Well, you can’t have a gaming heroes round up without Mario, and what better way to conclude ours. The fat italian plumber with the penchant for overalls and caps and the huge moustache is one of the gaming worlds oldest characters, first appearing in the arcade game Donkey Kong way back in 1981, although back then he was called Jumpman, rather than Mario. It’s also well known that the reason for him wearing dungarees was so that his arms would stand out from the rest of his body on the limited hardware of the time.

Donkey Kong was entirely the work of one man, that being Shigeru Miyamoto, who’s often cited as being the main creative force at Nintendo both now and in the past. Of course, he’s not the only game designer Nintendo has, but his track record his hard to beat, being responsible for the Zelda series and Pikmin amongst others.

Anyway, back to Mario. The game that really put Mario on the path to stardom was Super Mario Bros., where Mario (and his brother Luigi in two player games) tried to negotiate a series of horizontally scrolling platform levels to rescue Princess Daisy from the claws of Bowser. This started off as an arcade game, but the home version on the NES was when things really took off. Lots of staple platform gaming conventions were started by Super Mario Bros. or one of it’s many sequels.


For many, the pinnacle of this style of game came with Super Mario World on the SNES. This was an absolutely huge game, with tons of secret worlds to discover and multiple exits from certain levels. Mario could run, jump, swim, fly and ride Yoshi the, the, well, dinosaur is probably the best description of whatever Yoshi may actually be. The sequel, Super Mario World 2 : Yoshi’s Island, was odd in that you actually played as Yoshi. Mario was present, but in the form of Baby Mario, who Yoshi had to guide safely through the levels on his back. If Baby Mario was dislodged, Yoshi would have to run after the screaming infant before he was carried away by an enemy.

The SNES also started another long running gaming series, this being Super Mario Kart. Just about every popular (and not so popular) gaming character seems to end up with a Karting game now, but Super Mario Kart started it all off, and the SNES version is still immensely playable today. Mario Kart has also appeared on N64, GBA, Gamecube and DS, and there’ll probably be a Revolution version too.

Yet more innovation came with the release of the Nintendo 64 console, and Super Mario 64. Even today, with the remake on the Nintendo DS, Mario 64 stands up as one of the most finely honed platform games ever. It single-handedly convinced everyone that analog control was a Good Thing, as before the Nintendo 64 came along we were still playing with purely digital joypads.

Super Mario Sunshine on the Gamecube was the next “proper” Mario game, but many found it to be little of a progression from Mario 64. The addition of FLUDD, a backpack which could be used both as a jetpack and a water cannon, wasn’t enough of an interesting feature and many people were left cold, expecting another groundbreaker like Mario 64 and ending up a bit disappointed.

These days, Mario seems content to star in various party (Mario Party, Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix) and sports games (e.g. Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, Mario Baseball). Will Mario make another breakthrough in platform games on Revolution with the much speculated upon Mario 128? Time will tell, but I for one hope so.

That concludes our gaming advent calendar for 2005. We hope you have enjoyed it, even if your particular favourite character didn’t appear. Merry Christmas!

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