Historical Perspective; Origins of Super Mario Brothers

Super Mario Brothers is a platform video game developed by and for use on Nintendo gaming consoles, originally debuted in 1985. Starring a high-energy determined plumber in painter coveralls named Mario, the game leads the user through the perilous quest of rescuing Princess Toadstool from Bowser, King of the Koopas. The game, which takes place in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, was produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and is largely credited with pulling the United States from the video game crash of 1983.

Super Mario Brothers found its beginnings in urban San Francisco when in 1949, Anthony Puccini, Jr. was the eighth child born to lower class working parents Stella and Anthony Puccini Senior. Stella tragically died during Anthony Jr.’ s birth, leaving Anthony Sr. to tend to the eight children on his own with only the meager wages of an electrician for sustenance. As Anthony Jr. began to mature, complications involving his respiratory system began to arise and by the time he was six, Puccini was diagnosed with both a deviated septum and a collapsed posterior nasal cavity, leading the boy to labored breathing.

The resulting effects of the condition led Anthony to unnatural breathing patterns –when his mouth was closed Anthony suffered from a form of walking Apnea where he snored while awake. The symptom forced Anthony to breath with his mouth constantly agape, which resulted in an increased level of saliva build-up in and around his mouth, an issue that proved to continually embarrass Anthony’s father, who never truly forgave his eighth child for the death of his beloved wife Stella.

By 1959, Anthony Sr. and Anthony Jr.’s relationship had become strained and Anthony Jr. was cast out of his San Francisco home, relegated to the San Francisco County Children’s Orphanage. Anthony’s father wrote the boy a letter as the ten-year old was cast from the family as an outcast: ‘The financial burden of eight children is enough, but your constant snoring and drooling around the house and around the women I meet and would hope to be suitable to take your mother’s place as a family provider made this decision an easy one. You are a mouth-breather. I hope you find a supportive mouth-breathing family.’

The years leading into Anthony’s adolescence proved just as complicated and Anthony’s untreated respiratory condition severely inhibited his social interactions at the orphanage. The boy was described by many of his caretakers as a ‘loner’ and his eventual escape from the orphanage walls in 1966 found the boy on the streets where he rapidly descended into the San Francisco underworld of drug experimentation.

On Puccini’s 20th birthday in 1969, he professes in his diary a severe dependence on LSD, cocaine and cannabis as outlets from his ‘slack-jawed slobbering existence.’ Despite his disability, homelessness and severe drug habit, Puccini shows a burgeoning interest in both culture and literature, citing his idolization of Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac and refers to the 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as his ‘personal bible.’ Like Thompson, Puccini viewed his own drug-induced ramblings as his pursuit of the American Dream. Inspired, Puccini began drafting a loosely autobiographical manuscript entitled “Mario and the Toadstool" (a reference to hallucinogenic mushrooms). The plot follows a young electrician who seeks to circumvent a world fraught with perilous hazards (both literal and figurative) through the use of hallucinogens to find ultimate happiness.

Lacking the resources or connections to have a book sent to market, Puccini soon gave up on having the manuscript published and instead focused on piecing his life back together. By 1975, the War in Vietnam had seen the return of American troops to home-soil and with the help of Vice President Gerald Ford, the United States Department of Veteran’s Affairs sought to re-integrate the war’s veterans back into American peace-time society. Posing as a soldier who fought during the Tet Offensive in Saigon, Puccini received Federally sanctioned housing in Los Angeles where he spent the next five years of his life in relative solitude.

By the early 1980’s, the growing trend of interactive video-gaming (video games) had grabbed the attention of residential America and Puccini saw an opportunity to pitch his “Mario and the Toadstool” idea not as a novel, but rather as the first ‘plot driven interactive video experience.’ Posing as a French technician and engineer, Puccini secured a meeting at the Los Angeles Atari Corp. office with Aaron Tramiel, Atari’s Western Director of Operations.

It is unclear if Puccini had taken hallucinogens prior to his meeting with Atari, but Tramiel’s account of the meeting was far from favorable. Mr. Tramiel had Puccini escorted from the Atari office after a brief fifteen minutes. Only after Super Mario Brothers’ immense success on the rival Nintendo Console did Tramiel discuss the meeting; ‘Puccini was a drooling, snorting invalid incapable of rational thought. He spoke extensively about the game’s protagonist, a super-energized electrician who ate body-altering mushrooms who attacks his enemies (which include fire-flowers and lethal turtles known as ‘Goombas’) by leaping atop their bodies. He made reference to the game’s ultimate antagonist ‘Bowser’ and the ultimate prize, ‘Princess Toadstool.’ His non-sensical proposal and his abrasive presentation forced us to have him vacate the compound.

Puccini however, was determined. Researching the industry, he found up-and-coming gaming company Nintendo and, leveraging his meeting with Atari, secured a time to speak with video game visionary Shigeru Miyamoto, who financed Puccini’s trip to Kyoto, Japan to pitch the “Mario” idea to the Nintendo team. Miyamoto, whose reputation was that of a risk-taker in the gaming industry, vouched for Puccini’s vision and Nintendo bought the rights to “Super Mario” as a follow-up to the company’s earlier venture, Donkey Kong.

In 1983, ‘Super Mario Brothers’ was officially produced with Puccini serving as independent consultant, and ultimately released to the public with enormous success. Nintendo followed Puccini’s vision closely, changing very little of Puccini’s ideas (Mario, the lead character was changed from an electrician to a plumber). During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Puccini admits to several very ‘thinly veiled references to a drug-related past.’ Much speculation has been made that the game’s antagonist Bowser is the virtual embodiment of Puccini’s father while Princess Toadstool is that of Puccini’s mother, although neither has been confirmed. More likely though, is that Mario’s sidekick Luigi is the gaming-manifestation of Puccini’s lover Luis Carbado, though Puccini has never confirmed or denied that he is in fact homosexual.

The game’s music was composed by Japanese musician Koji Kondo who began his career writing the music for the widely acclaimed ‘Duck Hunt’ game for Nintendo. Kondo, the self-proclaimed ‘God of the ring-tone’ has set the Japanese national record for marriages and divorces, marrying 17 different women a total of 22 times. Each ceremony has maintained the distinction of using the theme music from ‘Super Mario; Mario’s Underworld’ as the bride and groom’s first dance.

In 1997, the North American Coalition of Homosexual Plumbers (NACHP) used likenesses of Mario and Luigi to promote awareness of their organization in a series of television commercials, which were later taken off the air when Nintendo threatened legal action, citing the use of 'likenesses of characters owned and operated by the Nintendo Corp as an egregious violation of copyright law.'