Tag Archives: Mario

Peach is Christian too? The Mario franchise has always been a cultural touchstone, carefully managed by Nintendo to avoid controversy. For decades, the Mushroom Kingdom has relied on fantasy imagery like mushrooms, stars, and fire flowers rather than religious symbols. Yet in 1987, one of the strangest and rarest pieces of Mario merchandise slipped through: a sticker called Prayer Power, showing Princess Peach clutching a Christian cross to repel a …

Boo is one of Mario’s most beloved enemies, the little ghost that covers its face when you look at it but balloons into something terrifying when you turn your back. Generations of players have laughed and cursed at its strange behavior, but few casual fans know the story of where it came from. Boo wasn’t just pulled out of a sketchbook. It was inspired directly by a real woman: Takashi …

An Innocent Gesture with a Dark Twist For more than two decades, fans of Super Mario World believed Mario was simply pointing forward when Yoshi stuck out his tongue. It looked playful and harmless. Mario gave the signal, Yoshi obeyed, and the duo worked together as partners. That illusion shattered in 2017, when Nintendo veteran Shigefumi Hino, the designer who created Yoshi, revealed that the original concept was very different. …