It’s March 10th, which can also be written as MAR-10, which means that it’s Mario Day, an annual celebration of Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber.
Like Disney and Star Wars Day, the consolemaker has embraced this fan-driven holiday, and it’s likely that some kind of major announcement will happen later today (the smart money is on the first trailer for the upcoming Super Bros. Mario movie).
But you need to get into the proper headspace to truly enjoy the holiday, so sit back and enjoy this trio of mini-documentaries about the man they call Mario.
From short films to podcasts to full-length features, Documenting the Past tunes in to the history of video games through a documentarian’s lens.
Even before Mario fans in North America and Europe had ever heard of Nintendo’s switcheroo, they knew that Super Mario Bros. 2 was a bit of an oddball. Throwing out nearly everything that made its predecessor the first post-crash blockbuster, Super Mario Bros. 2 forged its own path for Mario with multiple playable characters, new enemies, and an entirely original world to explore. And it ended with an unbelievable plot twist that left an entire generation of kids staring at their screens in disbelief.
At least, that’s what we thought at the time.
In reality, Super Mario Bros. 2 was a conversion of Doki Doki Panic, a platformer developed by Shigeru Miyamoto to promote a Japanese television convention in 1987. The actual Super Mario Bros. 2 was a more direct followup to the original game that was first released in Japan in 1986, but wouldn’t be available internationally until 1993 (when it was included in Super Mario All-Stars as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels).
Norman Caruso looked back at both games for an episode of The Gaming Historian:
Like Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Kart was similarly built upon the frame of a completely different game, though one that would never be released. According to Yahel from Wrestling With Gaming, the game actually first got the green light as a multiplayer-focused sequel to F-Zero, but a complicated development cycle encouraged Nintendo to swap in Mario and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom’s residents:
While Nintendo was able to salvage their multiplayer F-Zero prototype, not every project from the company will make it onto store shelves. This is especially true for Mario, who has starred in more 30 games that were in development in some from but ultimately went unreleased. The folks at Did You Know Gaming? recently provided a nice overview of these projects as they tore through a Lightning Round of “Every Cancelled Super Mario Game”:
Thanks to Norman Caruso, Yahel, and the team from Did You Know Gaming? for these great mini-documentaries. And Happy Mario Day to all who celebrate!