Mario

Mario (Japanese: マリオ, Hepburn: Mario, [ma.ɽi.o]) (English /ˈmɑːrioʊ/; Italian: [ˈmaːrjo]) is a fictional character in the Mario video game franchise, created by Nintendo's Japanese video game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as the company's mascot and the eponymous protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation. Depicted as a short, pudgy, Italian plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom, his adventures generally center upon rescuing Princess Peach from the Koopa villain Bowser. His younger brother is Luigi.

The Mario franchise is the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Over 210 million units of the overall Mario series of games have been sold. Outside of the Super Mario platform series, other Mario genres include the Mario Kart racing series, sports games such as the Mario Tennis and Mario Golf series, role-playing games such as Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario, and educational games such as Mario Is Missing! and Mario's Time Machine. The franchise has branched into several mediums, including television shows, film, comics and licensed merchandise. Since 1995, Mario has been voiced by Charles Martinet.

Super Mario

Super Mario (Japanese: スーパーマリオ, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario) is a series of platform video games created by Nintendo featuring their mascot, Mario. Alternatively called the Super Mario Bros. (スーパーマリオブラザーズ, Sūpā Mario Burazāzu) series or simply the Mario (マリオ) series, it is the central series of the greater Mario franchise. At least one Super Mario game has been released for every major Nintendo video game console and handheld.

The Super Mario games follow Mario's adventures in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, usually with Mario as the player character. He is usually joined by his brother, Luigi, and occasionally by other members of the Mario cast. As in platform video games, the player runs and jumps across platforms and atop enemies in themed levels. The games have simple plots, typically with Mario rescuing the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. The first title in the series, Super Mario Bros., released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, established gameplay concepts and elements prevalent in nearly every Super Mario game since. These include a multitude of power-ups and items that give Mario special magic powers such as fireball-throwing and size-changing into giant and miniature sizes.

Super Mario World

Super Mario World (Japanese: スーパーマリオワールド, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario Wārudo), subtitled Super Mario Bros. 4 (スーパーマリオブラザーズ4, Sūpā Mario Burazāzu fō) for its original Japanese release, is a 1990 platform video game developed and published by Nintendo as a pack-in launch title for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and is the fifth game in the Super Mario series. Development was handled by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, led by Shigeru Miyamoto, who produced the game.

The game centers on the quest of Mario and Luigi to save Dinosaur Land from Bowser, the series' antagonist. The two brothers must travel across seven worlds to restore order to Dinosaur Land. It built on the gameplay of previous Mario games, introducing new power-ups that augment character abilities, and established conventions that were carried over to future games in the series. Super Mario World marks one of the first appearances of Yoshi, Mario's dinosaur sidekick and riding mount.

Super Mario World was a critical and commercial success, selling over 20 million copies worldwide, and is considered by many critics to be one of the best games ever made. It has been re-released four times, first as part of a combo with Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES in 1993. Secondly, it was released on the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario Advance 2 (スーパーマリオアドバンス2, Sūpā Mario Adobansu Tsū) in 2001 and outside Japan as Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 in 2002 with modified gameplay. The third re-release was for the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan in 2006 and in North America and PAL regions in 2007; there were no changes from the original SNES version. It was also released for the Wii U's Virtual Console which integrated Off-TV Play and Miiverse features to the game.

Atlas

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the Solar System. Furthermore, atlases of anatomy exist, mapping out the human body or other organisms. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics. They also have information about the map and places in it.

Etymology

The word atlas dates from 1636, first in reference to the English translation of Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator, who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.

History

The first work that contained systematically arranged woodcut maps of uniform size, intended to be published in a book, thus representing the first modern atlas, was De Summa totius Orbis (1524–26) by the 16th-century Italian cartographer Pietro Coppo. Nonetheless, this distinction is conventionally awarded to the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius who in 1570 published the collection of maps Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.

Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros. (Japanese: スーパーマリオブラザーズ, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario Burazāzu) is a 1985 platform video game internally developed by Nintendo R&D4 and published by Nintendo as a pseudo-sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. It was originally released in Japan for the Family Computer on September 13, 1985, and later that year for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe on May 15, 1987, and Australia later in 1987. It is the first of the Super Mario series of games. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario and in a two-player game, a second player controls Mario's brother Luigi as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist Bowser.

In 2005, IGN's poll named the "pioneering" and "highly influential" title as the "greatest game of all time", considering it to have aided in resurrecting the crashed American video game market of the 1980s. The game's mid-1980s release served to further popularize the side-scrolling subgenre of the already popular platform video game genre of the early 1980s. In addition to its definitive features, the game has also sold enormously well, and was the best-selling game of all time for a single platform for approximately three decades at over 40 million units, until Nintendo's Wii Sports took that title. The commercial success of Super Mario Bros. has caused it to be ported to almost every one of Nintendo's major gaming consoles. Nintendo released special red variants of the Wii and Nintendo DSi XL consoles in re-packaged, Mario-themed, limited edition bundles in late 2010 as part of the 25th anniversary of the game's release.