The Mushroom Kingdom's ruler, Princess Peach, is Mario's love interest and recurring damsel in distress she repeatedly gets kidnapped by Bowser and has to be rescued by Mario, but occasionally serves as a protagonist herself. Mario's younger but taller fraternal twin brother, Luigi, often participates in his adventures alongside him in early games, he was playable only in the two-player mode as a simple palette swap, but with the passage of time, he went on to gain more significant roles. Bowser is responsible for most, if not all, of the Mushroom Kingdom's invasions, and almost always appears as the final boss, who constantly and consistently attempts to put an end to Mario and his friends. His arch-nemesis is Bowser, the king of the Koopas, a race of evil-driven anthropomorphic turtles. The main protagonist of the franchise, the titular Mario, is a fictional Italian-American who formerly worked as a plumber but now serves as the hero of a realm called the Mushroom Kingdom, which he endeavors to defend by traversing his way through stages filled with obstacles and enemies. The franchise revolves around the adventures of an extensive cast of recurring characters.
The main series in the franchise is the Super Mario series, consisting of platform games that typically involve Mario and his brother Luigi working to save the Mushroom Kingdom and its ruler, Princess Peach, from the villainous Bowser and his Koopa Troop. Most Mario games have been released for Nintendo's various video game consoles and handhelds, from the third generation onwards.
The games are primarily developed and self-published by Nintendo internally, with some games in the franchise being developed by other companies under Nintendo's supervision, such as Hudson Soft, Camelot Software Planning, Intelligent Systems, and AlphaDream. The franchise was created by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and its first installment was the arcade game Donkey Kong, released on July 9, 1981.
It centers around the fictional character Mario, an Italian plumber who serves as the hero of a realm called the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mario franchise is a media franchise consisting of video games published and produced by the Japanese company Nintendo. If it were not for this blindingly spectacular creation, digital entertainment as we know it today would not exist.” - Hideo Kojima, Nintendo Power Volume 230, November 2010
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