How Mario Began

But why a flat cap and overalls? How was this decided? This was due to the graphical capabilities of the time, Putting blocky hair on the top of this heroes head would not have gone down at all well, covering it up with a cap however would've been a much easier task. The overalls were put there to ease animation of the character, the arm colour of Mario had to differentiate from that of the overall, yet still show an arm... And that's how Mario became Mario!

"Mario's Early Years" (1981-1989)

We see our first signs of Mario's graphical development from Jump Man in Donkey Kong, to the more detailed sprites of Mario on the NES, which overall due to higher resolution capability gave Nintendo the capacity to enhance Mario's sprite.+

Mario, aka Jump Man (1981)
These are some Sprites of Mario from Donkey Kong on the NES.

Sprites from Donkey Kong (1981)

Mario Bros (1983)
This was an arcade style game, you could either play 1v1 battle mode vs. your brother Luigi. Or you could play on a multi-height level, with 2 pipes at the top, where a unlimited amount of turtles and other assorted enemies would descend upon you, the aim was to get the highest score (by killing more and more enemies). This was the first game in which Mario was a Plumber and saw the introduction of his brother, Luigi.

2 years after Mario Bros came Super Mario Bros which was the first visit to the Mushroom Kingdom, where Mario had gone to rescue a princess in distress, who had been kidnapped by Bowser

Sprites from Super Mario Bros (1985)

Super Mario Land (1989)
Although Super Mario Land was released later than Super Mario Bros. 2, the sprites for the Gameboy games always seemed to be a generation behind those of the consoles, the sprites of Mario weren't too dissimilar to that of Mario's sprites from Donkey Kong (1981) and Mario Bros (1983) in the sense that his eyes were 1 pixel in size, and due to technical limitations of the time he also had very sharp features such as his pointy nose and cap.

Sprites from Super Mario Land (1989)

Mario evolved (1988-1994)

Mario's sprites have become rounder, and less sharp - Mario looks friendlier, and due to becoming complacent after defeating so many enemies in his previous games, seems to have piled on the pounds...

Super Mario Bros 2 (1988)
This was not originally a Mario game, it was once called Doki Doki Panic, all Nintendo did was simply replace the four players from Doki Doki Panic and insert the Super Mario Bros and their buddies Toad and Princess as playable characters.. Simple as that, this was the only game to feature Wart as the main boss. Mario uses vegetables and potions to defeat his foes in this game as opposed to the classic mushrooms and fire-flowers etc. You had the option to play as Princess Toadstool, Toad and Luigi too.

Sprites of our new, rounder Mario from Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988)

Super Mario Bros 3 (1989)
Another of the Princess Toadstool rescuing platformers, this one however outsold any platform game in the world, even Super Mario World (Which imo is better). You play Mario (or Mario & Luigi in 2 player) trying to track down Bowser, you must also return the Wands of Power that control each lands to there Kings by defeating the Koopa Kids.

Another rounder-rendition of Mario from Super Mario Bros 3 (1989)

Mario gains Super Power (1991-1993)

With the release of the SNES, a significantly more powerful platform than the NES in all respects, Mario's creators could finally make the colourful, more detailed sprites that we all know and love today.

The sprites were made in significantly more detail and able to utilize a much greater colour pallet. Re-releases of SMB1,2,3 were bought out with remastered graphics and sound under the compilation "Super Mario Allstars" - the re-release of these titles with better graphics thanks to the more powerful platform would leak to a peak of Mario popularity - a fine hour indeed.

Super Mario World (1991)
The first Mario Game on the Super Nintendo, another kidnap of Princess Toadstool, This adventure however is not set in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario is in Dinosaur Land which consists of several playable zones including Yoshi's Island, Donut Plains, The Bridge areas, Vanilla Dome, Star Land, The Forest of Illusion, Chocolate Island, a Sunken Ship, and finally the Valley of Bowser.

Harnessing the power of the 16-bit revolution Nintendo were finally able to combine the new rounded Mario with many different colours and much more detail. Sprites from Super Mario World (1991)

Super Mario Kart (1992)
This was the first ever Super Mario racing game, it was released on the Super Nintendo and featured three different cups (Mushroom, Flower and Star, you could also unlock a fourth, called Special Cup), three different racing speeds (50cc, 100cc, 150cc) and three different modes (Battle, Grand Prix or Time Trial). The available characters in this title were: Donkey Kong, Bowser, Mario, Toad, Luigi, Princess, Yoshi and Koopa Troopa. Yet again the sprites of Mario in his Kart had come on leaps and bounds from their pre-90's predecessors.

A year later in Super Mario Kart Mario takes on a non-side scrolling roll, and we start to see Mario from different views other than the side. Sprites from Super Mario Kart.

The next dimension (1996-2004)

In 1996 Nintendo strayed from the beaten track, Mario - who everyone knew and loved as our 2D hero gained a dimension and took his first look into "3d" renders over sprites - beginning with Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES) and followed closely by Wrecking Crew (SNES) in 1998 and later Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA) and finally Mario vs. Donkey Kong in 2004 (GBA).

Super Mario RPG (1996)
Not only did Mario seem to lose a little weight for this title, but he also gained another dimension, breaking away from the typical 2D Mario Side-Scroller, Nintendo, partnered with SquareSoft, made a whole host of new characters, a whole lot of new sprites, and the biggest Mario storyline yet, in the first of the Mario RPG Games. This game was never released in Europe.

A more detailed and arguably a further evolution of Mario. Some would argue that the pre-rendered anti aliased Mario we would see this generation had lost a little of Mario's charm due to the severity of the changes from how we were used to seeing him previously. Sprites from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Mario's darkest hours

In the early days as well as being released on Nintendo platforms, Mario was also ported to other systems such as the Atari, the Commodore 64 and more. Most of these systems representations of Mario were more often than not unholy abominations except maybe the Colecovisions (third from left) which wasn't too bad.

Mario outside his Nintendo based home on the following systems left to right respectively: Atari 800 (DK + Mario Bros), Colecovision, Intellivision, Commodore 64, Atari 2600.

You'd have thought the Atari 2600 would've advanced from the Atari 800, but apparently due to the stress of being ported onto an Atari platform again Mario developed a colossal gut and started wearing pink pregnancy dresses... I bet he thanks the heavens he doesn't get ported out anymore!!

Modern Mario - the 3D Revolution (1996 - Present)

The sprite based Mario we knew from our pasts is gone on the successors to the early NES/SNES Platforms - introducing Mario on the Nintendo "Ultra" 64, Gamecube and Wii - Here we can see that no matter how much technology moves on, Mario will never be too far behind it.

Nintendo 64 - Super Mario 64 (1996)

Gamecube - Super Mario Sunshine (2002)

Wii - Super Mario Galaxy (2007)

So who was your favourite Mario?

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