Editing Mario

In 1981, years before video games exploded into mainstream popularity, prominent game designer [[Shigeru Miyamoto]] designed the original arcade game ''{{b|Donkey Kong|game}}'', debuting Mario as the main playable character and [[Donkey Kong]] as his in-game nemesis. Mario's character design was heavily influenced by the extreme technical limitations of video games at the time; as a small batch of pixels, Mario was given a mustache under his big nose to show he had a face.<ref>Rao, Anjali (February 15, 2007). [http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/02/14/miyamoto.script/index.html Sigeru Miyamao Talk Asia interview]. Retrieved February 28, 2009</ref> Red overalls and a blue shirt — the reverse of Mario's current red shirt and blue overalls — were also added to contrast against each other and the background, while 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/09/14/ign-presents-the-history-of-super-mario-bros|title=IGN Presents: The History of Super Mario Bros.|author=McLaughlin, Rus|date=September 13, 2010|publisher=IGN|accessdate=June 24, 2013}}</ref> Although unnamed in the Japanese release of ''Donkey Kong'', the character was named '''Jumpman''' in the game's English instructions.<ref>Mario: Alive, Well, and Living in the Bronx? (Next Generation magazine, issue 26, page 46, February 1997)</ref> However, during the localization of ''Donkey Kong'' for American audiences, Nintendo of America's warehouse landlord at the time, the late Mario Segale, confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument in which the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, they opted to officially rename Jumpman to '''Mario''' after Segale;<ref>{{cite web |url= http://technologizer.com/2010/04/25/mario/|title= The True Face of Mario |last= Edwards |first= Benj |date= April 25, 2010|accessdate=June 30, 2011}}</ref> this name would also be carried over into the game's sales brochure.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=316|title=Donkey Kong|website=The Arcade Flyers Archive}}</ref>

For over 30 years afterward, Mario would star in many games for various Nintendo systems. Mario and his accompanying franchise can be viewed as Nintendo's thematic tileset with which to create games of a whimsical, colorful, and light-hearted nature. Mario himself is meant to be a character anyone can enjoy playing as and can fit well as a protagonist figure and/or main balanced character in many genres of games. To this end, he is not portrayed as a character that undergoes development like what players would see from a character within an expansive story, but rather a character defined by the player's actions with a few defining traits of his own, such as his cheerfulness, whimsy, desire to help others, and humorous high-pitched Italian accent provided by Charles Martinet. As such, Mario is a semi-silent protagonist, who is sporadically depicted speaking coherent English sentences. In contemporary ''Mario'' games, most of his vocalizations are grunts, yells, and the occasional catchphrase, such as "Mama Mia!", "It's-a me, Mario!" and "Let's-a-go!", although he is shown to speak at length in some spin-off games and official interviews. Likewise, while Mario largely serves as a "everyman" protagonist to fulfill any role as needed to be, he has shown plenty of characterization; for instance, the ending of ''{{iw|mariowiki|Super Mario Odyssey}}'' has Mario comfort his longtime nemesis, Bowser, after Peach rejects both of their marriage proposals, showing him to be a selfless person who sees the best qualities in others. As an everyman character, the optimistic protagonist and the flagship character for both his series and company, Mario is inherently easy for players of his various games to appreciate, and he is usually the most balanced playable character in any game he appears in. While Mario's definitive, Martinet-voiced depiction was codified by ''{{iw|mariowiki|Super Mario 64}}'', to the extent that Martinet's successor {{iw|mariowiki|Kevin Afghani}} would effectively perform impressions of Martinet's voices for Mario (and Luigi), most auxiliary media prior to that game (such as the [[mariowiki:Super Mario Bros. (film)|live-action film]] and various cartoons produced by {{iw|mariowiki|DIC Entertainment}}) provided different portrayals of the iconic plumber, typically as a mild caricature of a working-class Italian-American with a gruff Brooklyn accent, some elements of which were portrayed in the [[mariowiki:The Super Mario Bros. Movie|2023 animated film]].