The birth of Mario!

"Shigeru once described his character in Donkey Kong as "a funny hang-loose kind of guy" and designed his character to be goofy and awkward!"	The Birth of Mario *"Eh... It´s a really me, Mario!"* In 1981 Shigeru Miyamoto guided by Gunpei Yokoi made the first game for Nintendo starring our dear Mario. It was the arcade game Donkey Kong. By then Mario didn´t even had a proper name! He was just called "jumpman" and was a carpenter! (When Donkey Kong came to the US and Europe jumpman had been renamed Mario, though.) Yes its true, Mario was first a carpenter before he became a plumber! Shigeru once described his character in Donkey Kong as "a funny hang-loose kind of guy" and designed his character to be goofy and awkward! He also starred in the sequel to Donkey Kong: Donkey Kong Jr. In Dk jr. Mario had gotten his real name (read more about how below). Then Mario Bros came out and his brother Luigi was born. One of Miyamoto's early sketches of Mario and Donkey Kong. Mario and Luigi in Mario Bros
"They gave him a mustache instead of a mouth and a cap instead of hair because it was easier to see in the low resolution."	How did Mario get his name then? When Minoru Arakawa, the president of Nintendo of America in New York, first saw "jumpman" he thought: "Hey! He looks just like the landlord of our office!"; and the landlord´s name was Mario Segali and he came from Italy so that's how it is! Mario in 1997 Why does Mario look like he does? The main reason Mario looks like he does is that it was easier to make him that way, because of the problem with the low resolution and few colors available on the NES and the early arcade machines. They gave him a mustache instead of a mouth and a cap instead of hair because it was easier to see in the low resolution (and because Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't too good at designing hair). One other thing with the cap was that it was static, which made easier to animate than hair. Mario was gven an overall because then you could see his arms easier when he was moving. The gloves that he sometimes wears, only appeared in the drawed art work, never in the games. This was because of the limited number of colors in the NES and arcade machines could handle and therefore his hands had to be in the same color as his head.
"Shigeru got the idea of using mushrooms as powerups from the popular book Alice in the Wonderland."	How come Mario became a carpenter? Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to make his character a hard working person so that the players could identify him/herself with him. He aslo wanted him to be a ordinary man neither heroic nor handsome. How did they get the idea of the Super Mushroom and Mario becoming Super Mario? Nintendo was developing a new technique that made it possible to make bigger sprites on the NES than before and at first they decided to make Mario big all the time, until Shigeru came up with the idea of Mario resizing when eating mushrooms! He got the idea of using mushrooms as powerups from the popular book Alice in the Wonderland. Does Mario and Luigi have a surname? Yes, in fact they do! Their surname is Mario! So their full names are: Mario Mario and Luigi Mario!
	Mario in Donkey Kong jr. Click for a larger picture!

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