Mario ( ; Japanese: マリオ) is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the Mario franchise, a recurring character in the Donkey Kong franchise, and the mascot of their owner, the Japanese company Nintendo. Mario is an Italian-American plumber who lives in the Mushroom Kingdom with his younger twin brother, Luigi. Their adventures generally involve rescuing Princess Peach from the villain Bowser while using power-ups that give them different abilities. Mario is distinguished by his large nose and mustache, overalls, red cap, and high-pitched, exaggerated Italian accent. Prior to being named Mario, the character was referred to as Ossan, Mr. Video, and Jumpman.
Mario debuted as the player character of Donkey Kong, a 1981 platform game. Miyamoto created Mario because Nintendo was unable to license Popeye as the protagonist. The graphical limitations of arcade hardware influenced Mario's design, such as his nose, mustache, and overalls, and he was named after Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segale. Mario then starred in Mario Bros. (1983). Its 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System sequel, Super Mario Bros., began the successful Super Mario platformer series. Charles Martinet voiced Mario from 1991 to 2023, when he was succeeded by Kevin Afghani.
Mario has appeared in hundreds of video games. These include puzzle games such as Dr. Mario, role-playing games such as Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, and sports games such as Mario Kart and Mario Tennis. He lacks a set personality and consistent profession, allowing him to take on many different roles across the Mario franchise. Mario is often accompanied by a large cast of supporting characters, including friends like Princess Daisy, Toad, and Yoshi and rivals like Bowser Jr., Donkey Kong, and Wario. Mario appears in other Nintendo properties, such as the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games.
Mario is an established pop culture icon and one of the most famous characters in history. His likeness has been featured in merchandise, and people and places have been nicknamed after him. He inspired many video game characters, including Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and unofficial media. The Mario franchise is the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Mario has been adapted in various media; he was portrayed in live-action by Lou Albano in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! and by Bob Hoskins in the 1993 film Super Mario Bros.. Chris Pratt voiced him in the animated films The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026).
Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario while developing Donkey Kong in an attempt to produce Nintendo's first blockbuster video game; previous games, such as Sheriff, had not achieved the success of games such as Namco's Pac-Man. Originally, Miyamoto wanted to create a game that used the 1930s characters Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl. At the time, however, because Nintendo was unable to acquire a license to use the characters (and did not until 1982 with Popeye), he ended up creating an unnamed player character, along with Donkey Kong and Lady (later renamed Pauline).
In early development of Donkey Kong, Mario was drawn using pixel dots in a 16x16 grid. The focus of the game was to escape a maze, and Mario could not jump. However, Miyamoto soon introduced jumping capabilities for the player character, reasoning that "If you had a barrel rolling towards you, what would you do?" Continuing to draw from 1930s media, King Kong was an inspiration, and Mario was set in New York City.
Mario was first called "Ossan" by the development team behind the original Donkey Kong. Although he was unnamed in the Japanese launch release of Donkey Kong, he was named "Jumpman" in the English instructions and "little Mario" in the sales brochure. Miyamoto envisioned a "go-to" character as needed for any game he developed, though limited to cameo appearances because he did not expect the character to become singularly popular. To this end, he originally named the character Mr. Video, comparing what he intended for the character's appearances in later games to the cameos that Alfred Hitchcock had done within his films. In retrospect, Miyamoto commented that if he had used the name "Mr. Video", the character likely would have "disappeared off the face of the Earth".
According to a widely circulated story, during the localization of Donkey Kong for American audiences, Nintendo of America's warehouse landlord, Mario Segale, confronted then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument in which the Nintendo employees eventually convinced Segale he would be paid, they opted to name the character after him. This story is contradicted by former Nintendo of America warehouse manager Don James, who stated in 2012 that he and Arakawa named the character after Segale as a joke because Segale was so reclusive that none of the employees had ever met him. James repeated this account in 2018. A friend of Segale commented: "My direct understanding and perception is that Mario Segale doesn't mind at all the fact that his name inspired such an iconic character, and that he shows humble pride in that fact in front of his grandchildren and close-knit adult circles."
Though it is implied by the title of the Mario Bros. series, in a 1989 interview, his full name was stated not to be "Mario Mario". The first notable use of "Mario Mario" is in the 1993 live-action film adaptation of the Super Mario series, and further in Prima's official video game strategy guides, in 2000 for Mario Party 2 and in 2003 for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. In 2012, after Mario voice actor Charles Martinet stated that the character's name was, in fact, "Mario Mario" at San Diego Comic-Con, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said Mario had no last name, with which Miyamoto agreed the month after. Two months after Iwata's death in July 2015, Miyamoto changed his stance, asserting at the Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary festival that Mario's full name is indeed "Mario Mario". Mario can also be referred to as Super Mario when he acquires the Super Mushroom power-up.
According to Miyamoto, Mario's profession was chosen to fit with the game design. Because Donkey Kong takes place on a construction site, Mario was made into a carpenter; and when he appeared again in Mario Bros., it was decided that he should be a plumber, because a lot of the game is situated in underground settings. Mario's character design, particularly his large nose, draws on Western influences; once he became a plumber, Miyamoto decided to "put him in New York" and make him Italian, light-heartedly attributing Mario's nationality to his mustache. Other sources have Mario's profession chosen to be carpentry in an effort to depict the character as an ordinary hard worker, making it easier for players to identify with him. After a colleague suggested that Mario more closely resembled a plumber, Miyamoto changed Mario's profession accordingly and developed Mario Bros., featuring the character in the sewers of New York City.
Due to the graphical limitations of arcade hardware at the time, Miyamoto clothed the character in red overalls and a blue shirt to contrast against each other and the background, making the movements of his arms easily perceptible. A red cap was added to let Miyamoto avoid drawing the character's hairstyle, forehead, and eyebrows, as well as to circumvent the issue of animating his hair as he jumped. To give distinctly human facial features with the limited graphical abilities, Miyamoto drew a large nose and a mustache, which avoided the need to draw a mouth and facial expressions. Omitting a mouth circumvented the problem of clearly separating the nose from the mouth with a limited number of pixels available.
Over time, Mario's appearance has become more defined; blue eyes, white gloves, brown shoes, a red "M" in a white circle on the front of his hat and gold buttons on his overalls have been added. According to an interview, Japanese character designer Yōichi Kotabe, who worked on redesigning characters in Super Mario Bros. (1985), revealed the M on his hat originally resembled the Golden Arches; Kotabe later changed the design of the M and straightened its lines to clearly distinguish the difference. The colors of his shirt and overalls were also reversed from a blue shirt with red overalls to a red shirt with blue overalls. Miyamoto attributed this process to the different development teams and artists for each game as well as advances in technology.