Happy birthday, Mario and Luigi
Super Mario Bros, the iconic Nintendo game, just turned 36 years old. On September 13th, 1985, Nintendo released the break-through scrolling-screen game in Japan. It was an instant hit and has gone on to become one of Nintendo’s greatest franchises.
The game, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, was the follow up to the Mario Bros. arcade game. The new console game took the Donkey Kong hero Mario and paired him with his brother Luigi, as the heroic duo charged with saving Princess Toadstool from the evil Bowser.
It’s been called the greatest video game ever, and has spawned dozens of spinoffs, grossing over $22 billion in revenue by 2021.
In an interview in 2015, Mr. Miyamoto told National Public Radio, “Mario and Luigi were rather small in size, and they would play and battle against each other in that game (Mario Bros.). And in the Super Mario Bros. game, those same small characters are in the game, but when they get a mushroom, they get big.
So, we decided to call the big version of them ‘Super Mario’ and ‘Super Luigi’ because they got super-sized… And if you think of stories like Alice in Wonderland and other types of fairy tales, mushrooms always seem to have a mysterious power… and so we thought the mushroom would be a good symbol for why they get it and get big.”
The game was released in the US later that year and was included with every purchase of a Nintendo Entertainment System. Today, Mario and Luigi are amongst the most easily identifiable video game characters in history.
Happy Birthday Mario Bros.!
Source: https://kotaku.com/thirty-six-years-ago-super-mario-bros-went-on-sale-in-1847663042