Biography Highlights

What can-a you say about Mario? He's the perfect videogame culture icon - a short, fat Italian plumber from Brooklyn who gets his jollies off butt-stomping Goombas and riding Yoshi-back through cartoon forests. The pride and joy of the Nintendo family, Mario has been there from the start. A creation of Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario was introduced in the arcade classic Donkey Kong in 1981 and since, he has become Nintendo’s mascot and brings quality gaming with him wherever...  Full Biography

Recent Articles

Is There a Bad Mario Game? - February 13, 2009, Retro Features
Despite the roar of harder edged, more realistic games over the past two console generations, no game character is a bigger, brighter icon for the entire industry than Nintendo's mascot. The Mario franchise has sold over 200 million videogames worldwide, making it the undisputed bestselling game series. It's a record that is likely impossible to beat thanks in no small part to Mario repeatedly being in the right place at the right time. His very first outing in the original Donkey Kong, back when Mario was known simply as Jumpman, is responsible for Nintendo's reversal of fortunes in America. His first NES adventure is regarded as one of the greatest games of all time and is credited with nailing down the essentials of the platformer genre. Super Mario 64 helped define 3D gaming during an exciting transitional era for videogames. Why deny it? Mario is videogames.

Stars 2008 Year in Review - December 15, 2008 Features
For IGN Stars, 2008 was a year for great gains on the movie and videogame character front; Iron Man gave Spidey a run for his money and put those Marvel characters waiting in the wings on notice. Batman ran to the bank, and one would assume back to the Batcave to think of his next move, and Solid Snake reminded legions of fans everywhere why he and his cardboard boxes are still going strong.

RetroCity Episode 18 Script - December 2, 2008, Retro Features
Every few RetroCity podcasts, I get an email from a listener wondering if the episode is entirely scripted or if I'm just talking extemporaneously about classic games for 20 minutes. The answer is usually a combination of the two. Some episodes where I have a specific argument to make, I script the majority of the podcast. Other episodes are done from outlines with a few key passages scripted and the rest of it completely extemporaneous. Episode 18 of the podcast was one of the scripted episodes because I had some points I wanted to make about how gamers define the whole idea of "retro gaming" and I solicited contributions from other writers, including IGN editors like Colin Moriarty and Jessica Chobot, as well as Travis Fahs, whose work appears on IGN Retro weekly. And so, I thought I'd post the script from the episode (sans the intro and outro, which really don't need scripting). There are differences between the script and the podcast, but for the most part, here's what I said during what will be RetroCity's first discussion about the definition of retro gaming.

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