Videogame history has some truly fascinating rabbit holes you can fall down.
The development of early games, particularly in the 8 and 16-bit eras, is full of fascinating stories of overcoming limitations and obstacles.
Reddit users were surprised to discover one such story during a discussion on videogame-related facts that sound too wild to be true. One user posted a curious fact about the origin of the Nintendo mascot's iconic appearance, explaining: “”Mario has a mustache because it was easier to represent than a mouth.”
Another user went on the clarify that Mario’s entire appearance, from his overalls to his hat was designed to make him distinctive whilst using the least amount of memory.
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Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto explained that there was a technical reason why Mario, and his brother Luigi, look they way they do during an interview with Conan O'Brien.
In the earliest depictions of Mario in the Donkey Kong arcade game, the developers were restricted to only four colors. As a result, Mario was originally red, blue, white and black.
With only a tiny number of pixels to work with, Mario needed a distinctive silhouette, but also needed to look recognizably human.
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Miyamoto told CNN in 2007 during a televised interview about the reasoning behind the mustache: “We had to draw Mario as a small character and at the same time, we had to make him look human. To do that, we needed to draw a distinctive feature for him, such as giving him a big nose. We gave him a mustache so that we didn’t need to draw a mouth. It is difficult to show facial expressions with small characters.”
It was a similar story with Mario’s iconic hat and overalls. According to IGN's The History of Super Mario Bros, overalls served to make the arms more visible and obvious, making the running animation look better. The hat, meanwhile, meant that the developers didn’t need to worry about animating hair.
As technology developed and advancements in graphics allowed for a greater level of detail, Miyamoto and his team began adding more detail to Mario’s model.
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As Miyamoto explained: “Maybe it was around the time of Super Mario Bros. 3 that we changed his hair to a different color. What really happened was that, when drawing the character, it became much easier to draw the mustache as an extension of the outline of his nose. Using that same color of black, we drew the mustache. But then we felt bad for Mario that he didn't have a distinct hair color, so we gave him brown hair.”
Similarly, some Reddit users were recently surprised to discover the true origins of the Goombas from the Mario franchise.