OoT Link is my favourite! Mostly cause OoT was my first introduction to the Zelda franchise! I was never great at video games as a kid but I could at least get myself to Epona which was the coolest part to 7 year old me! XD
Let’s face it: Mario is just as synonymous with video games as Pikachu, Sonic, or ridiculously priced downloadable content. In his panel Plumber’s Log: Through the Years with Mario, Shadow Wolf Z took video game fans on a tour of the life of everyone’s favorite turtle-stomping plumber.
Here are some highlights–and low-lights–of Mario’s history that were covered in the panel.
The character debuted in 1981 as the protagonist in Donkey Kong. Back then, he wasn’t even Mario; he was just known as “Jumpman” (a name that would be more fitting for Luigi). It wasn’t until the original Mario Bros. game a few years later that he would be named…and given a brother.
So, where did “Mario” come from? Video game creators definitely didn’t need to look far for their inspiration: he was named after Mario Segale, who was the landlord–not a plumber, but the landlord–renting the Nintendo company a warehouse outside of Seattle in the early 1980s.
Super Mario Bros. 3, one of the most beloved games in the entire series, also had the absolute best commercial to promote it (despite it showing absolutely nothing about the game).
Mario makes cameo appearances in other Nintendo games, perhaps the most well-known being his role as the boxing ring ref in Punch-Out!!! He has also popped up in NES sports games Golf and Pinball and, if you angle it correctly, in a painting in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
If you were a child of the 80s, you no doubt remember the cringe-worthy Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which combined cartoons based off of Super Mario Bros. and (the North American version of) Super Mario Bros. 2 with low-budget, live-action segments starring wrestling star Captain Lou Albano as Mario and Canadian actor Danny Wells as Luigi.
This show was Oscar material compared to its replacement series: Club Mario. The (thankfully) short-lived series kept the cartoons intact, but replaced live-action Mario and Luigi with “Tommy Treehugger” and “Co M.C.,” two hip-as-far-as-out-of-touch-TV-executives-are-concerned Mario fanatics who spent their days on a rooftop in some random city.
Mario had countless video games. He had several TV series. He even had a movie (which we will never talk about in public). But did you know that he even had his own line of products? At the peak of his popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nintendo licensed their mascot for everything, from a breakfast cereal to mac and cheese to even shampoo.
