How Mario Took Over the World

Mario it's hard to imagine a world without him according to the top10s.com he's more recognizable than Mickey Mouse I don't think that's true but let's roll with it it wasn't always this way after all every Hero has humble beginnings unlike most of us born into this world Kicking and Screaming Mario was born fully grown mustache and all and he had a mission to accomplish no less than resurrecting gaming itself From the Ashes if you're interested in learning how stick around because this is the story of how Mario conquered the world and saved the American video game industry from utter disaster now I can already hear what you're thinking save the video game industry what we're talking about video games aren't in any danger they're an incredibly popular medium and make billions of dollars year after year and while that may be true today it was a very different story not too long ago now take a minute to join me on a journey down to New Mexico 1983 where a dejected American company called Atari is dumping truckloads of unsold cartridges into a landfill around 700 000 cartridges in all were disposed of and the event marked the symbolic collapse of the company who had reigned over the American gaming market for the past six years and that's where Nintendo comes in hot off the heels of their wildly successful arcade game Donkey Kong the team of Nintendo was ready to make some big time money moves Hiroshi Yamauchi then president of Nintendo decided it was time for the company to make their own console Hiroshi stated that Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third-party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games of course there were other reasons for atari's collapse but that's a video for another day Yamauchi wanted the design to be simple and accessible to Consumers not entertaining ideas of anything passed an 8-bit cartridge-based machine and so in 1983 the same year atari's collapse began Nintendo launched their first Home console the famicom in Japan where it was doing well with everything happening Nintendo saw a clear opening in a collapsing Market of games which paid no special attention to craftsmanship or good gameplay Nintendo planned to use that opening to make their big debut in North America ultimately they decided to Rebrand the famicom as the Nintendo entertainment system or NES in North America and launch needed to go well if they were to make their Mark the reason the NES was called the NES and not the Nintendo gaming system or NGS was because Nintendo wanted to frame the console as a toy in North America not a gaming console to avoid association with the failed gaming industry a killer console needs a killer game and this is where the father of Mario and legendary video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto enters our story responsible for the creation of Donkey Kong Nintendo's fire hit Miyamoto would team up with fellow game designer Takashi tazuka to create the NES Golden Child Super Mario Bros now this was not Mario's first rodeo he actually made his first appearance in Donkey Kong but when he was first introduced his name was Jumpman later he was named Mario after Nintendo of America's landlord at the time Mario sigale Miyamoto would design a later arcade game with the same character called Mario Bros inspired by another popular arcade game of the time called joust but the moment that made Mario Mario and turned him into the pop culture icon of gaming was the release of the NES alongside Super Mario Bros in North America the ultimate success of the NES North American rollout was dependent on a Herculean effort to distribute the console by Nintendo of America's employees at this point Nintendo of America was more the scrappy upstart they weren't the well-oiled machine that their Japanese counterpart was Donkey Kong was under their belt but Distributing a whole console that was unprecedented but nothing was Beyond this team minoru arakawa Nintendo of America's president at the time chose to begin the North American launch in New York with a 50 million dollar budget despite this marketing strategy getting retail space proved to be a massive Challenge and arakawa risked everything by offering to handle all store setup and marketing to retailers and accept returns on every piece of unsold inventory despite countless challenges including toxic waste in warehouses around-the-clock work days and dealing with anti-japanese racism the team at Nintendo of America succeeded in New York and by September 1986 the NES was available across the country including a version bundled with Super Mario Bros Super Mario Bros was a game changer nowadays we take Platformers for granted but this style of gameplay was pioneered by the Mario team Miyamoto infused story Into the game albeit a simple one and players were able to see themselves in Mario there were clear goals challenges power-ups fun enemies like Koopa troopas Goombas and of course Bowser children Across America became enamored by this game which was unlike anything anyone had ever seen up until this point ultimately the NES Mario bundle was a smashing success Super Mario Bros sold over 40 million cartridges and over 60 million NES famicom consoles were sold worldwide by the year 1990 over 30 percent of Japanese homes contained a famicom Nintendo had become Japan's most successful Corporation and made up 93 of the entire North American video game market for comparison Atari sat at just one percent Mario was on top of the world on his way to becoming a globally recognized icon and it seemed no one would be able to stop him but for the next chapter of our story we won't be paying attention to Nintendo's 93 or atari's one percent because in the year 1990 a very important part of our story sat at just 3.8 percent you see a company called Sega was gearing up to take on the mustachioed plumber but it wouldn't be easy because unlike Atari Nintendo was here to stay okay if you wanted to gain market share you had to fight for it the gaming industry would never collapse again Sega knew that Nintendo had risen to the top with their dedication to Quality but what they also observed was that Beyond killer consoles and Killer Games what a gaming company needs is a killer character foreign

Channel: Bygone

Views: 3,429

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Id: m-5aE3fRM74

Length: 6min 27sec (387 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 29 2023