Bowser Action Figure

 

Mario is in his mid-20s

 

When you think of Mario, you probably have a certain image in your head. If you're like a lot of folks, you see a cartoony middle-aged plumber with a fungus addiction. But according to Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, you might have been misinterpreting Nintendo's iconic mascot for decades.  bowser action figure

 

In a recently re-published interview from 2005, Miyamoto stated that there weren't any strict guidelines or definitions when it came to Mario lore.   bowser action figure

 

"I think it was fortuitous that we didn't put any restrictions on Mario as a character (...) Normally when you create a character and present him to the world, all the details get filed in: what's his favourite colour? what kind of food does he like to eat? But aside from the fact that he's about 24-25 years old, we didn't define anything else."

 

Though Mario has appeared in games for over 30 years, he's apparently still young enough to stay on his parents' health insurance. That's probably a good thing, since the Mushroom Kingdom benefits package is mostly comprised of cake and kisses on the cheek. bowser action figure

 

"Yoshi" isn't Yoshi's full name

 

There are a lot of things we just sort of accept about Yoshi. For one, the fact that he hatches fully-formed out of the egg, complete with a built-in saddle. That, and we just sort of pretend every dinosaur that comes out of a polka-dotted egg is named "Yoshi," even if that was the name of the guy that got dumped in a bottomless pit two levels back. We can ignore these existential questions because hey, it's a video game.

 

No one was really asking what Yoshi's full name was, but apparently someone at Nintendo thought that was a more important issue to address than a dinosaur being born with shoes. An internal character guide unearthed by Blake Harris revealed something startling about Yoshi.

 

So, Yoshi's full name is... "T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas." The T. is left ambiguous, though we could guess it stands for "Transportation" or "Tyrannosaurus" or "Travis."  bowser action figure

 

This has never been referenced by any official Nintendo game, but the fact of the matter is it's still on an official Nintendo document. Of course, if everything here is true, that would also mean that Mario really is a member of the species "homo nintendonus," in which case we'd have a lot more questions. BOTW  Switch Case

 

The levels in Super Mario Bros. were designed by hand on graph paper.

 

The tiny team of designers responsible for the creation of Super Mario Bros. on the NES, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, drew the levels on "huge pieces" of graph paper to deliver to the programming team.

 

Lava balls that always kill you are called Podoboos. 

 

There are classic baddies like Koopa Troopas and Goombas, but do you know Buzzy Beetle, Blooper, and Cheep Cheep? You probably called them by your own names, like squid guy, and those damn fireballs in the castle lava, but every monster has a unique name, and the Super Mario Encyclopedia shares them all. (Now you know what to shout when you toss the controller across the room when you're taken out by a Podoboo.) bowser action figure

 

Mario's adventures go far beyond the Mushroom Kingdom into places like Subcon, Sarasaland, and Isle Defino.

 

From his adventures in the dreamlike Super Mario Bros. 2 world of Subcon to the lesser-known setting of Sarasaland in Super Mario Land on the GameBoy, Mario has traveled to more places than you might think. Super Mario World takes him to Dinosaur Land, Super Mario Sunshine is in sunny Isle Defino, and he explores the Sprixie Kingdom in Super Mario 3D World. bowser action figure

 

Super Mario Bros. had a code for infinite lives all this time

 

Did you ever beat Super Mario Bros.? Okay, did you ever beat Super Mario Bros. without using the Warp Pipes? Don't worry, it's less common than you think. It's a hard game, made in a time when games were an hour long, but also as hard as a diamond Nokia phone. And of course, there was no saving of any kind -- if you lost all your lives, that was it. Game Over, start from the beginning.  bowser action figure

 

Unless you held the A button and pressed Start. Then you would go back to the World you died on. 

 

I know. I know. Most people have lived their lives without knowing that secret. But it was right there all along, in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide.   bowser action figure