 2 for its North American release. Although the game wasn't essentially Mario, few players knew the difference, and the title, regarded only in retrospect as the black sheep of the franchise, went on to sell 10 million copies in the United States alone.

A third installment, Super Mario Bros. 3, was released in Japan in late 1988. It shipped to North America in 1990 and Europe in 1991; its shipment was preceded by the theatrical release of a film, called The Wizard, described by an IGN editor as "a 90-minute commercial for the game." For American and European players, Super Mario Bros. 3 was a return to the style of the original but on a far grander scale, with more power-ups, more foes, more secrets, and more levels, the last of which are connected by worlds with cohesive themes: a desert world, a water world, and so on. The game was a smashing success, both critically and commercially. By 1993 the game had sold 4 million units in Japan and 7 million in the United States, earning Nintendo over US$500 million in revenue. Author David Sheff commented that, in music industry terms, the game went platinum eleven times.

The series smoothly transitioned to the NES's successor, the Super Nintendo, with Super Mario World. Like the original, Super Mario World was packaged along with its platform and aptly demonstrated the console's technological capabilities: Mario hopped and bopped to vast array of rotating and distorting colors and stereo sound; Mario also got a dinosaur companion named Yoshi. Like its predecessors, Super Mario World was extremely successful, and Yoshi went on to star in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. For its clever puzzles and uniquely soft, pastel-like graphics, Yoshi's Island drew great critical acclaim, but its popularity was eclipsed by a growing interest in the three-dimensional graphics of video games for Sony's first hardware entry into the market, the PlayStation, and Nintendo's own Donkey Kong Country.

Nintendo was well aware of the market's impending adoption of 3D graphics as a de facto standard, and during Yoshi's Island's development, the company's hardware division was busy creating a new console to compete with the PlayStation, one capable of displaying three-dimensional, 64-bit graphics, that became the Nintendo 64. Parallel to the console's development, they were making another Mario game, one to launch the system off of, and one which added a third dimension to the illustrious franchise: Super Mario 64.

Exploring a new dimension

The Nintendo 64 game pad's analog joystick, essential to Mario 64's fluid, nuanced control, is prominently positioned in the pad's center.

Nintendo's hardware and software divisions closely collaborated on the console's design, particularly its controller. The three-handled controller was, at Miyamoto's request, tweaked to perfectly suit Mario 64's gameplay. Its most notable inclusion was an analog joystick, whose primary advantage over a directional pad is the ability to detect degrees of movement. Depending on how hard players push the stick in one direction, Mario will either tiptoe, walk, or run. The development team prioritized the character's movements, and before creating the levels they tested and refined Mario's animations on a simple grid ad nauseum. In awarding Edge magazine's first perfect score to Mario 64, the reviewer remarked, "the moment the game hands control of Mario over to the player, an experience of discovery begins....the temptation to simply toy with the controls without achieving anything in particular is overwhelming."

In the open courtyard where Mario 64 begins, players are introduced to a second interface issue that confronted the game's developers: camera control, or perspective. 2D games are exempt from this complexity as the screen moves along only one or two axes, and before Mario 64, 3D games circumvented the problem by using fixed (Resident Evil) or first-person (Doom) perspectives. These arrangements, however, suited neither the game's large, open worlds nor its fast-paced, run-and-jump style of play. Miyamoto's team labored to create an accommodating camera; the viewing angle was optimized for each area yet allowed for complete user control. However, maneuvering a video game character in 3D space presents an inherent challenge. One commentator pointed out that the third dimension makes jumps much harder to estimate; players might need to study the situation from several angles to properly aim and time a difficult leap. To balance the difficulty, Mario was given an arsenal of acrobatics that would make an Olympic gymnast blush: somersaults, back-flips, punches, and sweep-kicks, to name a few, and a generously sized "health meter" (a symbolic representation of how much damage a character can withstand) replaced the less forgiving rules of the game's predecessors.

The added dimension necessarily altered not only the series's mechanics, but also its formula. Fully three-dimensional planes are non-linear by definition; thus, it is a more difficult and seemingly arbitrary pursuit to define an end in 3D games than in side-scrolling games. The goal in Mario 64 was no longer simply to reach the end of a level; levels instead became settings for multiple objectives whose common goal is the acquisition of "power stars." Objective-based game design naturally involves more exploration and puzzles, so time limits—a series staple—were removed.

Mario 64's release—and, by extension, the Nintendo 64's launch—was delayed twice because Miyamoto wanted to further tweak his magnum opus. But the delay was apparently vindicated: Mario 64 is believed to be as revolutionary and important for 3D game design as the original was for 2D game design. Early Playstation games had merely dabbled in 3D and none had truly broken so much ground. According to GameSpot, Mario 64 "basically set the standards for how 3D space would be navigated within video games." The game was the flagship launch title for the Nintendo 64; Nintendo banked on the game to sell its new box, and their hopes were rewarded as Mario 64 went on to sell eleven million copies.

But, in some ways, Mario 64's success is paradoxical: Three alleged reasons for the Nintendo 64's failure—its delay to market, its controller's nonstandard design, and its cartridge media format—can be attributed to Mario 64's creation. Nintendo sought to correct these mistakes with their next system, the GameCube, but their efforts came up short as the system finished behind Microsoft's XBox and Sony's PlayStation 2 in the so-called console wars. The platform's companion Mario title, Super Mario Sunshine, was widely believed to be a disappointment, and the game sold only half that of Mario 64.

Nintendo's journey to regain market leadership began with their handheld DS system, whose sales have been both driven and partly sustained by New Super Mario Bros., and continued with the unconventional Wii, host platform of Super Mario Galaxy. Mario Galaxy was touted by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime as the true successor to Mario 64, implicit but official acknowledgment that Mario Sunshine failed to meet the series's high standards. Fils-Aime's extolment was warranted: By measure of review aggregates, Mario Galaxy is the third-best critically received game of all time.

Both titles have seen their success rewarded with direct sequels: New Super Mario Bros. Wii was released in 2009 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be released in 2010.

Derivative titles

New Super Mario Bros. Wii's 2009 release was accompanied by no fewer than five other Mario titles. The franchise is so immense and diverse that it is easy to get lost in its many sequels, spin-offs, and derivatives. Many of these titles are outsourced to smaller (and often less talented) game developers, earning Nintendo a reputation for milking its mascot. Nintendo is demonstrably indifferent to their acquisition of said reputation: The series's derivative titles increase in number yearly and include Dr. Mario, Super Mario Kart, multiple series of role-paying games (Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga), a long line of Mario sports games (including golf, tennis, soccer, baseball, basketball), and Mario Party.

Other characters in the series, such as Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Wario have also had their own spin-off series, including games such as Wario Land, Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country; some of these series also have their own spin-offs, such as Diddy Kong Racing and the WarioWare series.

In retrospect

Super Mario Bros. did more than sell Nintendo's new system—it established the most lucrative video game franchise and created a new generation of video game fans. There were Mario dolls, magazines, actions figures, cereal, clothing, a TV show, and movies. He has also inspired television shows, film, comics, and a line of licensed merchandise.

Although sidescrolling games existed before Super Mario Bros.—Atari's Pitfall!, for example—never had they been done so proficiently or on such a grand scale. And although platforming had been done in three dimensions, it hadn't been done in the third-person perspective and with full 3D movement.