For the first time, the world's gamers found their first '?' block, and as intended by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, they thought "what's this '?' thing?", clenched their fists, and gave it a swift jumping uppercut. They were each rewarded one coin and 200 points for their curiosity. Then, now that they all knew how to jump, a walking mushroom thing approached them. Some of them jumped on this first Goomba’s head, and were rewarded with another 100 points but some of them didn’t make it and had to start over.
This game has been so popular that many of you reading that last paragraph would know exactly what I was talking about. If not, you would still undoubtedly recognise the theme tune, (see here) created by Koji Kondo.
We have all played this game at some point over the last 25 years. If not the original, one of the many reworks Nintendo have given us whilst all along, never changing the basic principles of gameplay; you jump on bad things, you jump up into good things, (there's probably some metaphorical life lesson in there somewhere). Over the years we have journeyed through the eight (or nine) worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom, the seven dream worlds of Sub-Con, the four kingdoms of Sarasaland, Dinosaur Land, and the Star Road, and even across time and space. We’ve traveled by aeroplane, tail, cape, spaceship, dinosaur, rafts made from bones, cannons, winged hats, and stars that launch us across space. We’ve turned into frogs, raccoons, tanookis, ghosts, springs, balloons, drills, clouds, boulders, penguins, solid metal, and more. You can see all this summarised in a special commemorative video Nintendo have released to mark this anniversary below.
Mario has been so popular over the years, it has been parodied in many other video games including LittleBigPlanet and even World of Warcraft and after 25 years the franchise has sold over 240 million copies. That's nearly 40 million more than it's closest rival Pokémon and double that of third placed Tetris.
It would be fair to say that Nintendo have milked Mario's popularity for every penny they could. Even I have been heard numerous times over the years to say, "not another bloody Mario game" but something has to be admired in the long standing success that this franchise has endured. Shigeru Miyamoto and Koji Kondo created something that appealed to everyone and would last more than a quarter of a century and that is something we should all be thankful for.
Happy Birthday Mario!
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