Mario - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

As Nintendo's mascot, Mario is considered by some to be the most famous video game character in history, and has been called an icon of the gaming industry. The Mario series of video games has sold more than 200 million copies (210 million as of 2009), making it the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Mario was one of the first video game character inductees at the Walk of Game in 2005, alongside Link and Sonic the Hedgehog. Mario was the first video game character to be honored with a wax figure in the legendary Hollywood Wax Museum in 2003. In the 1990s, a national survey found that Mario was more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse; in fact, Mario has been called the "most recognisable" figure in the gaming industry.

Since his creation, Mario has established himself as a pop culture icon, and has starred in numerous television shows, comic books, and in a feature film. He has appeared on lunch boxes, t-shirts, magazines, commercials (notably, in a Got Milk? commercial), in candy form, on shampoo bottles, cereal, badges, and as a plush toy. Nintendo of Japan produced a 60-minute anime feature which starred Mario and his friends in 1986, although this film has never been released outside of Japan. The animated series The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! featured a live-action series of skits which starred the late former WWF manager "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi. Mario appeared in a book series, the Nintendo Adventure Books. Mario has inspired unlicensed paintings, performances on talent shows such as India's Got Talent, and short films, which have themselves been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Many people and places have been named (or nicknamed) after Mario. Bergsala, the distributor of Nintendo's products in the Nordic and the Baltic countries, is located at Marios Gata 21 (Mario's Street 21) in Kungsbacka, Sweden, named after Mario. Many sports stars, including Bundesliga football players Mario Götze and Mario Gómez, NHL hockey player Mario Lemieux, Italian footballer Mario Balotelli, and Italian cycling star Mario Cipollini have been given the nickname "Super Mario". In the Spanish suburb of Zaragoza, in commemoration of Mario a street was named "Avenida de Super Mario Bros".

Mario's legacy is recognized by Guinness World Records, who awarded the Nintendo mascot, and the series of platform games he has appeared in, seven world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. These records include "Best Selling Video Game Series of All Time", "First Movie Based on an Existing Video Game", and "Most Prolific Video Game Character", with Mario appearing in 116 distinct titles (not including remakes or re-releases).

Creator Shigeru Miyamoto has stated that Mario is his favorite character out of all that he has created. Nintendo Power listed Mario as their favourite hero, citing his defining characteristics as his mustache, red cap, plumbing prowess, and his mushrooms. In a poll conducted in 2008 by Oricon, Mario was voted the most popular video game character in Japan, outranking characters such as Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series. Gaming site GameDaily listed the "unlikely hero" on its top 25 video game archetypes, and used Mario as an example of this. It stated that in spite of the fact that he should have run out of energy through the first level, he kept going. Mario ranked fourth on GameDaily's top ten Smash Bros. characters list. Mario was fourth on UGO's list of the "Top 100 Heroes of All Time", ahead of fellow video game characters Samus Aran (Metroid), Link (Legend of Zelda), Gordon Freeman (Half-Life), and Master Chief (Halo). CNET listed him first on its list of the "Top 5 video game characters". He was voted 100th in IGN's Top 100 Villains for his appearance in Donkey Kong Junior, adding "This Mario is a total jerk, holding Donkey Kong Jr.'s dad hostage". UGO.com listed Mario's Hat twenty-first on their list of "The Coolest Helmets and Headgear in Video Games", stating "there’s always somebody at your Halloween party wearing one."