Super Mario

Nintendo has continually set the standard for video game innovation in America, and the saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game.

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The first princess Mario saved was Nintendo itself.

In 1981, Nintendo of America was a one-year-old business already on the brink of failure. Its president, Mino Arakawa, was stuck with two thousand unsold arcade cabinets for a dud of a game (Radar Scope). So he hatched a plan.



Back in Japan, a boyish, shaggy-haired staff artist named Shigeru Miyamoto designed a new game for the unsold cabinets featur-ing an angry gorilla and a small jumping man. Donkey Kong brought in $180 million in its first year alone and launched the career of a short, chubby plumber named Mario.



Since then, Mario has starred in over two hundred games, gen-erating profits in the billions. He is more recognizable than Mickey Mouse, yet he's little more than a mustache in bib overalls. How did a mere smear of pixels gain such huge popularity?

Super Mario tells the story behind the Nintendo games millions of us grew up with, explaining how a Japanese trading card company rose to dominate the fiercely competitive video-game industry.