35 thoughts about Mario on Super Mario’s 35th anniversary
Almost exactly 35 years ago, Super Mario Bros., the iconic video game from Nintendo, debuted making a high-jumping plumber named Mario the Japanese video game company’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse.
Back in 1985, Super Mario Bros. was revelatory. The game, which popularized Nintendo’s first home console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, played like a challenging, dreamlike cartoon that scrolled across a TV screen. Players controlled Mario, making him run, jump or sometimes swim through levels filled with giant mushrooms, menacing turtles and other strange obstacles. It was a tough game, but not too tough to discourage its avid players from giving it another try. And another. And another.
A sequel (which has its own fascinating history) followed. And another. And another.
The latest Mario game, Super Mario Bros. 35, which was released Thursday for the Nintendo Switch, lets 35 people play the original Super Mario Bros. simultaneously, each vying to be the last Mario standing. It’s sort of Super Mario meets Fortnite.
Here are some things to consider about the overachieving plumber.
1First,
it is Super Mario Bros. that’s 35, not Mario. He’s 39. Mario debuted in 1981 in another famous Nintendo game, Donkey Kong.
2In
the early years of video games, characters were defined less by who they were than by what they could do. Pac-Man gobbled dots and Mario jumped. In fact, before the creators of Donkey Kong called him Mario, they called him “jumpman.”
3Mario
is so famous that even his brother, Luigi (who was playable in Super Mario Bros. in two-player mode), is a superstar.
4It’s
unclear what Mario’s last name is.
5There’s
also Wario, a sort of evil Mario, relation unknown.
6There’s
even a Waluigi. He’s starred in nothing. 7As
modern games rely less on mascot characters, Mario stands out as a relic.
8Even
Nintendo doesn’t make many characters these days. They’re busy capitalizing on old ones.
9The
Super Mario Bros. theme music, from composer Koji Kondo, might be the most recognizable tune in gaming.
10The
essence of the entire Super Mario Bros. gaming experience can be understood through the arc of a jump: the ascent for discovery, the descent for conquest. The original game’s first delightful discovery comes in its opening seconds, when the player makes Mario jump and bonk his head into a floating block.
11Mario’s
reputation as an enthusiastic jumper has allowed Nintendo to morph him into an avatar of exuberance. He stars in a host of spinoff games, each with a cartoonish approach to its genre.
12There’s
even a line of Mario games involving over-the-top
takes on the Olympics.
13T
he color f ul, happy vibe of Mario games has sometimes put Nintendo out of step with gaming trends. In 2003, the hottest gaming franchise was Grand Theft Auto, which gave players the ability to steal cars and kill just about anyone, including prostitutes. Cue George Harrison, a former executive at Nintendo, awkwardly defending his brand at a news conference: “Mario will never start shooting hookers.”
14Mario’s
cheerfulness remains irrepressible. These days, Mario and Grand Theft Auto can sit side by side in their popularity.
15Ma
r io ’ s sup e r b strangeness also survives. The initial dreamlike quality of his game worlds extends to modern Mario sequels.
16If
you think this Mario stuff is bizarre, you’re in good company. In 2012, a New York Times copy editor asked me to clarify why Super Mario collects coins. To ... get them? To score a free life after every 100th coin? Because the designers put the coins in the games to guide players through the levels?
17The
original Super Mario Bros. contains what might be the most famous video game shortcut: an intentional exploit in which Mario can break through the ceiling of the game’s first underground level and enter pipes that lead to later portions of the game.
18There
are two major styles of Mario games. The so- called 2D games feature a Mario who runs across the screen from left to right. The revolutionary 1996 game Super Mario 64 moved the series into three dimensions and brought much of the video game industry with it.
19Mario
game designers rarely whiff. The closest to disaster they’ve come is Super Mario Sunshine, which saddles Mario with a backpack that shoots water. It’s OK.
20Super
Mario Galaxy is divine. Its main idea: setting Mario’s adventures on small, spherical worlds and letting Mario leap or fly from one to the next.
21Mario
popularized 3D gaming but also repopularized 2D gaming. In 2006, Nintendo broke a 16-year dry spell of 2D Marios with the release of New Super Mario Bros. Its popularity defied the medium’s conventional wisdom that artistic progress should be synchronized with technological advances.
22Three
decades of Mario sequels exemplify how video games have generally gotten easier or how they’re now designed to better respect a player’s time.
23Earlier,
Super Mario Galaxy offered another innovation in game difficulty: a “co-star” mode that let a second player use a second controller to assist the main player.
24The
Mario franchise embodies the tension between corporate ownership and fandom. Fans have created countless unofficial Mario games, many of them then stomped out of existence by Nintendo’s lawyers.
25If
you can’t sue them, sell them something. In 2015, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker, which lets players create, but not own, their own 2D Mario levels.
26Even
Nintendo re- creates classic Super Mario Bros. sequences. Their best riff might be a circular version of Super Mario Bros.’ first level, offered in WarioWare: Twisted, in 2004.
27Mario
games have helped popularize the grassroots speedrunning scene, in which skilled players use every trick imaginable to complete games as quickly as possible.
28M
ar io games have inspired the charming Super Mario Broth, a Twitter feed of Mario obscurities that recently revealed a detail about Mario’s irises.
29Some
superfans h ave pr op o s e d that all Mario games exist on one narrative timeline. It doesn’t quite work out.
30Some
Mario games are a little retrograde. The thin plots of all three Mario games in the new 3D All-Stars collection, for example, feature Mario rescuing a kidnapped Princess Peach.
31Princess
Peach has been a protagonist at times, with mixed results. She was a playable character in Super Mario Bros. 2, in 1988, and in the soon-to- be-remade Super Mario 3D World.
32Mario
games highlight the industry’s preservation problems. Games run on hardware that often becomes obsolete in a decade, making it hard to play the classics. While fans and preservationists collect and share ripped copies, copyright holders wield the power on whether or not to ensure games remain accessible.
33On
the other hand, Nintendo first sold Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube, which ceased production in 2007. That game also ran on the Wii, which was retired around 2012.
34Nintendo
is a popular company but also a weird one, known for being an engine of brilliant creativity and odd policies. Exhibit #1452 (probably): Nintendo says it will only sell its new collection of 3D Mario games (as well as Super Mario Bros. 35) until March 31.
35And
finally: Mario’s best jump? I nominate the triple jump from Super Mario 64 a trio of high-arc leaps, accompanied by three giddy yelps.