204-716: Mario ( Japanese : マリオ; / m ɑːr i oʊ / , / m ær i oʊ / ) is a character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto . He is the star of the Mario franchise, a recurring character in the Donkey Kong franchise, and the mascot of the Japanese video game company Nintendo . Mario is an Italian plumber who lives in the Mushroom Kingdom with his younger twin brother, Luigi . Their adventures generally involve rescuing Princess Peach from
408-467: A construction site in New York City , the eponymous Donkey Kong character is the game's de facto villain. The hero is a carpenter originally unnamed in the Japanese arcade release, later named Jumpman and then Mario. Donkey Kong kidnaps Mario's girlfriend, originally known as Lady and later renamed Pauline. The player must take the role of Mario and rescue her. This is the first occurrence of
612-656: A Brooklynite Italian-American has been described as an example of mukokuseki , or "nationlessness", with "roots across [the] three continents" of Europe, North America, and Japan. Mario usually saves Princess Peach and the Mushroom Kingdom and purges antagonists, such as Bowser , from various areas; since his first game, Mario has usually had the role of saving the damsel in distress . Originally, he had to rescue his girlfriend Pauline in Donkey Kong (1981) from Donkey Kong . Despite being replaced as Mario's love interest by Princess Peach in Super Mario Bros. ,
816-463: A Japanese manga series. Super Mario Sunshine was the first Nintendo game released after Satoru Iwata became the CEO of Nintendo, succeeding Hiroshi Yamauchi. The game's original concept did not feature Mario, as the developers believed the role was too out of the ordinary for such a character. Later on, when they used a generic man for the role instead, they believed having a realistic person alongside
1020-407: A Japanese-English dictionary for something that would mean "stubborn gorilla", or that "Donkey" was meant to convey "silly" or "stubborn"; "Kong" was common Japanese slang for "gorilla". A rival claim is that he worked with Nintendo's export manager to come up with the title, and that "Donkey" was meant to represent "stupid and goofy". In 2001, Miyamoto stated that he thought the name would convey
1224-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
1428-424: A blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background, making the movements of his arms easily perceptible. A red cap was added to let Miyamoto avoid drawing the character's hairstyle, forehead, and eyebrows, as well as to circumvent the issue of animating his hair as he jumped. To give distinctly human facial features with the limited graphical abilities, Miyamoto drew a large nose and a mustache, which avoided
1632-595: A character based on Miyamoto's concepts and sketches, which he drew during the development of Super Mario Bros. 3 . Super Mario World was released during a console war between Nintendo and Sega ; Sega's mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog , was considered a "cooler" alternative to Mario, to which Miyamoto apologized for. The plot for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins has Mario pursue something for his own benefit rather than for someone else, his goal trying to reclaim ownership of his island, Mario Land, from Wario . The game
1836-464: A character like Mario would cause "incongruity", and it was ultimately changed to Mario instead. Mario's ally, F.L.U.D.D., was one of ten design options but was chosen because it fit the game's theme, although it was not their favorite option in terms of looks. Super Mario Galaxy had Mario exploring a number of spherical planets, which the developers at the time knew simply jumping on enemies would be difficult to perform. They instead took advantage of
2040-558: A comic strip license played a major part, Donkey Kong marked the first time that the storyline for a video game preceded the game's programming rather than simply being appended as an afterthought. An unrelated Popeye game was released by Nintendo for the Game & Watch the following month, as well as a game called Popeye for arcades in 1982. Yamauchi wanted primarily to target the North American market, so he mandated that
2244-613: A complete story. It also notably had multiple, distinct levels that progressed the storyline. Donkey Kong was also one of the first Japanese games brought to Western regions that introduced a surreal concept using cute artwork, a representation of typical Japanese fantasy but unusual to Western audiences. For that reason, Donkey Kong and similar games that followed were briefly called "novelty games" by Western gaming press. Donkey Kong and other such games helped to acclimate Western audiences to Japanese approaches to game design, narrative, and abstraction that would become key elements in
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#17327696558302448-437: A connection between the two Kongs. On October 4, 1984, the court upheld the previous verdict. Nintendo and its licensees filed counterclaims against Universal. On May 20, 1985, Judge Sweet awarded Nintendo $ 1.8 million for legal fees, lost revenues, and other expenses, but he denied Nintendo's claim of damages from those licensees who had paid royalties to both Nintendo and Universal. Both parties appealed this judgment, but
2652-521: A considerable fee for all rights to Donkey Kong , but Nintendo declined after three days of internal discussion. Rivals Coleco and Atari, Inc. approached Nintendo in Japan and the United States respectively. In the end, Yamauchi granted Coleco exclusive console and tabletop rights to Donkey Kong because he believed that "it [was] the hungriest company". In addition, Arakawa believed that as
2856-648: A construction site, Mario was made into a carpenter; and when he appeared again in Mario Bros. , it was decided that he should be a plumber , because a lot of the game is situated in underground settings. Mario's character design, particularly his large nose, draws on Western influences; once he became a plumber, Miyamoto decided to "put him in New York " and make him Italian , light-heartedly attributing Mario's nationality to his mustache. Other sources have Mario's profession chosen to be carpentry in an effort to depict
3060-433: A conversion kit of new game software. Yamauchi polled the company's entire talent pool for fresh game design concepts to save the distressed startup. This yielded Shigeru Miyamoto 's debut as lead game designer of his Donkey Kong concept, and Yamauchi appointed head engineer Gunpei Yokoi as project supervisor with a budget of $ 267,000 (equivalent to $ 895,000 in 2023) according to Miyamoto. Ikegami Tsushinki
3264-486: A debugger to trace through the game's code. The game was ported by Nintendo Research & Development 2 to Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) console and released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as one of the system's three launch games . Masayuki Uemura , the Famicom's lead architect, designed the console specifically to faithfully recreate Donkey Kong . It is an early Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game in
3468-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
3672-403: A five-story structure of conveyor belts , each of which transport cement pans. The third stage involves the player riding elevators while avoiding bouncing springs. The final stage requires Mario to remove eight rivets from the platforms supporting Donkey Kong; this causes Donkey Kong to fall and the hero to be reunited with Pauline. These four stages combine to form one level. After each level,
3876-427: A fun addition. The concept was influenced by Japanese folktales . Super Mario Bros. 2 was originally not going to be a sequel to Super Mario Bros. , and was originally going to be a game called Doki Doki Panic ; directed by Kensuke Tanabe . One of the changes included the retexturing of the four main playable characters of Doki Doki Panic , and since they varied in height, this was the first instance where Mario
4080-424: A game that used the 1930s characters Popeye , Bluto , and Olive Oyl . At the time, however, as Miyamoto was unable to acquire a license to use the characters (and would not until 1982 with Popeye ), he ended up creating an unnamed player character , along with Donkey Kong and Lady (later known as Pauline). In the early stages of Donkey Kong , Mario was drawn using pixel dots in a 16x16 grid. The focus of
4284-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
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#17327696558304488-567: A heated argument in which the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, they opted to name the character in the game Mario after him. This story is contradicted by former Nintendo of America warehouse manager Don James , who stated in 2012 that he and Arakawa named the character after Segale as a joke because Segale was so reclusive that none of the employees had ever met him. James repeated this account in 2018. A friend of Segale commented: "My direct understanding and perception
4692-578: A launch game for the Game Boy that featured Mario, as he believed in the statement "fun games sold consoles". Super Mario Land was designed without the help of Miyamoto, a first for the series. The game uses completely different elements to pair with the small screen due to the Game Boy's portability. For example, instead of rescuing Princess Peach from Bowser in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario
4896-686: A lawyer and the president of MCA and Universal City Studios , learned of the game's success and suspected it might be a trademark infringement of Universal's own King Kong . Nintendo was given 48 hours to turn over all profits from the game and dispose of all Donkey Kong inventory. On April 27, he met with Arnold Greenberg of Coleco and threatened to sue over Coleco's home version of Donkey Kong . Coleco agreed on May 3 to pay royalties to Universal of 3% of their Donkey Kong ' s net sale price, worth about $ 4.6 million. Meanwhile, Sheinberg revoked Tiger's license to make its King Kong game, but O. R. Rissman refused to acknowledge Universal's claim to
5100-472: A limited release in Japan on July 9, 1981, before receiving a wide release some weeks later. Although Nintendo of America's staff was initially apprehensive, Donkey Kong succeeded commercially and critically, becoming the highest-grossing game of 1981 and 1982. It was ported to the Game & Watch , selling eight million units, while Nintendo licensed the game to Coleco , a developer of arcade conversions for home consoles , selling six million cartridges. It
5304-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
5508-479: A love triangle between a gorilla, a plumber with a large hammer, and a girlfriend, mirroring the rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl . Bluto became an ape, which Miyamoto said was "nothing too evil or repulsive". He would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy". Miyamoto has named " Beauty and the Beast " and the 1933 film King Kong as influences. Although its origin as
5712-402: A more established company in the U.S., Coleco could better handle marketing. In return, Nintendo received an undisclosed lump sum plus $ 1.40 per game cartridge sold and $ 1 per tabletop unit. On December 24, 1981, Howard Lincoln drafted the contract. He included language that Coleco would be held liable for anything on the game cartridge, an unusual clause for a licensing agreement. Arakawa signed
5916-493: A novel genre that did not match the style of games that came before it. The genre was initially referred to as "Donkey Kong-type" or "Kong-style" games, before the genre eventually came to be known as platform games. The game was also a milestone in terms of video game storytelling and cutscenes. While there were earlier games that either told a story or used cutscenes, Donkey Kong combined both concepts together to introduce its own new concept: using cutscenes to visually advance
6120-461: A pair of red overalls, and a blue shirt. In Super Mario Bros. , he wore a brown shirt with red overalls. He has blue eyes, and, like Luigi , has brown hair, and a dark brown or black mustache. This consistent difference in color is attributed to being a relic from designing the characters for their original platforms, wherein certain features were actively distinguished while others had to be curtailed due to technical limitations. Mario's occupation
6324-506: A previous case that King Kong ' s scenario and characters were in the public domain (by way of the Novelisation of the 1933 film). Judge Sweet ruled in Nintendo's favor, awarding them Universal's profits from Tiger's game ($ 56,689.41), damages and attorney's fees. Universal appealed, trying to prove consumer confusion by presenting the results of a telephone survey and examples from print media where people had allegedly assumed
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6528-669: A profitable toy-making company. Mario partakes in sports activities such as tennis and golf in Mario sports games , as well as kart racing in the Mario Kart series. In September 2017, Nintendo confirmed on their official Japanese profile for the character that Mario was no longer considered a plumber, but the statement was changed in March 2018. According to Nintendo, Mario has seven careers, which include plumber, doctor, racer, martial artist, basketball player, baseball player, and soccer player. Nintendo's characterization of Mario as
6732-760: A redesigned Pauline that first appeared in Donkey Kong (1994) has reappeared in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, Super Mario Odyssey and the Mario Kart series as a friend of Mario. Mario reprises his role of saving Peach in the Super Mario series, but Mario himself was rescued by Peach in role-reversal in Super Princess Peach . Mario rescued Princess Daisy of Sarasaland in Super Mario Land , but Luigi has since been more linked to her; in Super Smash Bros. Melee ,
6936-820: A score of 1,272,700. Lakeman reclaimed the world record only five months later on June 8, scoring 100 more points than McCurdy. Making the new record 1,272,800. In 2018, Mitchell was stripped of his records by Twin Galaxies and banned from submitting new scores after Twin Galaxies concluded that Mitchell had illicitly used emulators to achieve his scores. Twin Galaxies prohibits the use of emulators for high scores they publish because they allow undetectable cheating. In 2020 Guinness World Records reversed its decision and reinstated Billy Mitchell's previous world records, based on new evidence including eyewitness reports and expert testimonials. There are other world record categories for Donkey Kong besides highest score. One of
7140-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
7344-496: A set personality and consistent profession, allowing him to take on many different roles across the Mario franchise. Mario is often accompanied by a large cast of supporting characters , including friends like Princess Daisy , Toad , and Yoshi and rivals like Bowser Jr. , Donkey Kong , and Wario . Mario has also appeared in other Nintendo properties, such as the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games . Mario
7548-425: A settlement the following year; the terms of it were never disclosed. In 1996 Next Generation listed the arcade, Atari 7800, and cancelled Coleco Adam versions as number 50 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting that even ignoring its massive historical significance, Donkey Kong stands as a great game due to its demanding challenges and graphics which manage to elegantly delineate an entire scenario on
7752-467: A sideways somersault; a ground pound, which is a high-impact downward thrusting motion; and the "Wall Kick", which propels him upwards by kicking off walls. Super Mario Bros. introduced the basic three power-ups that have become staples for the series, especially the 2D games – the Super Mushroom , a large red mushroom, which causes Mario to grow larger and be able to survive getting hit once;
7956-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
8160-403: A single screen. In February 2006, Nintendo Power rated it the 148th best game made on a Nintendo system. In 2017, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Donkey Kong to its World Video Game Hall of Fame . Today, Donkey Kong is the fifth most popular arcade game among collectors. Donkey Kong spawned a number of other titles with a mix of running, jumping and vertical traversal,
8364-522: A skater outfit and a power-up that would make Mario grow to a large size, were cut; the latter would appear in its sequel as the Mega Mushroom. Super Mario 3D World on the Wii U included the "Cat Mario" power-up, which was implemented to help newcomers play the game and add new gameplay features such as climbing up walls. Another power-up was the "Double Cherry", which was added accidentally; one of
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8568-458: A success. In his 1982 book Video Invaders , Steve Bloom described Donkey Kong as "another bizarre cartoon game, courtesy of Japan" and said it was one of the "most exciting variations" on Pac-Man ' s maze theme along with Sega 's Frogger due to how players need to "scale from the bottom of the screen to the top" which make them "more like obstacle courses than mazes" since "you always know where you're going — up". In January 1983,
8772-488: A theme that's become all too familiar since the success of Donkey Kong ". That year Sega released a Donkey Kong clone called Congo Bongo in arcades. Although using isometric perspective , the structure and gameplay are similar. Crazy Kong was officially licensed from Nintendo and manufactured by Falcon for some non-US markets. Nevertheless, Crazy Kong machines found their way into some American arcades, often installed in cabinets marked as Congorilla . Nintendo
8976-425: A torn dress and stiletto heels . Like Pac-Man (1980), Donkey Kong has cutscenes , but innovates by advancing a complete plot. The game opens with the gorilla climbing a pair of ladders to the top of a construction site, accompanied by a variation on the musical theme from Dragnet . He drops Pauline and stomps his feet, warping the steel beams. He moves to his final perch and sneers. A melody plays, and
9180-489: A total of approximately 20 kilobytes of content. Yukio Kaneoka composed a soundtrack to serve as background music for the levels and story events. The circuit board of Radar Scope was restructured for Donkey Kong . The Radar Scope hardware, originally inspired by the Namco Galaxian hardware, was designed for a large number of enemies moving around at high speeds, which Donkey Kong does not require, so
9384-495: A unique ability, with Mario having an all-around average set of skills to pair with his type of character. This would eventually set the stage for future Mario Tennis video games. The Mario Kart franchise began with Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992; early in development, the game did not have any Mario -themed elements. A few months into the process,
9588-527: A variety of other Mario characters with supporting roles. The character sprites were designed by Eiji Aonuma , his first project in graphical art design. Mario's Tennis for the Virtual Boy was the first tennis game featuring Mario. Camelot Software Planning , who previously developed Everybody's Golf for Sony, was contracted to develop Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64 . Each character had
9792-431: A voice of an older figure. However, according to Martinet, the audition for Mario was the only time where his thoughts crashed and he spoke complete nonsense. After he was prompted the character, he babbled the following in a soft and friendly voice instead: "Hello, ima Mario. Okey dokey, letsa make a pizza pie together, you go get somea spaghetti, you go geta some sausage, I getta some sauce, you gonna put some spaghetti on
9996-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
10200-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
10404-429: Is a 1981 arcade video game developed and published by Nintendo . As Mario ,(known at the time as "Jumpman") the player runs and jumps on platforms and climbs ladders to ascend a construction site and rescue Pauline from a giant gorilla, Donkey Kong . It is the first game in the Donkey Kong series and Mario's first appearance in a video game. Donkey Kong was created to salvage unsold arcade cabinets following
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#173276965583010608-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
10812-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
11016-487: Is an established pop culture icon and is widely considered the most famous video game character in history. His likeness has been featured in merchandise, and people and places have been nicknamed after him. He inspired many video game characters, including Sega 's Sonic the Hedgehog , and unofficial media . The Mario franchise is the bestselling video game franchise of all time , with more than 800 million units sold worldwide. Mario has been adapted in various media ; he
11220-744: Is an update of the NES version that reinstates the cement factory stage and includes some animations absent from the original NES version, and has only ever been released on the Virtual Console . It was preinstalled on 25th Anniversary PAL region red Wii systems, which were first released in Europe on October 29, 2010. In Japan, a download code for the game for the 3DS Virtual Console was sent to users who purchased New Super Mario Bros. 2 or Brain Age: Concentration Training from
11424-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
11628-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
11832-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
12036-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
12240-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
12444-526: Is instead rescuing Princess Daisy from Tatanga in Sarasaland. Mario was designed with line art . Super Mario World was the first video game to feature Yoshi as a companion to Mario. Miyamoto had always wanted a dinosaur-like companion, ever since the original Super Mario Bros. , but the concept was never achievable due to limited hardware. Since Super Mario World took place in a land of dinosaurs, Takashi Tezuka requested Shigefumi Hino to draw
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#173276965583012648-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
12852-478: Is lost when Mario touches Donkey Kong or any enemy object, falls too far, or lets the bonus counter reach zero. The game ends when all lives are lost. Each of the four single-screen stages represents 25 meters of the structure Donkey Kong has climbed: 25, 50, 75, and 100 meters. Stage one involves Mario scaling a construction site made of crooked girders and ladders while jumping over or hammering barrels and oil drums tossed by Donkey Kong. Stage two involves climbing
13056-567: Is never directly referred to be Mario; In 1997, his look was changed in the re-release of the Famicom Disk System to that more like the character, and Nintendo later confirmed the character was Mario in a guide book of the game in 1991, marking his first sports video game appearance. He then directly appeared in NES Open Tournament Golf in 1991 as one of two playable characters, the other being Luigi, along with
13260-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
13464-445: Is plumbing, though in the original Donkey Kong games he is a carpenter . Mario has also assumed several other occupations: in the Dr. Mario series of puzzle games , which debuted in 1990, Mario is portrayed as a medical physician named "Dr. Mario"; in the Game Boy game Mario's Picross , Mario is an archaeologist ; in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series , Mario is the president of
13668-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
13872-484: Is that Mario Segale doesn't mind at all the fact that his name inspired such an iconic character, and that he shows humble pride in that fact in front of his grandchildren and close-knit adult circles." While it is implied by the title of the Mario Bros. series, in a 1989 interview, his full name was stated not to be "Mario Mario". The first notable use of "Mario Mario" was in the 1993 live-action film adaptation of
14076-665: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
14280-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
14484-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
14688-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
14892-502: The King Kong franchise . Donkey Kong 's success positioned Nintendo for market dominance for the 1980s and 1990s. The game debuts Mario, who became Nintendo's mascot and one of the world's most recognizable characters. It was mass marketed in multitudes of products, including breakfast cereal, toys, and television cartoons. Donkey Kong is considered one of the most important games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of
15096-536: The Luigi's Mansion series. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for the Game Boy saw the arrival of Wario , Mario's greedy counterpart and self-declared arch rival, who usually assumes the role of a main antagonist or an antihero . The dinosaur character Yoshi serves as Mario's steed and sidekick in games such as Super Mario World . Toad is Mario's trusted close friend, who gives him advice and supports him throughout his journey to rescue Princess Peach. During
15300-563: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
15504-618: The Arcade Classics Series , released in June 1986 in North America and October 15 in Europe. Omitted are the cement factory stage and most of the cutscenes, because early ROM cartridges do not have enough memory. It includes a new song composed by Yukio Kaneoka for the title screen. Both Donkey Kong and its sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. , are included in the 1988 NES compilation Donkey Kong Classics . A complete remake of
15708-701: The Coleco Gemini , in 1983. Atari obtained the license for home computer versions of Donkey Kong and released it for the Atari 8-bit computers . When Coleco unveiled the Adam Computer , running a port of Donkey Kong at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Illinois, Atari protested that it was in violation of the licensing agreement. Yamauchi demanded that Arnold Greenberg , Coleco's president, withdraw his Adam port. Greenberg complied, and
15912-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
16116-557: The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985. In these games, Mario traverses worlds that contain a set number of levels for Mario to complete. In them, he traverses them from moving left to right, the screen scrolling in the direction he moves. Mario has the goal of reaching the end of the level to move onto the next, typically marked with a flagpole. These games are less focused on plot and more on platforming; most commonly, Bowser kidnaps Peach, and Mario, with
16320-494: The Nintendo eShop from July 28 to September 2, 2012. In North America, a download code for Original Edition for the 3DS Virtual Console was sent to users who purchased one of five select 3DS games on the Nintendo eShop and registered it on Club Nintendo from October 1, 2012, to January 6, 2013. In Europe and Australia, it was released for purchase on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in September 2014. The original arcade version
16524-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
16728-483: The Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES. The NES version was re-released as an unlockable game in the first Animal Crossing , both through its Nintendo Space World 2000 demo as well as the final game. It was also published on Virtual Console for the Wii , Wii U , and Nintendo 3DS . The Wii U version is also the last game that was released to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of
16932-455: The Super Mario series, and was further used in Prima 's official video game strategy guides, in 2000 for Mario Party 2 and in 2003 for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga . In 2012, after Mario voice actor Charles Martinet stated that the character's name was, in fact, "Mario Mario" at San Diego Comic-Con , Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said Mario had no last name, with which Miyamoto agreed
17136-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
17340-471: The Wii Remote and Nunchuk having motion controls, and gave Mario a "spin" attack where he knocked over the enemies via spinning. To also balance the game's difficulty, Mario was given fewer hit points . To create a sense of familiarity for Super Mario Odyssey , various references to the Super Mario series were put in the game's environment. For example, Pauline was chosen to be a major aspect of
17544-409: The damsel in distress scenario that provided the template for countless video games released after. The game uses graphics and animation for characterization. Donkey Kong smirks upon Mario's demise. Pauline has a pink dress and long hair, and a speech balloon crying "HELP!". Mario, depicted in red overalls and a red cap, is an everyman character, a type common in Japan. Graphical limitations and
17748-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
17952-414: The greatest and most popular arcade games of all time . It has been frequently referenced in pop culture and subsequent video games and has an active high score competition . Following 1980's Space Panic , Donkey Kong is one of the earliest examples of the platform game genre, even prior to the term being coined; the U.S. gaming press used "climbing game" for games with platforms and ladders. As
18156-454: The maze and shooter games common at the time, and Judy and Lincoln expressed reservations over the strange title. Still, Arakawa adamantly believed that it would be a hit. American staff began translating the storyline for the cabinet art and naming the characters. They chose "Pauline" for the Lady, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's warehouse manager Don James . Arakawa suggested that
18360-592: The "Metro Kingdom" due to the kingdom representing the core of the game. Mario was also given a variety of costumes to represent other smaller games, such as the Mario's Picross series. The development team found the most fun way to use the Joy-Con controllers' motion controls was to throw a hat, and the gameplay was centered around Mario throwing his cap. There have also been a variety of Super Mario games starring Mario that do not have typical 2D or 3D platforming. The Super Mario 3D series does have 3D gameplay, but
18564-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
18768-622: The 1982 Arcade Awards gave it the award for the best single-player video game and the Certificate of Merit as runner-up for Coin-Op Game of the Year . In September 1982, Arcade Express reviewed the ColecoVision port and scored it 9 out of 10. Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games in 1983 stated that "Coleco did a fabulous job" with Donkey Kong , the best of the console's first five games and "the most faithful adaptation of
18972-408: The 1990s. Mario has been the protagonist of various role-playing video games (RPGs), beginning with Square 's Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). According to Yoshio Hongo of Nintendo, the game came out of Shigeru Miyamoto's desire to develop a Mario role-playing game while Square wanted a role-playing video game that sold well overseas. The game was notable at
19176-401: The 2D series of Super Mario games being absent for 14 years, the previous installment being released in 1992, game mechanics improved drastically. Since the characters were no longer sprites and the backdrops were not tile-based , the developers were nearly restrictionless; new game mechanics, such as Mario teetering off of trees and swinging on ropes, were implemented. New Super Mario Bros.
19380-678: The Famicom version were sold; the Famicom Mini version for the Game Boy Advance later had a further 160,000 units sold, for a total of 1 million units sold in Japan. The Atari 8-bit computer version sold 25,502 units in 1986 and 1990. This totals 15,206,025 units sold worldwide for the Game & Watch, ColecoVision, Atari and Famicom ports. As of 2015 , all versions of the original Donkey Kong are estimated to have grossed $ 4.4 billion in revenue. In April 1982, Sid Sheinberg ,
19584-561: The Fire Flower, which allows Mario to throw fireballs ; and the Super Star, which gives Mario temporary invincibility. These powers have appeared regularly throughout the series. Mario is the protagonist of the Super Mario series. Each game varies in its plot, but most of them have the ultimate goal of Mario rescuing Princess Peach after being kidnapped by Bowser . Mario explores a variety of locations, titled "worlds", and along
19788-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
19992-555: The Japanese version of the NES, the Famicom. The original arcade version of the game appears in the Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64 , and it must be beaten to finish the game. Nintendo released the NES version on the e-Reader and for the Game Boy Advance Classic NES Series in 2002 and 2004, respectively. In 2004, Namco released an arcade cabinet which contains Donkey Kong , Donkey Kong Jr. , and Mario Bros. Donkey Kong: Original Edition
20196-496: The Mushroom Kingdom, was first depicted in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island . In a 2005 interview, Miyamoto stated that Mario's physical age was about 24–25 years old, and Nintendo Power stated that his birthday is October 11. He wears a long-sleeved red shirt, a pair of blue overalls with yellow buttons, brown shoes, white gloves, and a red cap with a red "M" printed on a white circle. In Donkey Kong , he wore
20400-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
20604-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
20808-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
21012-497: The arcade successor to Donkey Kong , Ikegami sued Nintendo for the unauthorized duplication of the Donkey Kong program code. Nintendo managed to settle the dispute out of court after the two companies came to an agreement. At the time of the suit, computer programs were not considered copyrightable material. The Tokyo High Court gave a verdict in 1989 that acknowledged the originality of program code. Ikegami and Nintendo reached
21216-628: The bundled ColecoVision version sold 2 million units, while the Atari 2600 version sold 4 million units in 1982 for $ 100 million , making it one of the best-selling Atari 2600 games . It was also one of the earliest cartridges available for video game rental at certain stores in 1982. Atari's 1987 re-release for the Atari 2600 sold a further 180,523 units for $ 1,258,282 by 1990. Coleco's Mini-Arcade tabletop versions of Donkey Kong , along with Pac-Man , Galaxian , and Frogger , had combined sales of three million units. In Japan, 840,000 units of
21420-494: The cameos that Alfred Hitchcock had done within his films. In retrospect, Miyamoto commented that if he had named Mario "Mr. Video", Mario likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth." According to a widely circulated story, during the localization of Donkey Kong for American audiences, Nintendo of America's warehouse landlord, Mario Segale , confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa , demanding back rent. Following
21624-422: The character as an ordinary hard worker, making it easier for players to identify with him. After a colleague suggested that Mario more closely resembled a plumber, Miyamoto changed Mario's profession accordingly and developed Mario Bros. , featuring the character in the sewers of New York City . Due to the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and
21828-410: The character to be Mario after the success of one of his previous roles, Mario Bros. Certain other gameplay concepts were cut as well, such as how Mario could fly in a rocket ship and fire bullets. Originally designed with a small Mario in mind with the intention of increasing his size further in development, the developers implemented the feature of his size changes via power-ups as they considered it
22032-413: The concept of 3D video games was still new at the time, the developers knew they were helping to pave the way for future games, and they were not restricted on what the standard game was like. However, when Yoshiaki Koizumi had to create a 3D model and animation of Mario, he had no frame of reference and struggled with the task. Koizumi stated how the whole concept was "arguably tough", but was overtaken by
22236-474: The console. In the Paper Mario games, Mario is often aided by numerous allies who progress the story while Mario remains silent. Unlike Paper Mario , both Mario and Luigi have voices in the Mario & Luigi series and are voiced by Charles Martinet. According to the developers, the early games used character sprites ; the developers were generally inexperienced and did not know much about hardware at
22440-420: The decade that followed with the release of the NES. Computer and Video Games called Donkey Kong "the most momentous" release of 1981, as it "introduced three important names" to the global video game industry: Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Mario. These three figures went on to play a significant role in video game history. Donkey Kong paved the way for the NES, known as the Famicom in Japan. Following
22644-484: The designers were testing how one character would look at another they had just passed. They implemented Mario, simply to see how he would look inside a kart, and the original concept was scrapped entirely after they decided he looked better than the previous non-defined characters. Similar to the Mario & Luigi series, he appears as a sprite that turns in 16 different angles. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )
22848-765: The developers added a second Mario into the game in error, and found it humorous when both Marios were somehow controllable at the same time. In 2020, also as part of the Super Mario Bros. 35th anniversary, Nintendo re-released Super Mario 3D World on the Nintendo Switch with a companion game, Bowser's Fury . While the most prominent use of Mario has been directed toward the Super Mario series, various spinoff series that split into numerous games covering various genres have also been released. This includes genres such as role-playing games (RPGs), puzzle games , sports games , and even educational games in
23052-484: The development of Donkey Kong , Mario was known as Jumpman ( ジャンプマン , Janpuman ) . Jumping—both to facilitate level traversal and as an offensive move—is a common gameplay element in Mario games, especially the Super Mario series . By the time Super Mario RPG was released, jumping became such a signature act of Mario that the player was often tasked with jumping to prove to non-player characters that he
23256-542: The development of Super Mario Bros. Wonder , with Shiro Mouri as the director of the game. The game director, Shiro Mouri, said that the game developers aimed to provide a "stress free" experience to the players by allowing them to move freely through the course. In comparison to the previous 2D Super Mario games, Mario's facial expressions are now more detailed and expressive. Most Super Mario games in 3D feature open world gameplay; instead of being confined to only moving left and right, Mario can move in any direction, and
23460-566: The development team removed unnecessary functions and reduced the scale of the circuit board. The gameplay and graphics were reworked for updated ROM chips, and the existing CPU , sound hardware, and monitor were left intact. The character set, scoreboard, upper HUD display, and font are almost identical to Radar Scope , with palette differences. The Donkey Kong hardware has the memory capacity for displaying 128 foreground sprites at 16x16 pixels each and 256 background tiles at 8x8 pixels each. Mario and all moving objects use single sprites,
23664-418: The director called the company he said he "found our Mario". For the following years he would use the voice for an attraction at trade shows : small tracking sensors were glued onto his face, and he would voice a 3D model of Mario's head on a television while he remained hidden behind a curtain. When attendees would approach the screen, they could talk and interact with Mario. Due to the long shifts, Stevie Coyle
23868-571: The document the next day, and, on February 1, 1982, Yamauchi persuaded the Coleco representative in Japan to sign without review by the company's lawyers. Coleco bundled the game with the ColecoVision console, which went on sale in August 1982, though the individual cartridge was also available in stores. Coleco offered Atari 2600 and Intellivision versions as well. Coleco's Atari 2600 port
24072-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
24276-495: The enjoyment of innovating in a new field. Mario's movement was among the top priorities in the game's development, with his animation being tested long before the basic layout of the game's locations was in place. Super Mario 64 was one of the first games voiced by Charles Martinet, and Mario's character model was made with the N-World toolkit. Mario's movements and animations were inspired by Arale Norimaki from Dr. Slump ,
24480-408: The failure of Nintendo's Radar Scope (1980), and was designed for Nintendo of America 's audience. Hiroshi Yamauchi , Nintendo's president at the time, assigned the project to first-time video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto . Drawing inspiration from " Beauty and the Beast " and 1930s American media such as Popeye and King Kong , Miyamoto developed the characters and scenario and designed
24684-481: The first platform game to feature jumping, Donkey Kong requires the player to jump between gaps and over obstacles or approaching enemies whilst Donkey Kong throws barrels at the player, setting the template for the future of the genre. With four unique stages, Donkey Kong was the most complex arcade game of the time, and one of the first arcade games with multiple stages, following games such as 1980's Phoenix and 1981's Gorf and Scramble . In addition to
24888-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
25092-404: The following October. Mario is depicted as a portly plumber who lives in the fictional land of the Mushroom Kingdom with Luigi , his younger, taller brother. The original Mario Bros. depicted Mario and Luigi as Italians in New York , with the television series and films specifying them as originating from the borough Brooklyn . Mario's infancy, in which he was transported by a stork to
25296-614: The four to six months that the average game lasted. It remained Nintendo's top seller into mid-1983, with steady sales in Japan. A total of 65,000 arcade units were sold in Japan, and 67,000 arcade units in the United States, for a total of 132,000 arcade units sold in Japan and the United States. Nintendo's Game & Watch handheld version of Donkey Kong released in 1982 sold 8 million units. Coleco had sold 6 million Donkey Kong cartridges for home consoles, grossing more than $ 153,000,000 (equivalent to $ 483,000,000 in 2023) and earning Nintendo more than $ 5 million in royalties;
25500-430: The game alongside chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi . It was the most complex arcade game at that point, using graphics for characterization, including it and cutscenes to illustrate a plot, and integrating multiple unique stages into the gameplay. Donkey Kong pioneered the platform game genre before the term existed, is the first to feature jumping, and is the first video game with a damsel in distress narrative. It had
25704-456: The game be given an English title, as with many previous Nintendo games. Miyamoto decided to name the game for the ape, who he said was the strongest character. The story of how Miyamoto came up with the name "Donkey Kong" varies. A false urban myth says that the name was originally meant to be "Monkey Kong", but was misspelled or misinterpreted due to a blurred fax or bad telephone connection. Another, more credible story claims Miyamoto looked in
25908-551: The game in its second year of release in America, totaling $ 280 million in US cabinet sales by 1982 (equivalent to $ 940,000,000 in 2023). In Japan, the annual Game Machine charts listed Donkey Kong as the highest-grossing arcade game of 1981, and then the sixth highest-grossing arcade game of 1982, with Game Machine later listing the game in its October 1, 1983 issue as the twentieth most successful table arcade cabinet of
26112-504: The game is near perfect and that anyone can be caught in Donkey Kong "fever". Donkey Kong was popular worldwide, garnering a positive reaction from consumers, and was a significant commercial success for Nintendo, pulling them out of financial troubles. After the game's initial 2,000 arcade cabinets sold out, more orders were made. Arakawa began manufacturing the electronic components in Redmond because waiting for shipments from Japan
26316-540: The game varies, and according to him has ranged from three years before a game's release to one week. The amount of clips varies as well, ranging from one hour of audio to 20. Martinet was recognized by the Guinness World Records for the most roles performed with the same character, at the time one hundred, and is the most of any video game voice actor. As of January 2022, he has voiced Mario in over 150 games and has recorded 5 million audio files with
26520-559: The game was not published. The Atari 8-bit conversion of Donkey Kong contains one of the longest-undiscovered Easter eggs in a video game. Programmer Landon Dyer's initials appear if the player dies under certain conditions and returns to the title screen. This remained undiscovered for 26 years until Dyer revealed it on his blog, stating that "there's an Easter egg, but it's totally not worth it, and I don't remember how to bring it up anyway". The steps required to trigger it were later discovered by Don Hodges, who used an emulator and
26724-413: The game was to escape a maze, while Mario could not jump. However, Miyamoto soon introduced jumping capabilities for the player character, reasoning that "If you had a barrel rolling towards you, what would you do?" Continuing to draw from 1930s media, King Kong served as an inspiration, and Mario was set in New York City . Though the protagonist was unnamed in the Japanese release of Donkey Kong , he
26928-431: The game. The 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters portrays Steve Wiebe 's attempts to break the Donkey Kong world record, then considered to have been held by Billy Mitchell . In the early 2010s, Hank Chien set a record of 1,138,600 points. This was broken four years later by Robbie Lakeman with a score of 1,141,800. Lakeman's record was then broken by John McCurdy on January 11, 2021, with
27132-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
27336-406: The goal of saving Pauline , the player has a score. Points are awarded for the following: leaping over obstacles; destroying objects with a hammer power-up; collecting items such as hats, parasols, and purses; removing rivets from platforms; and completing each stage according to a steadily decreasing bonus counter. The player starts with three lives with a bonus life awarded at 7,000 points. A life
27540-406: The help of Luigi and other characters, sets out to rescue her. Most worlds have mini boss battles , which typically involve fighting Bowser Jr. or one of several Koopalings . The final level is a fight against Bowser. His first appearance in the 2D variant of the series was Super Mario Bros. in 1985, which began with a 16x32 pixel rectangle prototype as the character; Takashi Tezuka suggested
27744-470: The issues brought up was how Mario looked too small in comparison to the large terrain and the small, portable screen of the Nintendo 3DS , so the game's camera system needed to be fixed to one position in certain occasions. The game brought with it the "Tanooki Tail" power-up, which was originally introduced in Super Mario Bros. 3 , and its existence was teased by the developers to the fans prior to its official announcement. Concepts for Mario, which included
27948-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
28152-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
28356-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
28560-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
28764-402: The level starts. This brief animation sets the scene and adds background to the gameplay, a first for video games. At the stage, a heart appears between Mario and Pauline, but Donkey Kong grabs her and climbs higher, causing the heart to break. The narrative concludes when Mario reaches the end of the rivet stage. He and Pauline are reunited, and a short intermission plays. Nintendo of America
28968-420: The limited memory of Atari 2600 cartridges forced him to omit two of the original game's four levels. Coleco's sales subsequently doubled to $ 500 million and its earnings quadrupled to $ 40 million. Coleco also released stand-alone Mini-Arcade tabletop versions of Donkey Kong , along with Pac-Man , Galaxian , and Frogger in 1982. Coleco also bundled a copy of Donkey Kong with its Atari VCS clone,
29172-405: The low pixel resolution of the small sprites prompted his design. A mustache implies a mouth, a cap obviates the animation of hair, and colored overalls distinguish his arm movements. The artwork of the cabinets and promotional materials make these cartoon-like character designs even more explicit. Pauline, for example, is depicted as disheveled like the 1930s King Kong ' s Fay Wray in
29376-741: The managers of two bars in Seattle, Washington, to set up Donkey Kong machines. The managers initially showed reluctance, but when they saw sales of $ 30 a day—or 120 plays—for a solid week, they requested more units. In their Redmond headquarters, a skeleton crew composed of Arakawa, his wife Yoko, James, Judy, Phillips, and Stone gutted 2,000 surplus Radar Scope machines and applied the Donkey Kong conversion kits imported from Japan, consisting of motherboards , power supplies, and marquee graphics. The game officially went on sale in July 1981. Makers of video game consoles were interested. Taito offered
29580-547: The month after. Two months after Iwata's death in July 2015, Miyamoto changed his stance, asserting at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival that Mario's full name was indeed "Mario Mario". Mario can also be referred to as "Super Mario" when he acquires the Super Mushroom power-up. By Miyamoto's own account, Mario's profession was chosen to fit with the game design: since Donkey Kong takes place on
29784-560: The month. In the United States, Donkey Kong topped the Play Meter arcade charts in October 1981, setting a weekly earnings record, and it was later listed by RePlay as the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982. It was also among the thirteen highest-grossing arcade games of 1983 in the United States. According to Electronic Games in June 1983, the home versions contributed to the arcade version's extended popularity, compared to
29988-399: The more story-focused character in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team . Nintendo has released a variety of sports games featuring Super Mario properties, which include tennis , golf , baseball , soccer , kart racing , and other miscellaneous. In the 1984 video game Golf , although one of the two playable characters looks similar to that of him, wearing red clothes and black pants, he
30192-431: The most popular is the "No Hammer Challenge" where competitors try to get the highest score without using the hammer. The current world record in this category was set by Jeff Wolfe on July 8, 2008, with a score of 735,100. Some other categories include most points for different levels, and fewest points. Donkey Kong is considered to be the earliest video game with a storyline that visually unfolds on screen. Set on
30396-435: The name of "Jumpman", a name originally chosen for its similarity to the popular brands Walkman and Pac-Man , be changed to "Mario" after Mario Segale , the landlord of the original office space of Nintendo of America. These character names were used in promotional materials, although Mario was called Jumpman in the operations manual and instructions. Donkey Kong was ready for release. Stone and Judy convinced
30600-553: The need to draw a mouth and facial expressions. Omitting a mouth circumvented the problem of clearly separating the nose from the mouth with a limited number of pixels available. Over time, Mario's appearance has become more defined; blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, a red "M" in a white circle on the front of his hat and gold buttons on his overalls have been added. According to an interview, Japanese character designer Yōichi Kotabe , who worked on redesigning characters in Super Mario Bros. (1985), revealed that Mario's M on his hat
30804-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
31008-617: The original arcade game on the Game Boy , titled Donkey Kong (referred to as Donkey Kong '94 during development) contains levels from both the original Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. arcades. It starts with the same gameplay and four locations as the arcade game and then progresses to 97 additional puzzle-based levels. It is the first game to have built-in enhancement for the Super Game Boy system. Upon release in arcades, Computer and Video Games compared it favorably with King Kong and predicted that it would likely become
31212-616: The original video game I have seen". The magazine's Danny Goodman stated that of Coleco's three console versions, the one for the ColecoVision was the best, followed by Atari and Intellivision. Computer and Video Games reviewed the ColecoVision port in its September 1984 issue and scored it 4 out of 4 in all four categories of Action, Graphics, Addiction and Theme. Ed Driscoll reviewed the Atari VCS version of Donkey Kong in The Space Gamer No. 59. Edwards commented that
31416-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
31620-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
31824-421: The player can complete the level however they please. The player chooses from one of the multiple objectives before entering a level, and Mario is tasked with completing that goal, which ultimately ends with an obtainable item such as a star. These games feature a more complex narrative, but most still have Mario rescuing a kidnapped Princess Peach from Bowser. Mario's debut 3D role was in Super Mario 64 ; since
32028-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
32232-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
32436-483: The sausage and the sausage on the pizza, then I'm gonna chasea you with the pizza, then you gonna chasea me with the pizza, and gonaa makea lasagne." The voice he chose was derived from another voice role he used to play the character Gremio from William Shakespeare 's The Taming of the Shrew . Martinet kept speaking with the voice until the audition tape ran out; the clip was the only tape sent back to Nintendo, and when
32640-475: The screen which was eventually found too hard to program, though a similar concept came later in the Popeye arcade game. Miyamoto then thought of using sloped platforms, barrels, and ladders. When he specified that the game would have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to implement the game repeatedly. Nevertheless, they followed Miyamoto's design, creating
32844-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
33048-432: The stages are linear and do not allow for open-world movement. The Super Mario Maker games are a series of game creation systems where the player can create their own 2D Super Mario levels and play ones created by others. Super Mario Run is a 2D platforming mobile game with other unnatural gameplay aspects. The main aspect of Super Mario 3D Land was bridging the aspects of 2D and 3D Super Mario games. One of
33252-418: The stages repeat with increased difficulty. For example, Donkey Kong begins to hurl barrels faster and sometimes diagonally, and fireballs speed up. The victory music alternates between levels 1 and 2. The fourth level consists of five stages with the final stage at 125 meters. Level 130 is colloquially known as the kill screen , due to a programming error that kills Mario after a few seconds, effectively ending
33456-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
33660-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
33864-441: The success of Donkey Kong , Nintendo began developing the Famicom, the hardware of which was largely based on the Donkey Kong arcade hardware, with the goal of matching the system's powerful sprite capabilities in a home system. Nintendo wanted the Famicom to match the Donkey Kong arcade hardware, so they took a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet to semiconductor chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing
34068-417: The taller Pauline uses two sprites, and the larger Donkey Kong uses six sprites. Hiroshi Yamauchi thought the game was going to sell well and phoned to inform Arakawa. Nintendo of America's distributors, Ron Judy and Al Stone, brought Arakawa to the lawyer Howard Lincoln to secure a trademark. The game was sent to Nintendo of America for testing. The sales manager disliked it for being too different from
34272-600: The text explaining Daisy states that "After her appearance in Mario Golf , some gossips started portraying her as Luigi's answer to Mario's Peach." Luigi is Mario's younger fraternal twin brother, who is taller, slimmer, and can jump higher than him. He is a companion in the Mario games, and the character whom the second player controls in two-player sessions of many of the video games. Luigi has also occasionally rescued Mario as seen in Mario Is Missing! and
34476-408: The thought of a "stupid ape". Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project. He was not a programmer, so instead consulted technicians for concept feasibility. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, and have different movements and reactions. Yokoi thought Miyamoto's original design was too complex, though he had some difficult suggestions, such as using see-saws to catapult the hero across
34680-712: The time for having a unique blend of action and role-playing game elements, and was a critical and commercial success, and led to two other spinoff RPG series starring the character, Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi . A sequel to Super Mario RPG was planned for the Nintendo 64 . The original developer, Square, had signed a deal with Sony to release Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation , so Nintendo passed on development responsibilities to Intelligent Systems . The new art designer, Naohiko Aoyama, changed every character to two-dimensional to bring out "cuter" graphics compared to low-polygon three-dimensional graphics on
34884-408: The time. Once the Nintendo 3DS was released, the developers had the chance to switch to 3-dimensional graphics. They decided to change the background and world design but chose to keep the characters as 2D renderings of 3D characters as they believed it made it easier to convey comedic expressions. In 2013, they believed Mario took too much of the spotlight in the Mario franchise, and they made Luigi
35088-565: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Donkey Kong (1981 video game) Donkey Kong
35292-560: The trademark. When Universal threatened Nintendo, Howard Lincoln and Nintendo refused to cave. In preparation for the court battle, Universal agreed to allow Tiger to continue producing its King Kong game as long as they distinguished it from Donkey Kong . Universal sued Nintendo on June 29 and announced its license with Coleco. The company sent cease and desist letters to Nintendo's licensees, all of which agreed to pay royalties to Universal except Milton Bradley and Ralston Purina . Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo, Co., Ltd.
35496-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
35700-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
35904-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
36108-466: The types of sound clips needed from Miyamoto, and Martinet appreciated the fun tone of the game and later called Miyamoto a genius. He would continue to voice other various Mario characters, such as Luigi , Wario , and Waluigi . His time in the studio recording voice clips consisted of "45 takes of every sound [he] can think of", according to Martinet at a Q&A in Canada. What time he gives vocals for
36312-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
36516-535: The verdict was upheld on July 15, 1986. Nintendo thanked John Kirby with the gift of a $ 30,000 sailboat named Donkey Kong and "exclusive worldwide rights to use the name for sailboats". Kirby , the protagonist of the Kirby series, was named in John Kirby's honor. The court battle also taught Nintendo they could compete with larger entertainment industry companies. After the release of Donkey Kong Jr. ,
36720-584: The villain Bowser while using power-ups that give them different abilities. Mario's distinctive characteristics include his large nose and mustache, overalls , red cap, and high-pitched, exaggerated Italian accent . Mario debuted as the player character of Donkey Kong , a 1981 platform game . Miyamoto created Mario after he was unable to obtain the license to use Popeye as the protagonist. The graphical limitations of arcade hardware influenced Mario's design, such as his nose, mustache, and overalls, and he
36924-493: The voice. In an interview, Martinet said he wants to continue voicing the character until he "drops dead", or until he can no longer perform the voice accurately. In August 2023, Nintendo announced Martinet would be retiring from the voice role of Mario, though he would continue to promote the franchise as a "Mario Ambassador", a brand ambassador position. Voice actor Kevin Afghani succeeded Martinet in Super Mario Bros. Wonder
37128-404: The way, he can collect items and defeat enemies. Most levels have an end goal, such as stars or flagpoles, that he needs to reach to move on to the next. The series is divided into two general sets of games: the 2D side-scrolling Super Mario games and the 3D open world Super Mario games. The Super Mario series had Mario starring in platform games , beginning with Super Mario Bros. on
37332-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
37536-523: Was Mario. Mario's most commonly portrayed form of attack is jumping to stomp on the heads of enemies, first used in Super Mario Bros. This jump-stomp move may entirely crush smaller enemies on the stage, and usually deal damage to larger ones, sometimes causing secondary effects. Subsequent games have elaborated on Mario's jumping-related abilities. Super Mario World added the ability to spin-jump, which allows Mario to break blocks beneath him. In Super Mario 64 , Mario gains new jumping abilities such as
37740-507: Was a subcontractor who had already been paid. Game Machine called it "simply a nuisance tactic" on the part of Ikegami. By late March 1981, Nintendo was also pursuing a license to make a game based on the Popeye comic strip. When they experienced technical issues, Nintendo took the opportunity to create new characters that could be marketed and used in later games. Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he settled on
37944-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
38148-645: Was developed by Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1). The company was unmotivated by the Super Mario series, and when they were tasked with creating a Super Mario game without Miyamoto, they created Wario to emphasize the frustration of working with a character they did not make. The name "Wario" is word play of "Mario" and "Warui", the latter meaning "bad" in Japanese to mean "bad Mario". The character's models and backgrounds in New Super Mario Bros. were 3D, but still only allowed for left and right movement and are considered 2.5D . With
38352-408: Was founded in 1980 with minor success at importing its parent's arcade cabinets from Japan. In early 1981, its president Minoru Arakawa bet the small startup company on a major order of 3,000 Radar Scope . Its poor reception in America filled a warehouse with 2,000 unsold Radar Scope machines, so Arakawa requested that the parent company president (and his father-in-law) Hiroshi Yamauchi send
38556-615: Was heard in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Robert W. Sweet. Over seven days, Universal's counsel, the New York firm Townley & Updike, argued that the names King Kong and Donkey Kong were easily confused and that the plot of the game was an infringement on that of the films. Nintendo's counsel, John Kirby , countered that Universal had argued in
38760-476: Was hired as a voice match to take over during breaks by Martinet's suggestion. The attraction was successful and would be used for five years until Martinet was called by Miyamoto, requesting that he use the voice for a video game. His first official video game voice role would be the CD rerelease of Mario Teaches Typing in 1994, but his first major voice acting role was Super Mario 64 . He received instructions on
38964-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
39168-458: Was later ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), designed to replicate its technological capabilities; both the game and NES were integral in spreading Japanese video games to Western audiences. Donkey Kong 's various ports sold more than 15 million units worldwide. Other companies cloned the game and avoided royalties altogether. Universal City Studios unsuccessfully sued Nintendo, alleging that Donkey Kong violated its trademark of
39372-402: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
39576-437: Was named "Jumpman" in the game's English instructions and "little Mario" in the sales brochure. Miyamoto envisioned a "go-to" character he could use in any game he developed if needed, albeit in cameo appearances as Miyamoto did not, at the time, expect the character to become singularly popular. To this end, he originally named the character "Mr. Video", comparing what he intended for the character's appearances in later games to
39780-591: Was named after Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segale . After Donkey Kong , Mario starred in Mario Bros. (1983). Its 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System sequel, Super Mario Bros. , began the successful Super Mario platformer series. Charles Martinet voiced Mario from 1991 to 2023, when he was succeeded by Kevin Afghani . Mario has appeared in over 200 video games . These include puzzle games such as Dr. Mario , role-playing games such as Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi , and sports games such as Mario Kart and Mario Tennis . He lacks
39984-426: Was noticeably shorter than Luigi. Super Mario Bros. 3 experimented with Mario's looks with different power-ups that represented different creatures. An example included the raccoon tail, which was chosen over a power-up that represented a centaur . The game's success led to an animated television series, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 , with Mario being portrayed by Walker Boone. Hiroshi Yamauchi wanted
40188-419: Was originally the resemblance of McDonald's logo; Kotabe later changed the design of M and straightened its lines to clearly distinguish the difference. The colors of his shirt and overalls were also reversed from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overalls. Miyamoto attributed this process to the different development teams and artists for each game as well as advances in technology. Mario
40392-449: Was portrayed by Bob Hoskins in the live-action film Super Mario Bros. (1993) and voiced by Chris Pratt in the animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario while developing Donkey Kong in an attempt to produce a successful video game for Nintendo ; previous games, such as Sheriff , had not achieved the success of games such as Namco 's Pac-Man . Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create
40596-440: Was programmed by Garry Kitchen . Kitchen was contracted to port the game through his brother Steve, who had connections to an executive at Coleco. He was given only three or four months to develop the port and worked without sleep for the last 72 hours before shipping. Kitchen received no assistance from Nintendo and minimal aid from Coleco, who only provided him with an arcade machine for temporary use. These factors combined with
40800-728: Was re-released as part of the Arcade Archives series for Nintendo Switch on June 14, 2018, and the NES version was re-released as one of the launch titles for Nintendo Switch Online on September 19. Donkey Kong was one of the most widely cloned video games in the early 1980s, along with Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980). By 1983, Donkey Kong clones had become available on various different platforms. The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers lists 17 different Donkey Kong clones released for various home platforms. There were so many games with multiple ladder and platforms stages by 1983 that Electronic Games described Nintendo's own Popeye game as "yet another variation of
41004-480: Was subcontracted for some of the development, with no role in the game's creation or concept, but to provide "mechanical programming assistance to fix the software created by Nintendo". Nintendo instructed Ikegami to produce a program according to its instructions and put it onto read-only memory (ROM) chips on printed circuit boards (PC boards). This later led to mutual lawsuits in 1983, as Ikegami asserted ownership over Donkey Kong which Nintendo denied as Ikegami
41208-468: Was taking too long. The game's success led to Arakawa expanding Nintendo of America. By October, Donkey Kong was selling 4,000 units a month, and by June 1982, Nintendo had sold 60,000 Donkey Kong machines in the United States, earning $ 180 million. Judy and Stone, who worked on straight commission, became millionaires. Arakawa used Nintendo's profits to buy 27 acres (11 ha) of land in Redmond in July 1982. Nintendo earned another $ 100 million on
41412-408: Was the first 2D Super Mario game to use voice acting, with Charles Martinet voicing Mario and Luigi. It was followed by three games similar to New Super Mario Bros. , namely New Super Mario Bros. Wii , New Super Mario Bros. 2 , and New Super Mario Bros. U , the latter of which being the first game to feature Mario in high-definition graphics (HD). Takashi Tezuka returned as a producer for
41616-439: Was voiced by Charles Martinet from 1991 to 2023. When he crashed the audition, the directors were preparing to close for the night, already packing up when he arrived. He was prompted with "an Italian plumber from Brooklyn "; when he heard the phrase, he immediately thought of a stereotypical Italian accent with a voice similar to that of a mobster. He then assumed the voice would be too harsh for children, so he planned on using
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