Who And What Is Mario In 2020?

The famous plumber’s influence now extends well beyond games

During E3 2014, I met and interviewed Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. At the end of our chat — comfortably the highlight of my career — I asked if he could answer a simple, obvious question for the kids’ magazine I was the games editor of at the time. What is it, in his opinion, that makes Mario the number one video game character in the world?

His answer, which he’s surely had to give many times over the years, stuck with me. “I think probably it’s because Mario’s actions — running, jumping, falling — are things that everyone in the world has experienced,” he told me. “And because it’s something you have personally experienced you have more of a connection to it. Certainly in the Mario games we’re doing things that are impossible for people to do themselves, in terms of how high he’s jumping and things like that, but at the same time you have a connection to whatever it is he’s doing.”

It’s an interesting answer, one that reads as both profound and also arguably untrue — a lovely answer to include in a kid’s magazine, but not necessarily a thought that holds up to great scrutiny, I thought. It’s a statement I find myself thinking back on occasionally, though, as the Mario “brand” continues to expand.

In a 2016 earnings briefing (as per GameSpot), then-Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima spoke openly about the importance of establishing Mario as a brand outside of videogames. Citing Mario-branded toothbrushes specifically, he said that “due to changes in our industry, the proportion of young consumers who are first experiencing games on our systems has been falling…We want to have everyone become familiar with our IP by reaching as many people as possible from an early age within their daily lives.” Perhaps the toothbrush will inspire a kid to pick the game up, and not the other way around.

Now, in 2020, while rumours swirl that Mario’s 3D outings will receive multiple remasters on the Switch (from Super Mario 64 through to 3D World), a lot is happening with Mario outside of games. He’s expanded into Lego; he’s gotten his own Levi’s range; the Minions-makers over at Illumination are working on a new animated movie. Perhaps most importantly, Mario’s getting his own theme park — Super Nintendo World might not carry his name directly, but it is, unmistakably, a Mario theme park first and foremost, with the series’ iconography and characters all over the branding.

Meanwhile, an investment firm has made news for buying up over $1 billion in Nintendo stock, seeking to consult with Nintendo about transforming into a “broader entertainment company.” This isn’t a new idea for Nintendo by any means. The late Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo, said in a 2014 interview that he did not want the company to be known solely for video games.

The Disney parallels are obvious. While other franchises will rise and fall in popularity, or do huge box office numbers, none of their characters will ever usurp Mickey Mouse as the company mascot; similarly, Mario is synonymous with Nintendo, and from a branding perspective he is by far their most important character. In 1990, Mario actually overtook Mickey Mouse as a more well-recognized character among kids.

So where does that leave the character in 2020? Who is Mario, really? His success as a mascot, and his worth as a character outside of games, might rest on how strangely difficult that question is to answer.

Going back to that statement by Miyamoto, one thing we can take away from it is that Mario is defined by his actions, and perhaps by his competencies, moreso than his character. The same is not true of Luigi, who has been turned into a real person through his Mansion adventures; he’s a bit of a gangly coward, which make his actions all the braver. Wario, Mario’s evil doppelganger, is motivated by greed and defined, in the Wario Land series, by his ability to endure pain. Even Toad is now an adventurer.

What is Mario’s relationship with Peach, exactly? Does he love her, or does he rescue her each time because it’s what needs to happen? Does Bowser hate Mario because of who he is, or because he’s constantly thwarting his plans? Mario is sketched out so thin that asking these questions feels like a joke, and it’s hard to even attach adjectives to him that are focused on his personality rather than his abilities. When confronted with these questions, a common response is going to be “who cares?” And that is, in its own way, is a valid answer. Mario is a character that we care about deeply because he does not challenge our very basic sense of who he is — “the guy from the game we like”.

My very simple, straightforward theory is that Mario an essential, beloved character, for one very simple reason — his games are dynamite. You can’t go past Super Mario Bros 3, or Galaxy, or the more-recent Odyssey (not to mention Mario Kart, or Smash Bros, or the better sports games). He’s absolutely at the top of his genre(s), and we love him for it. He’s the conduit through which we have a lot of fun, and — truly — not much more than that. There’s a weird, rare purity in that.

Mario is one of the last great video game character that is really and truly defined entirely by the fun players have with him, alongside Pac-Man and, maybe, the straight line from Tetris. The relationship between players and Mario is simple, straightforward, hard to break. We know they’re not going to rewrite Mario’s backstory in the next game, or switch voice actors, or fundamentally change his character design (even Paper Mario and Dr Mario have been firmly established as entirely separate characters). Mario does not get rebooted. He does not get retooled. The Mario you love is the same Mario that both your parents and your children love. He’s just a guy who can jump well, and that’s enough.

The Mario Lego set is trying something a bit different from previous Lego. It’s “playable”, letting you hop Mario between obstacles and move through the “level” once it’s built. It’s innovative and clever, but it also talks to exactly what Mario does well — he runs, and he jumps higher than we can, and he reminds us of how much fun we’ve had with him. He makes us smile. Perhaps Miyamoto’s response was profound after all.