The man who inspired the famous mustachioed video game character has died in the United States at the age of 84, here's how his connection to Nintendo came about
Super Mario is dead. No, not the famous Nintendo video game character but Mario Segale, the Italian-American who inspired the most famous mustachioed plumber in the history of video games. Mr. Segale passed away at the age of 84 years in Tukwila, in the United States.
Mario Segale was born in Seattle in 1934 and became famous in the city because, as a real estate entrepreneur, he came into contact with some of the heads of the company Nintendo. In practice, Segale rented, in 1981, to the Japanese group a factory that became the first Nintendo headquarters in the United States. In the same year Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired by the face of Mario Segale to create a character, at the beginning secondary, that later became Super Mario. The most famous plumber of video games at the beginning was called Jumpman and was included in the Donkey Kong series.
The Italian-American who inspired Super Mario
Nintendo has always had the propensity to name its video game characters after real people who are somehow related to the company. It was Minoru Arakawa, the founder of Nintendo of America, who decided to call Super Mario Mario in honor of Rye. According to some, the decision was accidental and given by the good relationship between the two, but according to other reconstructions, Arakawa got the idea because after a few months of late payments, Mr. Rye decided to break into the American plant of Nintendo to request his money in a not exactly kind way. Seeing the impetuosity of the man, his character Jumpman came back to mind and so he decided to turn him into Super Mario. And it is no coincidence that in an interview with the Seattle Times in 1993, Mr. Rye joked that he was still waiting for the rights from Nintendo.