Nintendo has changed the official name of a Mario character

JOE

The character’s name was officially changed worldwide for the first time since 1985.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was filled to the brim with some great nods towards the long and detailed history of the Nintendo game series – including mentions of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out to mention of Jump Man, which was Mario’s game title before the franchise was renamed.

However, a character by the name of Spike is one reference that might have gone right over the heads of most viewers.

In the movie, we’re introduced to him in the restaurant near the start of the story, and he appears again close to the end of the action.

He makes fun of Mario and Luigi for their OTT advert on TV, and it turns out that Spike was actually a character from the games themselves.

However, he originally went under a different name, which was officially changed by Nintendo in April 2023 for… well… obvious reasons.

ファミリーコンピュータ向けソフト『レッキングクルー』などに登場するキャラクター「ブラッキー」の名称を、欧米での名称と同じ「スパイク」に変更いたします。なお、2023年4月28日に公開される『ザ・スーパーマリオブラザーズ・ムービー』での名称も、同様に「スパイク」となっています。 pic.twitter.com/HhTXEOmzxn
— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) April 20, 2023

Nintendo announces official name change for Mario character.

Translated, the social media post says:

“The name of the character ‘Blackie’ that appears in the family computer software Wrecking Crew will be changed to ‘Spike’, which is the same as the name in Europe and the United States. In addition, the name in The Super Mario Bros. Movie released on April 28, 2023 is also ‘Spike’.”

While we’ve had the movie in our cinemas for a few weeks now, Japanese fans actually won’t get to check it out on their big screens until the end of April.

As for Spike – aka ‘Blackie’ – he first appeared in the NES and arcade game Wrecking Crew when it was first released way back in 1985, and canonically, he was Mario and Luigi’s boss but has been rewritten as a competing foreman for the movie.

(First published in April 2023).