Mario (universe)

Mario (universe)
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Developer(s)	Nintendo
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Designer(s)	Shigeru Miyamoto; Takashi Tezuka
Genre(s)	Platformer; Puzzle; Racing; Sports; Party; Action-adventure; RPG
Console/platform of origin	Arcade
First installment	Donkey Kong (1981)
Latest installment	Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (2015)
Article on Super Mario Wiki	Mario (universe)

The Mario universe (マリオ, Mario) refers to the Super Smash Bros. series' collection of characters, stages, and properties that hail from Nintendo's expansive and highly successful Mario video game franchise. The Mario universe is Nintendo's most lucrative franchise, and it is flat-out the most successful game franchise in global sales and in history. The Mario universe is a franchise of fantasy video games, and the most popular games are the fantasy adventure platform games called the Super Mario games. Mario himself is Nintendo's mascot and is considered the most well-known, most famous, and most popular video game character in the world; in fact he is more popular to Americans than other very well known characters like Sonic, Mega Man, Warner Bros.'s Bugs Bunny, Disney's Mickey Mouse, DC Comics's Superman and Batman, and Marvel's Spider-Man. Mario, along with his many friends and nemeses, has appeared in dozens upon dozens of Nintendo's video games, many of them being best-sellers and several of which are considered some of the greatest games ever released.

As a direct result, there are more Mario-themed characters, items, and properties to be found in the Smash Bros. series than any other Nintendo franchise, not the least of which are eleven distinctive playable characters who originated from the series between Brawl and Smash 4: Mario, his clone Dr. Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Princess Peach (who has Toad as an attack), Rosalina (who uses Lumas to attack), Bowser Jr. (who has the Koopalings as palette swaps), Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and Wario. The Mario universe is so expansive, in fact, that the last four characters are considered stars of their own sub-universes: the Yoshi universe, the Donkey Kong universe, and the Wario universe. The Wrecking Crew universe is also a sub-universe of the Mario universe, although no playable characters hail from it. It is the most heavily represented universe in the Super Smash Bros. series, by far, with the highest Trophy, sticker, and item count in the series, with the total amount of playable characters falling second to the Pokémon universe (7 to 9).

Franchise description

By the beginning of 1981, Nintendo had developed a series of cabinet arcade games which were moderately successful in Japan, but its efforts to market them to Western audiences had fallen flat. In the most spectacular representation of this performance, thousands of units of an arcade shooter named Radar Scope, the first game Shigeru Miyamoto ever helped develop, were left sitting in warehouse storage. The president of the newly founded Nintendo of America division, Minoru Arakawa, faced financial disaster, so he pleaded with Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi to provide him with a new game which he could install as a replacement into Radar Scope machines. Miyamoto agreed to the task of "fixing" the game so it would appeal to gamers, and instead of tweaking the original, he designed an entirely new coin-op game out of the Radar Scope hardware, and created new characters that could then be marketed and used in later games.

The finished product, Donkey Kong, became a huge success for Nintendo and moved 60,000 units by 1982. Its popularity was owed to the many differences from the maze and shooter games of the time that being the first example of a platform game with actual jumping mechanics afforded it; these included its multiple-stage structure and its visual approach to story and characterization. It is considered to be the earliest video game with a storyline that unfolded on the screen itself, with cutscenes in between levels establishing a love triangle between characters inspired by the Popeye comic. The eponymous ape Donkey Kong is the de facto villain, shown stealing away a damsel-in-distress (later given the name Pauline), and it is up to the player-character, a carpenter named "Jumpman" at the time, to save her. This was the earliest incarnation of the character that came to be known as Mario, and his design's most iconic elements were necessitated by severe pixel-based graphical limitations; he was given a mustache because that was the only way to show he had a human face, and he was depicted wearing colorful overalls to show he was wearing something more defined then a shapeless blob. Mario was given his official name in Miyamoto's modestly successful 1983 arcade follow-up Mario Bros., which also introduced Mario's palette-swapped brother Luigi, changed his occupation from carpenter to plumber, and introduced the idea of him using strong jumping abilities to fell turtle-like enemies.

Over the course of the North American video game industry recession that lasted from 1983 to 1985, Nintendo released the Famicom (the Western equivalent of which was the NES), which eventually found success as a hardware platform in its own right. Miyamoto began development of a successor to Mario Bros. for the console, and the game went through many ideas before settling as a side-scrolling platformer with a very clearly defined diversity to its gameplay elements, onscreen characters, and setting. The 1985 release of Super Mario Bros. is labeled by many as the single most influential video game involved in not just the popularization of the side-scrolling game genre, but the direction the video game industry itself would take following the 1983 crash, and is often described as the game that began the modern era of video games. Almost all of the game's aspects have been praised on separate occasions; the precise controls, creative power-up system, and well-tuned speed and momentum mechanics came into play against a varied set of level-design obstacles and distinctive enemies, and Mario's whimsical quest through his newly established setting, the Mushroom Kingdom, to rescue his love interest Princess Toadstool from the dragon turtle-like Bowser was timeless. The game became the best-selling title in the history of the industry, a record it held for over twenty years.

The Super Mario franchise indisputably became Nintendo's foremost property immediately, and Mario himself earned a permanent position as the company's mascot. It became a custom to release a steady stream of Mario-related titles for each and every Nintendo console and handheld launched in the company's history, and as of 2013, over 200 games featuring Mario characters in some way, shape or form have been released. While many entries into the series enjoyed a high level of success, none of the subsequent Mario games necessarily had anywhere near as much influence on video game genres as Super Mario Bros. itself had, but there is one clear exception: Super Mario 64 was the core platform-based series' inaugural transition into the third dimension, released in the Americas in September 1996, with a free-roaming, non-linear design and an overarching collection aspect. A launch title for the Nintendo 64, it became the system's best-selling game and is given much of the credit for allowing the Nintendo 64 to attain the success that it had. The game set many precedents for the 3D platformer genre that would forever reappear in 3D platformers to follow, including player-character movement precisely dictated by the controller's analog joystick, a hub-based level design where each level accessible from the hub was a self-contained area containing a large variety of objectives to complete, and the first-ever "free" camera in a game with 3D environments, where the camera could be controlled independently of the character and was not rigidly fixed either to the character's position or a specific point in the level itself. Numerous other Mario platformers, particularly Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario Galaxy, are also frequently cited as some of the greatest games ever made; however, they were nowhere as genre-defining as Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 64, instead garnering praise for innovating on and refining the formulas set by the first 2D and 3D installments.

The Mario setting itself most often stars Mario, a free-spirited and heroic man with strong jumping abilities who is, by this point at least, a celebrity in the colorful and cartoon-like Mushroom Kingdom. Mario is often accompanied by his taller and more cowardly brother Luigi, who is occasionally mocked in-universe for being less famous than his sibling, but also goes on a few adventures of his own. His love interest and the ruler of the kingdom, Princess "Peach" Toadstool, regularly gets taken away by Mario's trouble-making arch-nemesis, Bowser, who is depicted as a menacing figure and/or a comedic one depending on the game. The most common setup for a Mario game is that Mario goes on an obstacle-laden quest to defeat Bowser and save Peach. Mario games rarely devote focus to lore or characterization; Mario, his world, and the established personalities that are his numerous allies and enemies represent Nintendo's primary "tileset" for creating colorful games of various genres that prioritize the quality of the gameplay itself, and Mario games sometimes satirize some conventions in video games. The Mario franchise is so big, and its side characters so thoroughly established, that several of these characters are the stars of their own semi-regular releases: Donkey Kong has starred alongside a simian supporting cast of his own in various games that, for a time, were primarily handled by British company Rareware; a pet-like dinosaur companion for Mario named Yoshi was introduced in the SNES launch title Super Mario World, and has been the focus of several of his own games; and a mischievous anti-hero equivalent to Mario who debuted in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for the Game Boy, Wario, has starred in both his own platformers and a series of party games that deliver a more outward parody of video game trends.

The many games of Mario have explored a large variety of video game genres, and one genre the series seems to avoid making a purely Mario-centric title for is the fighting genre, a gap the series regularly fills in with its guaranteed appearances in every installment in the Super Smash Bros. crossover series:

2D Platforming: The genre most closely associated with the Mario brand, which was begun by Super Mario Bros. for the NES. These are linear side-scrollers that follow the same basic formula, for the most part (the Western Super Mario Bros. 2 played very differently because it was a Mario-series conversion of an unrelated game named Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic). While there was an extended period where new Mario games were no longer two-dimensional platformers, a sub-series focused on the official return to the 2D platforming formula, New Super Mario Bros., began releasing for each of the most recent Nintendo platforms, starting with the Nintendo DS in 2006.

3D Platforming: The seminal Super Mario 64 paved the way for 3D Mario platformers on each of the Nintendo home consoles that followed the Nintendo 64. In some ways, these are the "biggest" Mario releases; Super Mario Sunshine for the GameCube incorporated a radical gameplay twist in the form of the F.L.U.D.D. spraying device on Mario's back; a pair of Super Mario Galaxy games on the Wii placed all of the action on tightly spherical settings; and the most recent games in this genre are Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS and Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U, both of which exchange the free-roaming world aspect for a more contained linear level design.

Racing: All high-profile Mario titles in this genre belong to an officially recognized sub-series called Mario Kart. Like several other Mario releases, the first Mario game in this genre, Super Mario Kart for the SNES, is credited for essentially popularizing a new genre in the video game industry, in this case the weapon and obstacle-based kart racing sub-genre. It is an unbroken Nintendo tradition to release one Mario Kart game for each and every Nintendo home console and handheld system. As of the most recent generation in gaming, the most recent entries are Mario Kart 7 for the Nintendo 3DS and Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U.

Party: Yet another genre the Mario brand influenced, the first installment in the long-running Mario Party series was released for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. The most recent entries are Mario Party: Island Tour for the Nintendo 3DS and Mario Party 10 for the Wii U. In the Mario Party series, multiple players roll the dice to move characters across a board like in a board game, then compete in one of many dozens of available mini-games to amass a high coin total and purchase a means of winning, typically Stars, among other things.

RPG: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was a result of an out-of-the-ordinary partnership between Nintendo and Square, developers of Final Fantasy, grafting the Mario aesthetic and reflex-based gameplay onto a JRPG format. This was the starting point for what would become a fair number of Mario-centric JRPGs that differentiate themselves from other titles in the genre by incorporating elements of timing and reflex to some of the standard battle commands. These are some of the only Mario games that feature a heaver slant towards storytelling; additionally, almost every game introduces a diverse cast of original characters to rival that of the main Mario universe. Mario has since established two entirely separate RPG-based sub-series: Paper Mario, where all characters are presented as flat paper-thin illustrations occupying three-dimensional areas, and Mario & Luigi, which is centered on cooperative combat between Mario and Luigi. While Mario himself is present and playable in all RPG titles, he is frequently teamed up with other party members as battle partners and/or alternate playable characters, including Luigi, Peach, Bowser, and numerous original characters. The most recent Mario RPGs are Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, both for the Nintendo 3DS. A crossover of the two series, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, is set to be released in January 2016 for the Nintendo 3DS.

Puzzle: Dr. Mario was a Tetris-style puzzle game for NES that starred Mario in a Doctor's costume throwing pills to combat differently colored viruses. There have been some occasional puzzle games following this, but an official puzzle-based subseries entitled Mario vs. Donkey Kong began on Game Boy Advance, which pays homage to Mario's original rivalry with Donkey Kong. The most recent release is Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move for the Nintendo 3DS' eShop.

Sports: Mario has a long-standing tradition of applying its aesthetic to a variety of team sports-based games and incorporating specific Mario-flavored twists. The two longest-running Mario Sports sub-series are Mario Golf and Mario Tennis, both of which are regularly developed by Camelot Software Planning. Mario Sports games have also been based on soccer, baseball, basketball, and more. The Olympic Games series have received one game per season starting in 2008, and in an unprecedented twist, marking the first ever crossover between Mario and its former "rival" franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog.

In Super Smash Bros.

The Mario universe easily outnumbers every other universe represented in Super Smash Bros. in playable characters, stages, and items.

Characters

With two of the twelve fighters hailing directly from the Mushroom Kingdom and two other fighters (Donkey Kong and Yoshi) from branches of the franchise, Mario is the most extensively represented franchise in the Smash Bros. series from the start. HAL Laboratory originally planned to include Bowser as part of the Smash Bros. roster, but was removed for unknown reasons.

Mario: Appearing as a mustachioed man with a big nose and blue overalls, red cap and shirt, and white gloves, Mario is the undisputed mascot of Nintendo and is the most well-known video game character in the world. His appearance is based off Super Mario 64. He has appeared in many, many Nintendo games spanning a large variety of genres, such as platforming, kart racing, sports, and puzzle games, and in almost every appearance he is playable as the most balanced character of that game. He is made to be the most balanced character of the Super Smash Bros. roster, of which this is his first appearance in a fighting game, and new Smash Bros. players are encouraged to try out the game as him because of that. While he does not have glaring weaknesses, the fact that he is designed to have no especially powerful strengths either makes only high tier, not top tier.

Luigi: Mario's younger, lankier brother in green rather than red has always been relegated to the role of Mario series co-star. His appearance is based off Super Mario World. In many Mario games where Luigi appears, he is a selectable alternative character to Mario, such as in the Mario Kart and Mario Party game series. Games that came out after Smash 64, however, gave Luigi more important roles. In Super Smash Bros., Luigi appears as an unlockable, alternative fighter to Mario, with his own unique quirks in his fighting style.

Also see Yoshi and Donkey Kong.

Common Enemy

The Mario series is one of two universes in Smash 64 to feature a stage where a minor character appears as a stage obstacle, the other universe being the Pokémon universe (Silph Co.).

Piranha Plant: A long-standing common enemy in Mario games resembling a sentient plant with a bulbous head with a gaping, fanged mouth. It first appeared in Super Mario Bros. as a common enemy hiding in the warp pipes that Mario would either jump over or travel through, and they damaged him either by appearing when he was about to collide with them or by breathing fireballs in his direction. The Piranha Plants appear from out of the Warp Pipes on the unlockable Mushroom Kingdom stage and will damage whichever fighter they come into contact with. These are, however, very easy to avoid, as they will not appear out of these pipes if the character is on them or standing very near them to begin with.

Stages

The Mario universe is the only franchise to feature in more than one stage in this game. Super Smash Bros. features the following stages that are specifically Mario:

Peach's Castle: An elevated stage representing Princess Peach's castle from the Mario games, but many feel that it does not resemble Super Mario 64 enough. It has a decidedly non-traditional layout of platforms and an aerial bumper.
Mushroom Kingdom: The game's one unlockable stage, Mushroom Kingdom is an audiovisual throwback to the original Super Mario Bros. It features suspended platforms and pipes to travel through with Piranha Plant hazards, like in the old game.

Also see Yoshi's Island and Congo Jungle.

Items

Likewise, there are more items based on Mario-based games than any other franchise. Including the Donkey Kong universe as part of this list will consequently include the Hammer as a Mario item:

Bob-omb: A walking bomb that usually patrols around and explodes in the Mario games, making it very dangerous to Mario to run into in his games. In some games Bob-omb can be picked up and thrown at an opponent as a volatile projectile; this is the style of Bob-omb usage featured in its appearance as an item in Smash Bros.
Fire Flower: A semi-sentient flower imbued with the power of fire. In many Mario platformers, Mario and Luigi can pick this up and gain the ability to launch fireballs from their hands. In Smash Bros., however, it is used more as a weapon that can be wielded to project a continuous stream of fire into the area in front of the wielder.
Green Shell: Bowser's army of turtle underlings, called Koopa Troopas, come in several colors of these protective shells. Green-shelled Koopas often walk off the edges of platforms, and if jumped on by Mario, the Koopa will be ejected from its shell. The now-empty Green Shell can then be used as a weapon, either kicked at enemies or thrown at them. As a Smash Bros. item, it can be picked-up and thrown at enemies to do damage and often cause them to be sent flying a far distance.
Red Shell: Unlike their green-shelled counterparts, red-shelled Koopas often patrol platforms from either end and do not fall off the edges, but can be ejected from their shell and the shell used as a weapon in the same way. As a Smash Bros. item, when set in motion, the red shell will spin by itself on the ground and head towards the X-position of the nearest character on the stage for a short period of time, and characters hit by it will receive some damage and be bounced.
Starman: This coveted power-up found in many Mario platformers is a five-sided semi-sentient glowing yellow star that bounces around, and if Mario can touch it, he will be made invincible for a short period of time, during which any enemy that touches him will be defeated. It functions much like that in Smash Bros., though opponents won't be damaged for touching you, but while under the influence of a Starman, you will not take damage nor will you be knocked back by anything.

Music

These are the following Music entries in the Sound Test related to the Mario series:

5: A remix of the original stages music from the original Super Mario Bros. It is in fact, a mixture of the World Ground and Underground themes. It is heard in Peach's Castle.
13: A perfect preservation of the original 8-bit theme from the first stage for the original Super Mario Bros, heard in Mushroom Kingdom.
14: A perfect preservation of the original 8-bit "Hurry Up" version of the normal stage music heard in the original Super Mario Bros. for NES, appearing in Mushroom Kingdom to replace the previous track when there are 30 seconds left in the match.
15: The victory fanfare of Mario and Luigi is an orchestration of the standard "Stage Complete" theme heard in the original Super Mario Bros.
27: A remix of the "invincible" music that would occur when Mario picks up a Starman in Super Mario Bros. and other platforming games, and it occurs when the player picks up the Starman item during a match.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee

Super Smash Bros. Melee is far more substantial than Super Smash Bros., and the amount of properties from the Mario universe are increased proportionally.