No Beer 'Til Next Year, Young Man! (a.k.a. Happy 20th B-Day, Mario!)

Like Cabbage Patch Kids, Teddy Ruxpin, Tickle Me Elmo, Furby, Pokemon, the Razor Scooter, Bag O' Glass, and Super Bass-O-Matic '76, Nintendo was the must-have present for the 1985 holiday season.

EDIT: In the words of Ralph Wiggum, (and as a recently-engaged friend of mine is fond of saying) "Me Fail English? That's Unpossible!" I should have caught this earlier, but I just realized that I wrote that paragraph as though all of those items were from 1985 (and that incudes the Super Bass-O-Matic '76). My bad. Sure, I could just correct it, but then that would go against my policy of never passing up a chance to quote from The Book of Ralph (amen).

This feat was all the more amazing, given that the entire retail industry was beyond convinced that the video game "fad" was dead, after the arcade and home console crashes a couple years earlier.

So armed with an intrepid plumber as its mascot (and a savvy distribution deal with Teddy Ruxpin maker Worlds of Wonder), Nintendo hoisted the entire industry on its shoulders, and made it crystal clear that video games weren't quite ready to be buried (say, in an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill) just yet.

While I could have put off my Mario 20th birthday post until October 1 (the 20-year anniversary of the U.S. launch on the NES), today seems to be the official "big day".

20 years ago today (September 13, 1985, for those of you who aren't in the mood to do the math), uber-mazing game designer Shigeru Miyamoto introduced Mario to an adoring Japanese public on the Nintendo Famicom (Family Computer) console, which is identical to the North American Nintendo Entertainment System, but with a different casing & color scheme.

In honor of the occasion, here are some nuggets & tidbits about the birthday boy:

• The character actually made his debut in 1981, in the wildly popular Donkey Kong arcade game...
  

• ...the famous plumber was originally a carpenter...
  

• ...his name wasn't even Mario yet. He was called Jumpman...
  

• ...he later was renamed Mario after Mario Segali, who was the landlord of Nintendo of America's offices at the time...
  

• ...legend has it that Jumpman and Mr. Segali bore a striking resemblance to one another...

• ...for several years now, Mario has enjoyed greater global popularity than a certain iconic shorts-wearing rodent.

Here's a visual Mario Timeline for you, courtesy of Gametopia.


Here's a more complete and info-licious timeline, but I forgot where I found this one.


Finally, Dark Watcher has even more on the graphic evolution of Mario.