Mario’s first game appearance was in
the original Donkey Kong arcade game, which was released in 1981. It is currently
2022, which means that Mario has existed for 41 years. But of course, Mario wasn’t a baby
in Donkey Kong, and he doesn’t get older every time Nintendo releases a new Mario game. So in
universe how old is he? And come to think of it, how old is Luigi, Princess Peach and Bowser?
You might think all of these characters’ ages are a mystery, but that’s not quite true. If we
look at statements made by Mario’s creator, and search for clues within the games themselves, then
we can answer the question, “How old is Mario?” So, interestingly, Mario’s age is actually the
easiest to find out, out of every Mario character. But back in the very early days of the series,
Nintendo themselves weren’t sure how old Mario was meant to be. Looking back to Mario’s creation,
game designer Shigeru Miyamoto originally just called this character “Ossan”, which is a
Japanese term for a middle aged man. It wasn’t until later that he was named Mario. So from
the start, Mario was intended to be middle aged. A few years later, after Super Mario Bros
became a hit, a Japanese interviewer asked another member of Nintendo’s development
team, called Kenji Miki, about Mario’s age. “So, is Mario a child? Is he a middle aged guy?” “He’s middle aged.” The specific word that Kenji Milki used was
Ojisan, which is another term that means “an older guy” or “a middle aged guy”. The boundaries
of who counts as an Ojisan are pretty blurred, but one survey found the answer to
be somewhere between 35 and 50 years old. That is about how old Mario was
thought of by some of his creators. As late as 1996, Mario creator
Shigeru Miyamoto described Mario as a “weird old dude” in an
interview about Super Mario 64. But then, in 2001, this totally changed! And it’s
all thanks to the game Super Smash Bros Melee. Now, in a lot of the Smash games, you’re able to
collect these trophies or figures of well known characters from the world of video games. And one
of these famous characters is Mario. Each trophy has a short description of who the character is,
including Mario. His reads, “Known worldwide as Mr. Nintendo, Mario uses his incredible jumping
ability to thwart the evil Bowser time after time. While he's best known as a hero, Mario
has played many roles, including racer, doctor, golfer, and villain. His tastes have
changed over 20 years of gaming; he long ago swapped the colors of his shirt and overalls.” So,
what does that have to do with Mario’s age, then? Well, what I just read out was from
the US version of Super Smash Bros. In Japan, there’s one important difference
to that description. Instead of the line “his tastes have changed over 20 years of
gaming,” it says “he is about 26 years old”. Twenty six! That is a lot younger than the
middle-aged man Nintendo talked about before. And this, new younger Mario was here to stay.
Because in 2005, Shigeru Miyamoto said this in an interview: “Normally when you create
a character and present him to the world, all the details get filled in: what’s his
favourite colour? what kind of food does he like to eat? But with Mario, we didn’t decide
on anything except that he is around 24 to 25 years old.” 24 to 25? Mario once again has
become slightly younger! A 24 or 25 year old man. Now, in the years since, no new age has
been given for Mario, so we have to assume that that is how old Mario is. But what about
other characters? Well, their ages were much harder to figure out than Mario’s. But I’m pretty
confident in what I’ve landed on. Let me show you. Let’s start with Luigi, since he’s not
too complicated. In the very early days of the Mario series, Luigi was stated to be
Mario’s younger brother. Nintendo didn’t state HOW much younger Luigi was, but in this official
comic from 1990, Luigi is shown to be a baby while Mario has already started growing up. So,
there’s at least a year between them. Except, 5 years later, Nintendo changed the relationship
between the two brothers. In the game Yoshi’s Island, set in the past when Mario was just a
baby, we play as Yoshi, carrying baby Mario and trying to rescue the kidnapped baby Luigi. In
other words, since Mario and Luigi are babies at the same time, they must therefore be twins.
And to this very day, Nintendo have stuck with that idea: that Mario and Luigi are twins. So,
Luigi must be the same age as Mario: 24 to 25. Now, the final boss of Yoshi’s Island is
another baby: Baby Bowser. So is he the same age as Mario and Luigi, then? Well, not
quite. Because when you first meet Baby Bowser, he says, “Kamek, it’s too noisy in here!!
I wanna go sweepy-byyye!!!” He can talk, which is something that Mario and
Luigi cannot do. All Mario does is cry. Now, most babies start talking between 9 and
12 months. But Baby Bowser is speaking in full and not overly simple sentences, so
I’d fathom that he’s actually at least a year older than Mario and Luigi. In
other words, 25 to 26 years old at minimum. Next, let’s move on to Princess Peach. If
you google, “how old is Princess Peach”, you’ll find a ton of articles stating that she’s
16 years old. I was pretty puzzled by this, as I couldn’t find a single source for that claim.
Eventually though, I figured out where this rumour came from: a joke tweet by a user called
Mollie Goodfellow. Goodfellow searched “how old is Mario” and “how old is Princess Peach”, and
was mock-horrified by the age gap between them! 38 and 16? Shocking! But of course, if you look at
what information Google is actually spitting out, it’s responding with how many years ago the
original Mario Bros arcade game was released, and how long ago Super
Princess Peach was released. Now, this tweet was a joke, of course, but
the idea that Princess Peach is 16 years old somehow permeated both the English and Japanese
internet, and it's showing no signs of slowing. So if that's not true, then how old is
Princess Peach, really? Well, the answer can be found in the game Yoshi’s Island DS, a
follow-up to that original Yoshi’s Island game. In this new entry in the series, a number of
other babies appear alongside Mario. So if we look at which babies co-exist, there is Mario, Luigi,
Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario and Bowser. Now, we know that Bowser can speak, which puts him slightly
above the others in terms of age. But based on the fact that these characters are all babies, the
rest of them are probably all about the same age. In other words, based on this in-game evidence,
Princess Peach, Donkey Kong and Wario are all about 24 to 25 years old in the present
day! And Bowser is about 1 year older. But there’s one last character’s age we can work
out. Waluigi. Because in HIS trophy description, also from Super Smash Bros Melee,
you’ll find the following statement: “it's general knowledge that he's the
same age as Luigi”. So in other words, we can add Waluigi to the list of characters
that are currently 24 to 25 years old. And there we go. That is the definitive
answer to the question of “How old is Mario?” Originally a middle-aged man, he
has now been revised to a young 24 year old, alongside almost every other
main character from the series! And Mario has done a heck of a lot with
those 25 years of his - what an inspiration! Hi, thanks for watching to the
end! I hope you liked this video! If you enjoyed digging into a bit of Mario lore,
you might like my video “Who are Mario’s parents”. Be sure to subscribe if you wanna see more
videos from me, and you can follow me on Twitter @thomasgdocs to keep updated on my
newest videos. Right, I’ll see you next week!
