Day 10: Mr. Video

Who would you consider to be the most iconic and influential video gaming character in history?  A character who's been in all genres, sold over 200 million games, and is an Italian from Japan? Well, if you aren't a fan of Nintendo, you're just going to have to suck it up and realize that Mario's been around a long time, and he's not likely to ship off anytime soon.

This definitely came from Japan...

Mario's had many forms over the years with just as many names to go with them.  What we see on the left is an adaption of Ossan, Shigeru Miyamoto's first "Mario" concept.  For those of us that need to use Google to translate for us, Ossan apparently means something along the lines of "middle-aged man".  It seems that Shigeru had wanted to create a game that rivaled Pac-Man's popularity, but couldn't quite get the right components together.  He initially wanted to use Popeye and his crew in that endeavor but was unable to get the rights.  So instead, Ossan, who was known as Mr. Video outside of the company, became the star of Donkey Kong. 

Why barrels?

With the advent of Donkey Kong came a new name for Mario: Jumpman.  Why Jumpman you ask?  The best I can figure is this:  Miyamoto's original intentions for the game was to have it be a maze setting similar to Pac-Man.  However, to beat the curve as it were, Shigeru enabled the character to jump and created the Donkey Kong that we remember today.  Any way you cut it, this game is pure classic arcade goodness.  The name was conceived during this era and from my understanding it came from a landlord that wanted his rent money from Nintendo.  Apparently, the man, whose name was Mario, and Nintendo came to the decision to rename Jumpman to alleviate some of the landlord's rent issues with the company.  I find it no coincidence then that Mario's profession involves fixing leaky pipes.

 

 

This just speaks for itself.

Just as Mario's name hasn't always been, so is it with his job.  During the original Donkey Kong, Mario was a carpenter.  It makes sense what with all the ladders leading to nowhere, the flaming oil barrel with the hellish flaming imps that appear, and the hammer...Wait, no it doesn't.  Of course, when Mario made his leap onto the NES his profession became that of a plumber as most of the scenes involve going down pipes into underground settings.  The game involves navigating through the Mushroom Kingdom to save the Retainers of the kingdom in each castle until the eighth, when you have to toss that bastard King Koopa, known today as Bowser, into the pit of lava.  I've always wondered though, why is he a turtle?  I had to look it up.  Apparently, Shigeru Miyamoto's original design for the turtle king was mimicked after the Ox King, who's shown up in various forms throughout the years.  My most fond memories of him occur in the Dragonball and DBZ series.  At some point during the design phases, someone pointed out to Miyamoto that he looked more like a turtle than an ox.  Thus, King Koopa evolved from an ox into a turtle.

Mario today.

I could go on for days writing down the history of Mario, but that's not my intent.  What I wanted to do was flesh out some possible missing pieces from everyone's common knowledge of Mario. The early years are something that occurred mostly beyond my knowledge due to my date of birth being before their time.  However, I've wanted to know this information for some time as I have played every Mario game that I could get my hands on, good or bad, and the character's progression through those games has always impressed me.  I am no less impressed with what I've recently learned of his heroic journey to the year 2011.  Who would've thought that Nintendo's runner-up to Popeye could come so far through long shot odds to be the star of over 200 video games?