Nintendo's big hit "Super Mario Brothers," has appeared even in the the "Genius World Book of Records," as the world's best selling video game. However, have you ever thought why was he named "Mario"? (Yukito Ikeya) On the foreign news site, "ocweekly.com" they ran an article called "Ten Things You Didn't Know About Super Mario Bros." In the article they exposed each and every known secret about of Mario, starting from the origin of his name, to why Mario wears overalls, all the way to the existence of various hidden stages. How many of the 10 secrets do you know?
① The grass and the clouds use the same pixel graphics.
If you take a good look at the clouds drifting in the sky and the grass coming out of the grass coming out of the ground, then you can realize that they both are the same graphics. This device was used to save even the smallest bit of memory space.
*Side note: Super Mario Bros. took up 40 kb of memory space.
② The hidden "Minus Stages"
When entering the warp zone at the end of the stage 1-2, using a slight trick before the screen scrolls over you can enter the pipe that takes you to a place labeled "-1." "-1" is a water stage but for some strange reason the graphics in the background look like a running stage. Throughout the stage Princess Peach and Koopa come out.
③ Mario's name's origin comes from the landlord's name
Mario's name was taken from the owner who rented out the office during that time. His name was "Mario Seagale." It seemed at the time Nintendo of America was running behind on the rent, Nintendo made a deal to extend the payment by naming the game character after Mr. Seagale.
④ Mario was influenced by "Alice in Wonderland."
The "Super Mushroom," an item if eaten makes Mario's body grow bigger. According Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto when he was answering question for a foreign interview, the motif of the item appeared in "Alice in Wonderland." If you think about it, Alice also eats mushrooms and grows bigger and smaller.
⑤ Mario really does hit the blocks with his fist.
By chance is there anyone that really thinks that Mario hits the blocks with his head? If you look carefully at Mario's jump motion you can see that Mario properly thrusts his hand above his head. Well, in the case of his squat jump do you know whether or not he hits blocks with his head?
⑥ The reason for the hat and the mustache.
This is a pretty famous story but Mario wears his hat because when Mr. Miyamoto was designing Mario, it was difficult to represent Mario's hair color with pixels. For the same reason, Mario has a mustache because it was a device that easily showed where Mario had a mouth.
⑦ "Super Mario Bros." was released on Friday the 13th!!!
"Super Mario Bros." 's release date was September, 13th 1985 on a Friday. Yes! Friday the 13th!!!! I've said enough....!!!!
⑧ "All Night Nippon" edition does exists.
Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 1987's "All Night Nippon," a limited amount of copies of "All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros." were manufactured for the Famicom Disk System. The contents were nearly the same as the original, but gumbas were replaced with Sun Plaza Nakano, a Japanese celebrity, Toads were turned into the various personalities from the program. The means of obtaining this wasn't through general sales but through a prize drawing. To the people that have this game, it's a rather precious, so please treasure it.
⑨ Why Mario wears overalls.
Have you ever wondered why Mario's clothes are overalls? There's a proper reason for this. According to one of Mr. Miyamoto's past stories, he said "I did this in order to clearly show Mario's arm's movement." Because they're overalls you can easily make a distinction between Mario's arm and waist, moreover with the overalls I can show Mario's lively movement.
⑩ Isn't Koopa's flame backwards?
If you take a good look at the fire Koopa breaths, the front part of the flame looks like the the tail of the fire. It's a flame that flies forward but normally shouldn't the tail of the flame come out at the end? If you think about it calmly, even though it's clearly strange, why until now has no one pointed this out? Perhaps some of the turtle tribe .... the parents it seems like someone is coming at this time.....
Japanese Article
Ten Things You Didn't Know About Super Mario Bros.
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