We’re putting good money on him being an influencer now…
There is a lot about the Mario video game universe that doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.
Much like that first meeting in which somebody came up with the idea for Sonic (“Okay, so it is this hedgehog, but unlike normal hedgehogs, he can run really fast, and he’s got to beat this scientist who is turning his animal buddies into cyborgs.” “I love it, but can we make the hedgehog blue?”), we’d love to have been in the meeting room for the moment of Mario’s creation:
“Okay, so that plumber from the Donkey Kong games, he has to save this princess from a big reptile thing, who also happens to be a King…”
Also, if the games are called Super Mario Bros., that would mean his brother is called Luigi Mario, and his own name is … Mario Mario? That can’t be right.
Obviously Nintendo backed the right horse, because Mario is still as popular today as he was when he first got his own game back in 1983. Just as point of fact, there were SEVEN new Mario games released in 2016, and so far there are SIX more confirmed for release in 2017. So… yeah, there’s money to be made there.
Clip via Nintendo
Anyways, one of the things that has remained constant in our understanding of Mario was that he was a plumber. He must have studied as an apprentice, then made his own living out of it, probably trained in his brother Luigi, and (we’re assuming) went down the wrong pipe and ended up saving princesses multiple times a year.
However, now even that is no longer true.
According to Nintendo’s official Japanese website (via Kotaku), Mario is now no longer a working plumber:
“All around sporty, whether it’s tennis or baseball, soccer or car racing, he [Mario] does everything cool. As a matter of fact, he also seems to have worked as a plumber a long time ago…”
That’s fair enough, we guess. In the 34 years we’ve known him, we haven’t seen him fix a single pipe. He’s a plumber in the same way porn stars holding a wrench are plumbers, and at least they say “I’ve come to tighten your pipes.” Mario just jumps into them and ends up somewhere else, which, as any plumber will tell you, isn’t good for the pipes.
So if he isn’t a plumber anymore, what is he?
You can’t put Professional Princess Rescuer on your CV, so we’re going to go with Social Influencer. Think about it, how many other characters out there are more influential that Mario Mario? Name a more dynamic duo:
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