To get to know the journey of this game-character, it is necessary to understand the mindset of both the creator as well as the company that launched Mario. Nintendo was a toy company that was quite a bit in the doldrums. They had to do something that would revive their sagging business and the only way they could do this would be to bring out a character that was not just new, but quite captivating to those bored video game players out there. This is was indeed a very tall order! But, Nintendo did the right thing by featuring Mario in its games. The inventor of this character was a simple artist called Shigero Miyamoto. From the name, you would have guessed he was Japanese – yes that’s right. A simple artist from Japan who created a character that was Italian
Miyamoto’s Programming
Now, if you are thinking that this artist was also a programmer, you’re quite wrong – he was no programmer at all. In fact, he had very little idea about how a video game would work. This was probably the very first game in the video industry that had a person working on a game of this magnitude who did not know how gaming had to be designed. This person was a simple artist who had hitherto worked on some simple art designs with Nintendo. Therefore, for him, it was quite a hurdle to design a character and put him through all the moves, without knowing much about gaming platforms and designs.
The Love Triangle
After all the research that took place, the game of Donkey Kong (Super Mario sunshine rom) came into being. This was in the year 1981. There was a very intense love triangle between a man, his girlfriend and guess who! The third angle was his pet gorilla. You might think this was pretty strange – the truth is that because of this absurd premise, the game became an instant hit. The character could move in all sorts of directions. He could move not just forward and back, but also from the left to the right and back. The fun part, however, was his ability to jump from one platform to the other. This is what gave him the name: Jump Man
If you were an early Nintendo player, you would remember that jumping jack who is also called Mario. Get your kids to try this game out and you will find them happy to do so.