How on Earth did we manage to get to issue 47 without the fat plumber? The problem seems to be that everyone knows the Mario games are absolute classics, but when asked to name the best game of all time, they're easily overlooked. It's just too easy to say, "Super Mario Bros. is the best game of all time," and far cooler to come up with something slightly more obscure. Let's make amends with a brief history of the world's most enduring videogame hero...

Mario was born in 1980, fathered by the one and only Shigeru Miyamoto. He was a very plain child, bedecked in red overalls and cap, and blessed with a lovely pair of 'bugger-bars' (a Nigel Mansell-style moustache). His first public appearance was in 1981 as the barrel-jumping player-character in Donkey Kong (he was actually simply known as 'Jumpman' at the time). But everyone knew that the boy was meant for better things. It wasn't long before he was joined by a brother, Luigi, similarly dressed but with a penchant for green. After a few appearances on Nintendo's Game & Watch handhelds, the siblings found their way into the arcades, this time in their own game.

Mario Bros. was similar to the old handheld games, with its single-screen layout, and involved killing an infinite supply of turtles, crabs and flies that scuttled out of green pipes at the sides. A two-player mode allowed co-operative play and even a crude deathmatch mode.

The brothers' big break came in 1985, as Super Mario Bros. helped to shift millions of Nintendo Entertainment System's (NES) worldwide. This massive platformer kept the kids glued to their televisions for months on end and soon dominated playground discussions. "Have you found the warp to level x-x?" became standard banter as the gaming revolution took place, signalling the death of jumpers for goalposts. And British Bulldogs.