The first time I got introduced to Mario was when I was about 4 years old. I got the Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas and Super Mario Bros., which came with it. I never touched a console game before, but it wasn't too new to me, since I played computer games on a RadioShack TRS-80 computer. But unlike the computer games, Super Mario Bros. was addictive! I remember that I got into the games so much that I would cry and throw a fit whenever I fell into a pit or hit an enemy and died.

I was even happier to find out later that there was a sequel to the game that I loved so much, which was Super Mario Bros. 2. The first time I played it was at my cousin's house and I fell in love with it. My parents bought it for me not too long after that and I got addicted to that as well. At the time, it didn't strike me as odd at all that the content of the game was very different from its predecessor. After all, it was only my second Mario game and it was a ton of fun, so why would it have mattered?

Mario Mania really didn't hit me though until the Super Mario Bros. Super Show aired on Fox Kids. The characters now actually had personalities- even the bland NPCs like Toad and Princess Toadstool. I remember laughing at the episodes because Mario and Luigi would be so clumsy sometimes when saving the Mushroom Kingdom. My dad would record the episodes on VHS and I would always watch them, even after they went off the air.

I soon found out that I wasn't the only one experiencing Mario Mania. My cousins and friends were, too! One of the games that we would like to play together when we were young was pretending to be regular people caught up in the adventures along with Mario and Luigi. We pretended that each of the Koopa Kids had twins that were not evil, and even drew a map of Bowser's Castle, complete with detail! (I wish it wasn't thrown away! I could've put it up on this site)!

Then when The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World aired on TV, I fell deeper into Mario Madness! I also bought Mario merchandise on which you'll see in the Merchandise section. My favorite characters at the time were Yoshi, Magikoopa, and Wendy O. Koopa. I really liked the versions of these characters from the cartoons because again, they had personalities that I could either relate to or admire to an extent. I would even always try to imitate their voices, as well. I remember that Yoshi had this high-pitched, screechy-like voice- nothing like what he has now in the games.

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, I kept buying as many Mario games as I could, and even though Mario's fame started to decline a little bit, I still remained a loyal fan to him. Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64 is perhaps my favorite game of all time and to this day still means a lot to me. Around the time that it came out, I also wanted to make a site on the Internet, but couldn't really think of a topic. But I chose none other than Mario for the topic in the end!

Starting around the late-2000s, my gaming life began to take a backseat to my real life, and I no longer had nearly as much time as I used to to play Mario games anymore, much less work on this website. I still very much enjoyed some of the Mario games that came out on the Wii, but I did not get the Wii U when it came out. It really wasn't until 2017 when I experienced a true Mario revival when I got the Nintendo Switch and Super Mario Odyssey. I also got both the NES and SNES Classic Edition consoles and relived my youth with Mario (and other) games. The most recent Mario game that I have played now is Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and boy, that was a nice trip down memory lane. Now, I am optimistic that I've become steeped in Mario Mania again and have some inspiration to breathe a little bit of life back into this website!

Overall, I think the Mario universe is awesome, and I sure can't wait to see what's in store for him in the future.