Mario and Luigi are two brothers who rose to popularity from their first video game appearance in the Donkey Kong series, which would propel them to direct, instant stardom when they starred in their own video game franchise for the Nintendo Entertainment System more than 30 years ago.
Origin of the moustachioed plumber
Mario is the main character of the eponymous video game franchise, and was created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for the Nintendo company.
Acting as the company’s mascot, with his appearance in video games, television series and films, he has positioned himself as Nintendo’s iconic mascot, becoming one of the most famous and well-known video game characters of all time.
His first appearance was in an arcade game titled Donkey Kong in 1981. His participation was under the original name of ‘Jumpman’, whose mission was to rescue a girl named Pauline, the ‘damsel in distress’. The plot describes her abduction by a gorilla named Donkey Kong.
Mario achieves immortality
Super Mario Bros, released in 1985 for the NES, is the first installment in the Super Mario series and features the first appearance of Princess Peach, known as Princess Toadstool at the time. Bowser also makes his first appearance as the game’s main villain.
The narrative used in this game is a model for forthcoming Mario platformers. In the story, Bowser kidnaps the princess and turns all the characters in the Mushroom Kingdom into blocks, enemies and so on.
Mario has to go through the seven worlds and in each castle, he must defeat a fake Bowser.
How much has the brand made up to this point?
Super Mario Bros is the most emblematic brand of the video game company Nintendo, which is worth 6.8 trillion dollars, according to a report by TitleMax, a lending company in the United States.
In addition to this, the character generated revenues of 5,872 million dollars from merchandise and comic book sales from its creation until 2018, so over its lifetime it has accumulated 36,122 million dollars in sales.
It currently holds the world record for the highest sales of video games as a franchise, with more than 500 million units sold across its numerous titles in 2018.