Blockbuster.co.uk - Game Legends: Mario

To celebrate the impending release of sensational side-scroller New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games on Nintendo DS and Wii; both available to pre-order now at Blockbuster.co.uk, Marshall Julius presents a trivial history of the man they call Mario.

Nintendo's mighty mascot, Mario is without question the most famous character in the history of videogames. The star of the best-selling videogame series of all time, Mario has shifted more than 201 million units of his adventures around the world. In the Nineties, a national survey found that Mario was more recognisable to American children than Mickey Mouse, while in 2008, an additional survey declared that Mario was the most popular videogame character in Japan.

Originally from Brooklyn, Mario Mario is a short, stocky, Italian American plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom with his younger, taller, thinner brother Luigi Mario, also a plumber. Rather than spend any time plumbing, though, Mario spends the majority of his waking hours rescuing Princess Peach from the clutches of dastardly dino Bowser, King of the Koopas. From time to time, he is also called upon to defeat evil counterpart Wario and a barrel-tossing ape called Donkey Kong, occasionally and ably assisted by his kid brother and an adorable green dinosaur called Yoshi.

Born November 16, 1952 in Kyoto, Japan, Shigeru Miyamoto is a videogame designer and producer who has been called both "the Walt Disney of electronic gaming" and the "father of modern videogames" for helping to create the Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, Pikmin and Nintendogs franchises. Shortly after his 54th birthday in 2006, Miyamoto was celebrated in Time Asia's 60 Years of Asian Heroes, alongside the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Hayao Miyazaki and Bruce Lee. "Videogames are bad for you?" asks Miyamoto incredulously. "That's what they said about Rock 'n' Roll."

Miyamoto's enduring creation first appeared in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong as a carpenter called Jumpman, better known in Japan as Mr Video Game. When the time came to adapt the game for English-speaking players, Nintendo opted to name the character after their grumpy warehouse landlord, Mario Segale.

Mario's design was entirely driven by the graphical limitations of early Eighties' arcade hardware. "I didn't have any special theory behind the making of Mario," reveals Miyamoto. "He simply evolved over the development process. We had to draw Mario as a small character and at the same time, we had to make him look human. To do that, we needed to draw a distinctive feature for him, such as giving him a big nose. As it's difficult to show facial expressions with small characters, we gave him a moustache so that we didn't need to draw a mouth. To avoid having to animate his hair as he jumped, we gave him a cap. Since we were trying to create something distinctive in the character, we gave him big hands. Finally, we dressed him in bright red overalls and a blue shirt so that he would contrast against the background, adding white gloves to distinguish his arms as they swung back and forth."

Mario's adventures took a bionic evolutionary leap in 1985 with the release of best-selling platform classic Super Mario Bros., created for the Nintendo Entertainment System. "It started with a simple idea," remembers Miyamoto. "I wondered what it would be like to have a character who bounced around. And the background had to be a clear, blue sky. I took that idea to a programmer, and we started working on it. Mario ended up being too big, so we shrank him. Then we thought, 'What if he can grow and shrink? How would he do that? It would have to be a magic mushroom! Where would a mushroom grow? In a forest.' We thought of giving Mario a girlfriend, and then we started talking about Alice in Wonderland. Everything we did grew out of those early thoughts and conversations."

Given that Mario was originally known as Jumpman, obviously he's big on leaping. In the early days, he'd jump to avoid barrels and other obstacles, to access areas both obvious and hidden, and to stomp without mercy on the heads of enemies. Over the years Mario's jumping-related abilities have grown considerably. 1990's Super Mario World, for the Super NES, gave Mario the ability to spin-jump, allowing the plumber to break blocks beneath him. 1996's Super Mario 64, for the mighty Nintendo 64, saw Mario jumping higher with each consecutive jump, performing back-flips, sideways somersaults, a mighty ground pound and a super-useful wall kick that propelled the plumber upwards by kicking off walls. Without these skills, Mario would never have been able to survive his greatest adventures: 2002's Super Mario Sunshine, for the Nintendo Gamecube, 2007's Super Mario Galaxy, for the Nintendo Wii, and, available to pre-order now from Blockbuster.co.uk, New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Since his creation almost 30 years ago, Mario has established himself as a pop culture icon, having starred in numerous comic books, commercials, television shows and even a live-action feature, 1993's Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi and Dennis Hopper as King Koopa. Mario is also at the heart of a merchandising bonanza, having appeared in candy form, as plush toys and action figures, on t-shirts and cereal boxes, badges, shampoo bottles and lunch boxes. In 2005, Mario even had an opera written about him, by Jonathan Mann, who performed The Mario Opera at the California Institute of the Arts.

Mario has been voiced by actor Charles Martinet since 1995. "They were searching for Mario's voice and I was persuaded by a friend to crash the audition," says Martinet. "I walked in and the guy had already put his camera away, but I asked if I could have a turn and he impatiently agreed. He said, 'You're an Italian American plumber from Brooklyn, just talk about whatever you want until you're done. I'd originally intended to do a more traditional Brooklyn voice but I thought maybe Mario should be more friendly. So I opened my mouth and out came the exact same voice that you hear today - It's a-me, Mario! It's a profound honour to play the part," adds Martinet, who also voices Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Toadsworth, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in both the English and Japanese-language versions of the games. "Mario brings out the wondrous, happy child in all of us. It's humbling to be a part of that."

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