Mar10 day: Mario turns 40

March 10, abbreviated as Mar10. This year it’s an extra reason for a party, because exactly forty years ago (plus one day) Mario first appeared in a game.

Spiritual father Shigeru Miyamoto, the renowned developer who also created The Legend of Zelda, wanted to create an everyday character. He turned Mario into a carpenter, a hard-working man. Later, Mario changed his profession and became a plumber; an ordinary person that everyone could identify with.

He first appeared in 1981 in Donkey Kong, although he was still called Jumpman. In the game made for arcade halls, he assaulted a monkey, who then became so angry that he kidnapped his girlfriend.

Cap and mustache

The iconic appearance that we now know came mainly from graphic constraints. By giving Mario a red cap, his hair did not need to be animated. With a large moustache, His features remained hidden. That would have been far too difficult for the technique of the Eighties.

No one could have guessed that Mario would shake up the gaming industry several times. According to experts, he almost single-handedly pulled the gaming industry out of the doldrums. In the 1980s, the market was flooded with bad games and no one trusted games anymore.

Nintendo released the NES console in America in 1985 and introduced its own quality brand to win back trust. Super Mario Bros. was the first feat, a platform game in which Mario had to jump over all kinds of obstacles and enemies. The game was a hit and is still in the top ten best-selling games of all time.

The fancy plumber brought new creativity to the industry several times. In 1996, Super Mario 64 pioneered as one of the first three-dimensional platform games. Things that now seem normal, like moving the camera or walking freely in an open area, were first conceived or refined by Nintendo.