Mario

• 1. Introduction

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  Shigeru Miyamoto once reflected on a name he had considered for Mario and concluded that the character likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth." Mario is the mustached Italian plumber who stars in the Mario franchise and serves as the mascot of Nintendo. In 1990, a national survey found that he was more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse. Today he has appeared in hundreds of games, from puzzle games to kart racing. Yet he began as a small grid of pixel dots with no name at all. Why did Miyamoto create him? How did a stand-in become the most famous video game character in history? And what does it mean for one figure to be a plumber, a doctor and a tennis player at once?

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• 2. A Substitute Hero

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  Nintendo had already released Sheriff, a game that failed to match the success of Namco's Pac-Man. Miyamoto wanted something bigger, the company's first true blockbuster, and he developed Donkey Kong with that goal. His first idea was to build the game around Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl, the characters of the 1930s. Nintendo could not obtain a license for them, and it did not get one until 1982. So Miyamoto invented his own cast. He created an unnamed player character, an ape called Donkey Kong, and a woman called Lady, who was later renamed Pauline.

  The earliest version of the hero was drawn with pixel dots on a 16x16 grid. The game was about escaping a maze, and he could not jump. Miyamoto soon changed that, reasoning with a question of his own: "If you had a barrel rolling towards you, what would you do?" King Kong supplied further inspiration from the 1930s. Miyamoto also chose to set the story in New York City.

  The apes and the pixel grid were settled. The hero at the center of them still had no name.

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• 3. The Naming Problem

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  Ossan was the first label the Donkey Kong development team used for the hero. When the game launched in Japan, he had no official name at all. The English instructions called him "Jumpman," and the sales brochure called him "little Mario." Miyamoto had a different plan. He imagined a go-to character who could appear in any game he developed, limited to cameos. He called that character Mr. Video and compared those walk-ons to the cameos Alfred Hitchcock made in his own films. Miyamoto did not expect the character to become singularly popular.

  Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America's warehouse, supplies the name in a widely circulated story. While Donkey Kong was being localized for American audiences, Segale confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa and demanded back rent. After a heated argument, the Nintendo employees convinced him he would be paid. They then decided to name the character after him.

  Former warehouse manager Don James tells a different version. In 2012 he said that he and Arakawa chose the name as a joke, because Segale was so reclusive that no employee had ever met him. James repeated this account in 2018. A friend of Segale said that Segale does not mind at all and shows humble pride in the name around his grandchildren.

  Mario's surname has caused even more disagreement. A 1989 interview stated that his full name was not "Mario Mario," even though the title Mario Bros. implies it. The first notable use of "Mario Mario" came in the 1993 live-action film. Prima's official strategy guides repeated it, in 2000 for Mario Party 2 and in 2003 for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

  In 2012, voice actor Charles Martinet told an audience at San Diego Comic-Con that the name was in fact "Mario Mario." Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata then said Mario had no last name, and Miyamoto agreed the month after. Iwata died in July 2015. Two months later, at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival, Miyamoto reversed course and asserted that the full name is indeed "Mario Mario." Whatever his surname, the hero is called Super Mario whenever he picks up the Super Mushroom power-up.

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• 4. Pixels and Overalls

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  Donkey Kong takes place on a construction site, so Miyamoto made its hero a carpenter. When Mario Bros. arrived, much of the game was set in underground places, and the job changed to plumber. Miyamoto has said the profession was chosen to suit the game design. Other accounts say carpentry was meant to show an ordinary hard worker whom players could identify with. In those accounts, a colleague suggested he looked more like a plumber, and Miyamoto changed the job and built Mario Bros. around the sewers. Once Mario was a plumber, Miyamoto decided to make him Italian, and he lightheartedly credited the nationality to the mustache.

  The arcade hardware of the era could display very little detail, and that shaped nearly every feature. Miyamoto gave the character red overalls and a blue shirt so the colors would contrast with each other and with the background. That contrast kept his arm movements easy to see. A red cap let Miyamoto skip drawing hair, a forehead and eyebrows. It also spared him the problem of animating hair during a jump.

  To give the character a human face with so few pixels, Miyamoto drew a large nose and a mustache. Those features meant he did not have to draw a mouth or facial expressions. He also never had to separate a nose from a mouth with the limited pixels available.

  Later artists added blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, gold buttons and a red "M" inside a white circle on the cap. Designer Yōichi Kotabe redesigned characters for Super Mario Bros. in 1985. In an interview, he revealed that the M had originally resembled the McDonald's logo. He changed it and straightened its lines to make the difference clear. The colors also flipped, from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overalls. Miyamoto credited that drift to the different teams and artists on each game, and to advances in technology.

  The character has a full head of hair, yet early Donkey Kong merchandise showed him balding.

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• 5. The Voice

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  Charles Martinet arrived at his audition as the directors were already packing up for the night. The prompt he received was "an Italian plumber from Brooklyn." His first thought was a stereotypical Italian accent with a mobster's voice. Then he worried that it would be too harsh for children, and he planned to sound like an older figure. Instead, according to Martinet, his thoughts crashed, and he spoke complete nonsense in a soft, friendly voice. "Hello, ima Mario. Okey dokey, letsa make a pizza pie together." The babble went on about spaghetti and sausage, about chasing each other with pizza, and it ended with lasagne.

  The voice drew on another role he had played, Gremio in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Martinet kept talking until the audition tape ran out. That clip was the only tape sent back to Nintendo, and the director phoned the company to say he had "found our Mario."

  Before any game, Martinet used the voice at trade shows. Small tracking sensors were glued to his face while he hid behind a curtain, voicing a 3D model of Mario's head on a television. Attendees walked up to the screen and chatted with it. Because the shifts were long, Stevie Coyle was hired as a voice match to cover breaks, at Martinet's suggestion. The attraction ran for five years, until Miyamoto called and asked him to voice a video game.

  Martinet's first major video game role was Super Mario 64. Miyamoto told him which sound clips were needed, and Martinet enjoyed the game's playful tone and later called Miyamoto a genius. He went on to voice Luigi, Wario and Waluigi as well. A studio session meant "45 takes of every sound he can think of." His time commitment ranged from one week before a game's release to three years, and the audio ranged from one hour to 20 hours.

  Guinness World Records recognized him for performing the most roles with the same character, a count of one hundred at the time. By January 2022, he had voiced Mario in over 150 games and recorded 5 million audio files with the voice. He said he wanted to keep going until he "drops dead," or until he could no longer perform the voice accurately. In August 2023, Nintendo announced that he would retire from the role and continue as a brand ambassador called the "Mario Ambassador." Kevin Afghani took over the voice in Super Mario Bros. Wonder that October.

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• 6. Careers and Companions

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  According to Nintendo, Mario has seven careers. They are plumber, doctor, racer, martial artist, basketball player, baseball player and soccer player. In the Dr. Mario puzzle series, which debuted in 1990, he is a physician named Dr. Mario. In the Game Boy game Mario's Picross, he is an archaeologist. In the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, he is the president of a profitable toy-making company. In September 2017, Nintendo's Japanese profile for the character said he was no longer considered a plumber. The statement was changed in March 2018. Mario has no set personality, and that is part of what lets him take on so many roles.

  Small biographical details are scattered across interviews and manuals. In a 2005 interview, Miyamoto stated that Mario's physical age was about 24-25. Nintendo Power gave his birthday as the 11th of October. An official 1993 Nintendo manual listed his species as "homo nintendonus," named mushrooms as his favorite food, and gave his taste in music as "opera or new-wave, high-techno Euro pop." In 2017, a Nintendo representative confirmed that he is human, noting the variety found in human nature. His infancy, when a stork carried him to the Mushroom Kingdom, was first shown in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Nintendo's portrayal of him as a Brooklyn Italian-American has been called an example of mukokuseki, or "nationlessness," with roots across Europe, North America and Japan.

  Luigi is Mario's younger fraternal twin. He is taller and slimmer, and he can jump higher. He is the character the second player controls in many two-player sessions. Luigi has also rescued Mario, in Mario Is Missing! and in the Luigi's Mansion series.

  Mario's first love interest was Pauline, whom he rescued from Donkey Kong in the 1981 game. Princess Peach replaced her in Super Mario Bros. A redesigned Pauline first appeared in Donkey Kong in 1994 and has returned as a friend in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, Super Mario Odyssey and the Mario Kart series. Mario rescued Princess Daisy of Sarasaland in Super Mario Land, though Luigi has since been linked more closely with her. In Super Princess Peach, the roles reverse and Peach rescues Mario.

  The dinosaur Yoshi serves as Mario's steed and sidekick. Toad is a trusted friend who gives him advice on the journey to rescue Peach. Wario, a greedy counterpart and self-declared arch rival, arrived in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.

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• 7. Jumps and Reinventions

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  In Super Mario RPG, players were often asked to jump in order to prove to non-player characters that they were Mario. By then, jumping had become his signature act. The jump-stomp on enemy heads first appeared in Super Mario Bros. It can crush smaller enemies entirely and usually damages larger ones. Super Mario World added the spin-jump, which breaks blocks beneath him. Super Mario 64 gave him a sideways somersault, a high-impact ground pound and the "Wall Kick," which propels him upward off walls.

  Super Mario Bros. introduced the three power-ups that became staples of the series. The Super Mushroom makes him larger and lets him survive one hit. The Fire Flower lets him throw fireballs. The Super Star gives him temporary invincibility.

  The prototype for Super Mario Bros. was a 16x32 pixel rectangle. Takashi Tezuka suggested the character be Mario, after the success of Mario Bros. Plans for Mario to fly a rocket ship and fire bullets were cut. The developers had expected a small Mario, but they found size changes through power-ups a fun addition, and the idea was influenced by Japanese folktales.

  Wario has a story of his own. Nintendo Research & Development 1, or R&D1, was unmotivated by the Super Mario series. When the team was tasked with making a Mario game without Miyamoto, it created Wario to express the frustration of working with a character it had not made. The name combines "Mario" with "warui," the Japanese word for "bad."

  The Mario Kart series began with Super Mario Kart in 1992, and early in development it had no Mario-themed elements. The designers placed Mario in a kart just to see how he would look. They decided he looked better than the undefined characters, and the original concept was scrapped. In Wrecking Crew, designed by Yoshio Sakamoto, Mario cannot jump at all because of the weight of his hammer.

  In the 1990s, educational games starring Mario released for the NES, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and personal computers, with little involvement from Nintendo. Brian Fargo, head of Interplay Productions, saw the success of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and knew Mario would appeal as a teacher. Another Mario education game of poor quality appeared around the same time. Miyamoto met with Fargo and halted production of any further educational games, and the last was Mario Teaches Typing 2 in 1997.

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• 8. Beyond the Screen

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  At the closing ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics, Mario appeared to promote the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. In a pre-recorded video, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became Mario and used a Warp pipe planted by Doraemon at Shibuya Crossing to travel to Maracanã Stadium. Abe then appeared dressed as Mario in an oversized Warp Pipe in the middle of the stadium. The segment was well received in Japan as playful and tasteful, and it earned Abe the nickname "Abe-Mario."

  Mario Day falls on the 10th of March, because the date written as Mar 10 resembles the word "Mario." Nintendo has officially observed it since 2016 by promoting Mario games and holding events. In March 2018, Google Maps joined the celebration. Tapping a yellow ? Block turned the navigation arrow into Mario, driving his Pipe Frame kart from the Mario Kart series.

  The 1993 film Super Mario Bros. cast Bob Hoskins as a cynical older brother who takes great pride in being a plumber, with John Leguizamo as Luigi. Hoskins was cast after other choices such as Dustin Hoffman and Danny DeVito fell out. In later interviews, Hoskins called the role the worst choice of his acting career.

  The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023 cast Chris Pratt as Mario. Co-director Aaron Horvath explained that Pratt was cast mainly because of his history of playing good-natured, blue collar protagonists. Sebastian Maniscalco auditioned for Mario and instead voiced the villainous Foreman Spike. Charles Martinet appears in the film as Mario and Luigi's father and as a character called Giuseppe, who resembles Mario's original Donkey Kong design. Pratt returns as Mario in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in 2026.

  Bergsala, which distributes Nintendo's products in the Nordic and Baltic countries, is located at Marios Gata 21 in Kungsbacka, Sweden, a street name that honors him. Sports stars such as Mario Götze, Mario Gómez, Mario Lemieux, Mario Balotelli, Mario Cipollini and Mario Williams have all been nicknamed "Super Mario." In a suburb of the Spanish city of Zaragoza, one street is named "Avenida de Super Mario Bros." Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog is among the many characters he inspired.

  Guinness World Records awarded Mario and his platform series seven records in its Gamer's Edition 2008, including "Best Selling Video Game Series of All Time." In 2009, Guinness listed him as recognized by 93 percent of Americans, second only to Pac-Man at 94 percent. In 2024, a BAFTA poll with around 4,000 respondents named him the second most iconic video game character of all time.

  In 2026, Nintendo launched a product line called "My Mario" for infants and toddlers in the United States, after releasing it in Japan the previous year. It includes wooden block sets, board books, plush toys, apparel and the Hello, Mario! app. The brand also includes a short stop-motion animated series starring Mario, made up of five one-minute episodes.

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