I heard this story from my Texan friend last month, and I'd like to share it with you here before forgetting.

Do you know that there was a real person who served as the model for the world-famous Nitendo character Mario from the Mario brothers?

Nintendo has a long-established company based in Kyoto, Japan, and it had been selling playing cards before inventing video games. In 1981, Nintendo opened an office in Seattle, in the U.S. to market its arcade game Donkey Kong. The company rent a warehouse owned by Mario Segale, whose parents are immigrants from Italy. He had been successful in the real estate business but he had no connection with the video game business industry at all.

Nintendo expected the big success of its arcade game, but at that time the arcade game in the States were already shrinking. The company began to struggle financially and was unable to pay the warehouse rent.

Mario Segale was so irritated by the unpaid rent that he visited the warehouse to ask it. The CEO of Nintendo apologized for the delay and promised that he would definitely pay. When the staff first saw Mario Segale, they thought he looked exact like one of Donkey Kong characters. They named the character after him, and the same name was later used for Mario in the Mario brothers.

You can guess Mario is an Italian name, and he might be an Italian character, but I had never thought he was named after a real person, especially an American. I found this story very interesting.

I sometimes pass by Nintendo when I go to my hometown, Shiga Prefecture. Nintendo has a museum in Uji City, Kyoto as well. When I visit Uji, I'd like to explore their museum some time to report here.

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