Ask someone who Mario is, and there’s a good chance they’ll be able to tell you at least a little something about him. When the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros rolled around in 2020, the Q Scores Company noted that 72% of Americans over the age of six were familiar with Mario, and that he was the most popular videogame character. It’s likely that this figure has only grown since then – after all, his 2023 movie grossed over $1.3 billion.
But Mario hasn’t always been the star that he is today. Indeed, Mario’s name didn’t even appear in the title of his debut outing, though his name wasn’t exactly a fixed matter when arrived in arcades – the American operating manual for the game referred, Shigeru Miyamoto noted that he referred to Mario as “Mr Video,” a character intended for use across a variety of games. “Someone at Nintendo Of America actually came up with the name Mario,” he noted, and a promotional flyer does indeed call him Mario.
