We all recognise him straight away \u2013 red\nhat, red t-shirt with blue dungarees with a moustache \u2013 yes, he\u2019s Mario. He is\npotentially one of the most iconic game characters of all time. He was\ninitially created by video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who worked for\nNintendo. For a period, he also acted as the company\u2019s unofficial mascot, and\nwe would make his first video game appearance in 1981 in the game \u2018Donkey\nKong\u2019. And although nearly everyone might recognise just who Mario is, that\u2019s\nnot what we\u2019re going to be looking at today. Instead, we\u2019re going to be looking\nat the influence he\u2019s had both with the success of Nintendo and with video\ngames in general. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
First and foremost, let\u2019s get down to the\nnumbers, over 606 million units of Mario themed games have sold worldwide,\nwhich makes it by far the most popular franchise of all time. The nearest to it\nis Pok\u00e9mon which comes in at a modest 340 million-unit sales. On top of this,\nthe Italian plumber has also appeared in over 200 separate video games \u2013\nsometimes alongside other members of the franchise including Princess Peach and\nhis brother Luigi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now let\u2019s have a look at the influence that\nMario had on Nintendo as a company and how he saved them from a possible\ndownfall back in the early \u201980s. Back in 1983, Nintendo had released the NES or\nNintendo Entertainment System. The console itself went on to be a huge success\nand breathed some life back into, what was, a dying industry. However, the\nfirst Super Mario Bros game released in 1985 would catapult Nintendo into the\nstratosphere. It was referred to as the \u2018must-play\u2019 game of the console. From\nthis point on the game would hold the title of being the most-sold video game\nfor nearly a quarter of a century having sold over 40 million copies. It\nwouldn\u2019t be until 2009 that this record would be broke by Wii sports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that over three decades have passed since the inception of Mario let\u2019s examine how he\u2019s changed the video game industry in a much general way. Firstly, it catapulted the 2D platform genre to be the most popular, paving the way for demand to lead to games such as Sonic being created. Super Mario Bros<\/a> was also one of the first games to implement \u2018power-ups\u2019 as an in-game mechanic. This added a whole new edge to the game and increased the competitiveness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Super Mario Kart is another game from the franchise that created itself a whole new genre. It was also one of the first times that a character from a franchise has appeared out of the original genre that it found itself in. Super Mario Kart is a 16-bit classic which inspired games such as Crash Bandicoot Racing, Wacky Racers and Sonic & Sega all-star racing. Racing wasn\u2019t the only other genre that Mario dipped into; the Super Smash Bros also entered the fighting market\u00a0and Mario has his own slot games<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, with the transition from 2D to 3D, we\nseen a lot of the former notable video game characters start to lose a lot of\ntheir prominence. However not Mario, instead he made the transition between the\ntwo seem seamless, as well as being a huge contributor to the 2D revolution he\nwas equally as responsible for the 3D revolution. Mario himself has also\nestablished himself as a global cultural icon, with many lessons above and\nbeyond the gaming side of things that can be taken from this. The reason why he\nis so popular, as such, is that he isn\u2019t a superhero, but appears simply a down\nto earth average Italian plumber just like anyone else. This veered away from\nthe typical comic book and superhero stereotype. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This casual aspect of Mario also meant that\nhe could be moulded and adapt to any situation or scenario, which has made is\nso easy for him to be included in so many different genres and on so many\ndifferent platforms. There is also the background story with him and his other\naccompanying characters, for example, his fraternal brother Luigi, or the love\nof his life, Princess Peach. Having all these characters and their intertwining\nstories adds a sense of novelty to proceedings. This also adds to the reasoning\nthat when you\u2019re in a character selection screen on any Mario game, as you\nguessed, it will land by default on Mario. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So the reason for his popularity as a\ncultural icon plain and simply comes to down his casual trait. We judge all of\nhis fellow characters based off him, for example, Bowser would be \u2018heavy\u2019 thus\nmeaning a lot heavier than Mario, and with Toad as \u2018light\u2019 so that just by\nthese nicknames we can make them comparisons to Mario. There are also different\nversions of Mario, take, for example, Baby Mario, or Dr Mario, he\u2019s a\npersonality in himself that can be applied to many different roles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully today this has shed a bit of light on just how influential Mario has been not only on Nintendo and for the 80\u2019s gaming culture, but on the video game industry in general. It is still clear by nearly 300 million units sold holding the record for being the most successful franchise of all time. On top of this, it shows no sign of stopping with\u00a0Mario Kart for smartphones<\/a> currently in the pipeline. This shows that Mario can keep on going and adapt to any platform he is on, and the fan base will be bigger than ever. It also seems that it could be another couple of decades at the very least when we begin to see another franchise even get near that of Mario. However, something is for sure, Mario hasn\u2019t half had a huge influence on video games and video game culture over the past three decades and a lot of the developments that have brought to us where we stand today can be attributed for sure to the success of Mario and the wider Mario franchise. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We all recognise him straight away \u2013 red hat, red t-shirt with blue dungarees with a moustache \u2013 yes, he\u2019s Mario. He is potentially one of the most iconic game characters of all time. He was initially created by video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who worked for Nintendo. For a period, he also acted as the company\u2019s unofficial mascot, and we would make his first video game appearance in 1981 in the game \u2018Donkey Kong\u2019. And although nearly everyone might recognise just who Mario is, that\u2019s not what we\u2019re going to be looking at today. Instead, we\u2019re going to be looking at the influence he\u2019s had both with the success of Nintendo and with video games in general. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news_info"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1676,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariomayhem.com\/bowsers_blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}