Jumpman and Pauline
I said:
Hm...wasn't there a handheld of SuperMario Bros (& DonkeyKong, etc) before the NES??
What you may be thinking of is that the glorified plumber we grew to know as Mario (full name: Mario Mario, believe it or not) made his debut in video games a few years before appearing in
Super Mario Bros., which is featured in the
Guinness Book of World Records for the best selling video game in history. After doing a quick search online, I was able to find a timeline of Mario's appearances in video games
before the release of the original
Super Mario Bros. on the NES. It is as follows (in my own words):
-Mario appeared in the 1981 arcade classic
Donkey Kong, but he was known as merely "Jumpman." It featured his first girlfriend, Pauline, instead of Princess Peach.
-On Game and Watch, which is what I think Brian may be referring to, Mario appeared for the first time under the name that would stick in
Donkey Kong (1982). He was a carpenter, not a plumber, at the time.
-Mario appeared in the arcade and Game and Watch sequel to
Donkey Kong, entitled
Donkey Kong Jr. (1982). Welcome to Mario's first taste at being the villian, not the hero, of a game.
-The direct sequel, which was also released on Game and Watch in 1982, was
Donkey Kong 2. As you can imagine, Mario adheres to his original role he played in the first game.
-Leaving carpentary, Mario takes up the career of a worker in a cement factory in the 1983 Game and Watch game
Mario's Cement Factory. Oh, the simple joy of not being killed in a cement accident while trying to keep up with the capitalist relationship between a conveyer belt, cement trucks, and elevators! Mario could've saved himself a lot of lives by contacting OSHA.
-Mario goes to war! Well, kind of....the character was featured in another Game and Watch little known classic
Mario's Bombs Away in 1983. Perhaps he went a little crazy after losing his job at the cement factory...
-Players get a glimpse of what was to come on the NES with 1983 arcade game
Mario Bros. where he fights his brother Luigi (full name: Luigi Mario. Guess who was the parent's favorite son) for the ultimate prize of high scores. Two players could play at the same time, and it featured villians such as the turtles and fireballs that we would later see play a big role in his NES debut. Mario snuggles up to his career as a plumber who battles deformed versions of turtles, beetles, and shrooms. Read: Mario suffers greatly from his drug addiction. The game would reappear in a bonus-type stage in
Super Mario Bros. 3 where players could challenge one another for their next turn by sucking them into a round of
Mario Bros.
Although Super Mario Bros. came out before the following games, they did, however, appear the same year as it and helped introduce the character to that generation of players:
-In the game
Tennis, Mario cameos as the net referee.
-
Wrecking Crew may bring to mind
Mario's Cement Factory. Mario takes the lead role, and the game is a strange mix of
Mario's Cement Factory,
Super Mario Bros, and
Donkey Kong.
Through this list, I did not include the ported versions of the games on the Atari; I included only the original releases.
