Mario (franchise)

The Mario franchise is a massive gaming franchise created by Nintendo. It stars the titular Italian plumber, Mario. Prior to the franchise's first installment, Mario Bros. for Game & Watch, Mario debuted as the protagonist of the Donkey Kong arcade game of its namesake franchise, but was conversely the main antagonist of its sequel, Donkey Kong Jr.
Since the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System game, Super Mario Bros. in 1985, the Mario franchise has been primarily defined by the Super Mario series of platforming games, which typically have a simple premise of Mario having to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser.
==Relevance to The Legend of Zelda==
The Mario franchise has had several connections to , as early as the first , which was developed concurrently with Super Mario Bros. by the same development team at Nintendo. 's earliest connection to Mario is in the Japanese manual of , in which Manhandlas are said to be jumbo-sized Piranha Plants.
Two recurring elements of the Mario franchise, Chain Chomps and Fire Bars, were originally created for series. Nevertheless, both appear in , which is one of the earlier appearances of Chain Chomps in general.
A lot of Western media in the late 1980s and early 1990s grouped Mario and together. The most prominent instance of this was , which was a part of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! syndication package, and would have new episodes of Fridays. Additionally, many of the live-action Mario segments of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! would have a preview of a The Legend of Zelda episode. In Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up, there is not only a career page dedicated to Link, but a few of the pages include a Bot in them. Mario and series were also licensed together for various Nintendo-themed merchandise, such as Nintendo Cereal System and the Nintendo Adventure Books series. Both the Mario and licenses were given to Philips at one point to produce Philips CD-i games.
 has guest appearances of various characters and enemies from other franchises, especially the Mario franchise, and has more Mario representation than any other game. Since , Thwomps have been a semi-recurring enemy in franchise, and the game introduces two Thwomp variants that have not appeared within the Mario franchise—Mega Thwomps and Stone Elevators—not unlike Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, a game starring Wario that exclusively features another Thwomp variant, Pouncers. In , one of the bosses is a Thwomp named Head Thwomp, who has likewise never appeared in the Mario franchise. Bob-ombs and Cheep Cheeps are some other examples of Mario enemies that have appeared as enemies in more than one game.
 enemy species have seldomly had their own variants in the Mario franchise, but in Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, there are Octoombas, which are a variant of both Goombas and Octoroks.
Other than Super Mario Bros. and , Nintendo has often produced a mainline Super Mario and game concurrently, such as Super Mario 64 and (the latter even uses a heavily modified Super Mario 64 engine) and and Super Mario Odyssey.
==External links==
*Mario (franchise) on the MarioWiki
==References==