Rise Of Mario: Past And Present

Review

From its ground-breaking release in 1983 on the first NES (a.k.a. Nintendo Entertainment System) to the redefined Wii Console (Wii U), “The Mario Bros.” has seen a very extensive franchise met only with success on the rise. From its humble beginnings, the release of such a ground-breaking video-game on a 2-D scale was seen at the time as state-of-the-art technology. Two years later, in 1985, “Super Mario Bros.” was released for the same console now allowing you to play an extra character, Mario’s brother Luigi. Not only were you able to play as another character but also turned into a 2-player video-game allowing you to run through Mushroom Kingdom together to rescue Princess Peach against the antagonist Bowser.

Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka are the original designers behind Mario Bros. later published by Nintendo on the first Nintendo Entertainment System. Mr. Miyamoto and Mr. Tezuka had several designs their early development team wanted to implement but later chose to not include them in the game. One such design was to have a “shoot ‘em up” like level where he would rise on a cloud and shoot down below at his enemies. Instead, the game was meant to stay simple and to a “jump-action” style. However, the sky-high and cloud levels still remained. The name and overall design of “Mushroom Kingdom” surprisingly almost didn’t make the cut into the final production of the game design. The idea was later added after it was revealed that the mushroom idea had come from an old folklore tale-telling of people who would wander into the forest and eat magic mushrooms. With this, it was added that when Mario or Luigi came in contact with these magic mushrooms, they themselves would change size.

The Mario franchise was listed as #1 in Electronic Gaming Monthly’s “Greatest 200 Games Of Their Time” list, and was named in IGN’s top 100 games of all-time list in 2005 and 2007.

Mario has not only had its video-game success but has even branched out into other entertainment streams such as a cartoon television series, a live-action movie and several animated movies.

These are just small examples that don’t even come close to scratching the surface of the Mario Franchises major international success. Many Mario titles followed the release of the Super Mario Bros title in 1985. The most recent release debuted on the new rendition of the Wii system, called Wii U in 2012. This release, like many others before it, is a re-release of older generation titles just on a different console. Despite this title being a re-release of the Super Mario Bros title on the original Wii system, all glitches and original content still remain with extra added bonus features.

From this, we can see here that Nintendo has no intention of slowing down with its already overwhelming success with the Mario Franchise.