The History of Mario

Super Mario Bros is a game created by Nintendo, originally in 1979. The game has grown since its beginning to be what is now one of the highest selling games of all time.

How Mario Began

In 1981 Nintendo needed a quick idea to save them from the failure the Radar Scope arcade console sales, or lack of sales, had brought them. Nintendo had over-produced consoles and were left with at least 2,000 unsold consoles, so they decided to ask Shigeru Miyamoto, a Nintendo artist, to help them design a new game to take the place of Radar Scope.

Donkey Kong Arcade is Created

Eventually Miyamoto came up with an idea which would later be known as Donkey Kong, which featured a Gorilla at the top of a series of ledges, throwing barrels down them. The good guy in this game was known as Jumpman, most likely named this because that's what he did; jump over the barrels. Jumpman later became known as Mario, and is now one of the most famous video game characters ever created.

From Donkey Kong comes a Legend

The jump in publicity that Donkey Kong gave to the Mario character led to the Nintendo team's idea to incorporate Mario into their upcoming games. After the Donkey Kong game, Mario continued his gaming career in the game Donkey Kong Jr, where strangely enough, Mario becomes a bad guy and takes capture of Donkey Kong. This was the only game which features Mario as a bad guy.

Mario turns 3D

As computer and game graphics continued to improve, many gaming manufacturers started developing games in three dimensional space. Nintendo, who was well known for their quite advanced and sophisticated 2D graphics games, decided to turn Mario into a 3D game. The most notable advance from 2D graphics to 3D for Mario was in Mario 64, which was developed for the Nintendo 64 console. Although Mario 64 did sell quite well, the whole "3D Mario" image turned off many previous "2D Mario" fans.

Mario still going strong

Mario games are still being produced for many consoles such as the Ninendo DS and Nintendo Gamecube, and the original SNES and NES Mario games are still widely played throughout the world.