Mario is the main character in the long running super Mario brother’s series. Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and is a mascot for Nintendo. As well as featuring in a large proportion of Nintendo games he is also often used by them in various advertising campaigns. The reason Mario is used so much by Nintendo is because he is so loved by the public.
Something that may surprise you about Mario is that he did not start his career in Super Mario Borthers. He was actually a feature in the popular game Donkey Kong which was first released in 1981. It would seem that due to his popularity in this game he was reintroduced a couple of years later in his own game – Super Mario.
Mario is most recognised by a few key features:
Red outfit
Mario always wears the same red outfit and this makes it really easy to recognise him. Even when you look at Mario and Luigi they may look very similar but you can always tell that its mario brothers because he will be in red (whereas Luigi will be in Green).
Red Hat
Another defining feature of Mario is the red hat that he always wears. This hat matches well with his red outfit but it is also personalised just for Mario. His hat features a big white letter M on the front of it and this letter M of course stands for Mario.
Moustache
Lastly, you can also identify Mario by his trademark bushy moustache. You will never see Mario without his moustache as it is one of his defining features.
A short history
As we mentioned previously, Mario first appeared in the Donkey Kong game where he was technically just an extra. The main character was Donkey Kong and Mario was the second most popular character in the game.
After the success of Donkey Kong, Mario came back a couple of years later – 1983 to be precise and had his own game, called Mario Bros. Although Mario looked very much like the character from Donkey Kong, his story was different from Mario Bros onwards. He was a plumber from New York fighting a number of bad guys such as Shellcreepers and Sidesteppers.
Mario had a few basic skills from the outset, the main one being the fact he could jump on top of his enemies in order to kill them.
There were also some cool power ups that Mario could make use of such as super mushrooms that would make Mario increase in size – this made him easier to control but also meant that if he was attacked by an enemy he would essentially have an extra life – reducing back to his original size rather than dying straight away as he would when he was small.
Mario Brothers 