Retro Raunch Revisit

JUL 14, 1983: Nintendo launches its popular Mario Bros. video game in Japan and the arcade & home entertainment versions are receiced to positive fanfare. The game features twin Italian plumber brothers Mario & Luigi (both in blue overalls & with bushy moustache but Mario in red cap and Luigi wearing green) who exterminate turtle & crab creatures emerging from pipes in a labyrinth sewer complex to which the animals are knocked upside down & kicked away. The brothers are running & jumping along platforms. As the enemies are defeated, higher phase levels increase with difficulty to which players can use spinning bonus coins, and players lose if making contact with fireballs or icicles. The ensuing Mario Bros. franchise actually began as a spinoff from Donkey Kong whose Jul 1981 debut was immediately following the success of Pac-Man in May 1980 that saw the video arcade revolution take off with surrounding games such as Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missile Command and Frogger. Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong as a carpenter (sometimes referred to as the 'Jumpman') in fitting with the construction site background of having to climb ladders & vines to run along beams while a huge gorilla drops barrels that Jumpman has to dodge by jumping over, and collecting items like a hammer to keep powering up. Once at the top beam, he has to rescue his damsel-in-distress girlfriend Pauline. Players begin with 3 lives which are lost if an obstacle is touched or Jumpman falls. Different accounts of how Jumpman became Mario are either an Italian-American landlord named Mario Segale had barged into a Ninentendo meeting at the headquarters in Kyoto and demanded rent resulting in the company staff naming him as the original mascot, or that Nintendo's President named the character after Seagle who was said to have been a recluse that no one had ever met. Before entering Japanese mass market production, Mario Bros. had first appeared at an arcade convention in Chicago earlier in Mar. with Nintendo owning the rights in Japan while licensing overseas to the Atari, Inc. developer/home computer system founded in Jun 1972 whose consoles would revolutionize the video game industry. Initial sales were modest with sales of arcade cabinets in the USA reaching 3800 in the first month but the quick rising purchasing of home cartridges for Atari's main rivals Commodore-64, ColecoVision (and bootleg versions for Intellivison & Sega) reached global millions. In Oct 2015, former SHAI HULUD (metalcore named after the sandworms in Dune) drummer Steve Kleisath set the world record for the Mario Bros. arcade version high score with 5,424,920 points. In Apr 2023, an animated movie was released whose international box office made $1.36 billion and today, the game's legacy has spawned numerous updated variations incorporating changes such as expanded graphics, voice actors, location settings, color schemes, soundtracks & new multi-features.