Nintendo is having a very good year. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was a record-breaking success; Switch sales continue to climb even in the console’s sixth year. In February, the company opened Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios in California. All of this, though, looks small compared to the hype around the company’s ubiquitous moustachioed plumber. This summer, The Super Mario Bros. Movie brought in nearly $1.4 billion globally at the box office, making it the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time. Now, Nintendo is releasing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the latest game in the franchise, to rave reviews from critics.
Mario has been bouncing his way to this moment for some time. Developer Shigeru Miyamoto created the character, an unassuming Italian plumber with a knack for saving princesses and jumping really high, four decades ago. Following a series of successful games on early Nintendo systems, Mario got his first movie in 1993—a puzzling, staggeringly bad live-action flick with little resemblance to the growing franchise.
He fared much better on consoles, as Nintendo crafted more adventures around Mario and his friends, including breakout hits like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. As the decades marched on and Nintendo amassed hundreds of successful titles, from sports to party games, Mario’s popularity only grew—along with the company’s ambitions, especially those outside of the video game industry.
“It’s limitless,” Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser says of the Mario franchise. “I think if we were here talking five years ago, we would only be thinking about the next iteration of a game and what genre that might be.” Now, things are different.
