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Mario Segale, Namesake For Nintendo's Mascot, Dies At 84 (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rest-in-peace dept.

Iwastheone shares a report from Ars Technica: Mario Segale, the Seattle real estate and construction business owner who inspired the name for Nintendo's famous mascot, passed away on October 27 according to reports from The Seattle Times and The Auburn Reporter. He was 84 years old. Segale owned the business park housing Nintendo's American arcade operation in the early '80s, when the company was busy converting thousands of disused Radarscope cabinets to play Donkey Kong. At the time, Nintendo of America President Minoru Arakawa and other executives were trying to come up with an Americanized name for the game's player avatar, who was still referred to as "Jumpman" at that point (a name that appears on early Donkey Kong cabinet art). As the story goes, when Segale came to Arakawa to demand payment for a late rent bill, inspiration struck.

While the broad strokes of Segale's role in Mario's naming remain consistent, the particulars can change with the retelling. David Sheff's seminal Nintendo history Game Over suggests the executives exclaimed "Super Mario!" after Segale's visit in 1981 (though the book misspells his name "Segali"). As Benj Edwards notes in an in-depth 2010 exploration of the tale, though, the "Super" descriptor for the character wouldn't become common until the release of Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Other retellings over the years go so far as to suggest that the "Super" came from Segale's role as "superintendent" of the building, but these stories offer little in the way of direct evidence. Ars mentions a 1993 Seattle Times article that quotes Segale as joking, "You might say I'm still waiting for my royalty checks."

18 comments

  1. Magic Mushrooms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Once again proving, you can live a long and healthy life even with a heavy diet of magic mushrooms and fire flowers. Fight on in the clouds, Mario!

    1. Re: Magic Mushrooms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a gay comment. You must be from fruitopia, also known as the bay area.

    2. Re:Magic Mushrooms by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Magic Mushrooms, Flower Power, Star dust - nope, those weren't drugs. No siree Bob!

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    3. Re: Magic Mushrooms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, so edgy.

  2. Shame he had to die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you think heâ(TM)d just shrink down to half size.

  3. Ahhhhhhhh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh no!

  4. So the monkey won after all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thought so.

  5. Headline: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Slightly ethnic landlord's greed oddly immortalized, dies"

    1. Re:Headline: by fredrated · · Score: 1

      You're mean.

    2. Re:Headline: by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      There's nothing greedy about asking to be paid the rent you're due. Overdue in this case..

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
  6. I would have mixed feelings about that honor by elrous0 · · Score: 2

    So, I was your inspiration for a fat Italian stereotype? And you didn't even pay me? Gee...thanks.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:I would have mixed feelings about that honor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why should he be paid? Nintendo could have easily come up with some other name.

    2. Re:I would have mixed feelings about that honor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They were never interested in being famous and wanted nothing to do with it.

      Win win for Nintendo because they did not have to pay any royalties.

    3. Re:I would have mixed feelings about that honor by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      So, I was your inspiration for a fat Italian stereotype? And you didn't even pay me? Gee...thanks.

      From what I can tell, he was happy to be the name inspiration and Nintendo attempted to pay him many times but he refused the offer.

  7. Jumpman by Dripdry · · Score: 1

    It was a game on the IBM PC waaaay back in ~1985; the first platforming game I ever played, it had a few strange little twists on each board to overcome.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    -
    1. Re:Jumpman by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From your link...

      A key concept of the game engine was that movement was controlled through the internal collision detection system of the Atari's player/missile graphics system. This system looked for "collisions" between the sprites and the background, setting registers that indicated which sprite had touched which color.[43]

      Glover separated the Jumpman sprite into two parts, the body and the feet. By examining which of these collided the engine could determine which direction to move. For instance, if both the body and feet collided with the same color, it must be a wall and the Jumpman should stop moving. If there was no collision with either his feet or body, Jumpman is unsupported and should fall down the screen. Variations on these allowed support for ramps, ropes and other features.

      This simple system meant the engine did not have to "understand" the map, motion was controlled solely through the collision system.[45] This not only saved processing time comparing the player location to an in-memory map, but also meant maps could be created simply by drawing with them and experimenting with the results in the game.

      This also makes the game easy to modify with the creation of new maps; any map can be added to the game, the challenge being working with the binary format. New maps for the original Atari version began to appear in 2016 and there are now a wide collection.

  8. Royalties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He did deserve royalties, though.