Super Mario

1981video game franchiseclassic

Published September 29, 2026

Super Mario is Nintendo's flagship video game franchise starring the mustachioed Italian plumber who first appeared as 'Jumpman' in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. The 1985 NES release of Super Mario Bros. turned Mario into a global mascot and seeded decades of internet remix culture, from Hotel Mario cutscene parodies to YouTube Poops.

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Overview

Super Mario, also known as Super Mario Brothers or just Mario, is Nintendo's flagship game series built around the plumber brothers Mario and Luigi and their trips through the Mushroom Kingdom1. The character was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and named after Mario Segale, the landlord of one of Nintendo's early American warehouses2.

As a meme source, the franchise powers a huge chunk of gaming remix culture. The low-budget 1994 Philips CD-i title Hotel Mario is a favorite well for parody edits and YouTube Poop videos thanks to its stilted animated cutscenes3. Power-ups like the Super Mushroom and the Fire Flower, plus the antagonist Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach, are shorthand recognizable enough that even the Urban Dictionary entries for 'Super Mario' assume readers already know them4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Arcade (Donkey Kong, 1981) / YouTube (meme spread)
Creator
Shigeru Miyamoto; meme derivatives by various fan creators
Date
1981

Mario debuted as 'Jumpman' in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, where he climbs girders to rescue a woman from a giant ape5. Nintendo released a role-reversed sequel, Donkey Kong Jr., in 1982, in which a young gorilla frees the original Donkey Kong from Mario6. The 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. introduced Luigi and reframed the pair as Italian plumbers stomping creatures crawling out of pipes3.

The franchise's breakout was Super Mario Bros., released on September 13, 1985 alongside the Nintendo Entertainment System1. It shipped with eight worlds of four levels each and made Bowser and Princess Peach household names3. Mario has since appeared in more than 200 games3.

How It Spread

Mario's move from arcade cabinet to internet fixture stretched across two decades of Nintendo hardware. Mario Kart launched in 1992 on the Super Nintendo and grew into a multi-console racing series that keeps the cast in constant rotation3. Hotel Mario's 1994 CD-i cutscenes later became raw material for parody edits once broadband and YouTube made clip sharing easy3.

Dedicated fan infrastructure showed up in the mid-2000s. The Mario Wiki went live on August 12, 2005 and grew past 15,000 entries over the following decade7. A Facebook page called 'Super Mario' launched on May 31, 2011 and pulled in more than 1.9 million likes within three years8. Flash-based fan ports like Full Screen Mario and MarioGames.be gave players browser access to the original 8-bit adventures9.

Nintendo leaned into the remix impulse at E3 2014 by announcing Mario Maker for the Wii U, a sandbox tool that let players build and share their own Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros. U levels3. The reveal trailer is embedded on the Know Your Meme entry as the marker for that shift toward user-generated Mario content3.

How to Use This Meme

Meme use of Super Mario typically involves recontextualizing sprites, sound effects (the coin ping, the 1-Up jingle, the death sting) or cutscene lines. Hotel Mario dialogue such as Luigi's 'I hope she made lotsa spaghetti' is a common YouTube Poop building block3. The term 'Super Mario' also gets used as slang for someone who constantly one-ups other people's stories, playing on the 1-Up mushroom mechanic4.

Frequently Asked Questions