You'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't know the name of Nintendo's flagship mascot, Mario. Whether they play video games or not, Mario has become enough of an icon to be recognizable by anyone, and his name has become synonymous with the gaming industry. Even though he made his debut in 1981 in Nintendo's Donkey Kong, it wasn't until the release of Super Mario Bros. in 1985 that it was clear that Mario wasn't going to just be꧅ the mascot of Nintendo, but for video games as a whole.

Mario's success lead to a number of sequels and spinoffs over the years, and the famous plumber has appeared in well over a hundred games, surpassing any other kno⛦wn video game character... though that may not be much of a surprise when you consider his 40th(!) birthday is approaching in the coming years. Whether he's stomping on goombas or playing golf with his friends (and foes), it'd be hard to find a Mario game that you didn't enjoy.

Even though Nintendo has kept Mario a family friendly character over the years, it doesn't mean the titular plumber is safe🦩 from the internet. With the growing popularity of internet memes over the years, Mario has naturally become a victim of the internet and has had multiple jokes made at his expense. While our nostalgia for Mario games of the past is completely warranted, the internet has had no problem attacking Nintendo's mascot through internet memes, and while most of them will likely make you laugh, they still just might be enough to ruin your childhood memories of Mario.

20 Everyone Was A Benedict Arnold 🍰

Yoshi made his debut on the Super Nintendo in one of Mario's greatest adventures, Super Mario World. From a gameplay standpoint, Yoshi didn't offer too much in terms of actually being benefic⛄ial to Mario other than adding an extra hit point or being able to gobble up enemies that could just as easily be stomped. That didn't stop us from enjoying the novelty of getting to ride on a little 🍬green dinosaur. While Yoshi may not be the best powerup for Mario, he certainly was... useful.

Admit it. You did it, I did it. Everyone has done it. You're riding Yoshi, but you fall down a ledge and need to jump to safety or you need to make a jump that you kno꧃w you can't quite reach without a little bit more of a boost. Most gamers learned this trick, despite essentially killing off a helpless Yoshi. Mario could jump off of Yoshi's back allowing him to get a higher jump, but in most cases, this would leave Yoshi plummeting to his death. Sure, it makes us all awful people, but I guess it's okay if it's for the greater good, right?

19 💞 Eat Your Heart Out, Res෴ident Evil

Mario games are not really scary in the traditional sense. Yet as a kid, there were a strange number of levels that would cause a certain amount of anxiety or fear in me. Super Mario Bros. 3 in world 2 with the chasing sun? Check. The haunted houses in Super Mario World? Check. But one enemy in particular rings a bell in Super Mario 64. That huge eel from the level Jolly Roger Bay.

Also known as Unagi, the giant eel from Super Mario 64 fame was actually quite terrifying. Maybe it was because of its huge stature or maybe it was because its easy to feel helpless swimming in the depths of a dark sea, but Unagi was definitely capable of raising our anxiety levels in this stage. If you got near its vicinity, it would come out and chomp at you. While it may seem obvious to just avoid it, you still had to lure the big beast out as it had a star attached to the end of its tail. At least he's not quite as terrifying in Mario Kart 8.

18 How Does ওThis Make Sense?

It's probably no surprise that games from the eighties didn't exactly require that much storage. Unlike games today that require up to fifty gigabytes of storage space and consoles that come with terabyte sized hard drives, gaming back in the day was far simpler and only required the consol๊e and a cartridge that held kiloby﷽tes of data.

Naturally, the original Super Mario Bros. had a relatively small file size, weighing in at a measly 31 kilobytes. It's hard to believe that the game that pretty much pioneered some of the greats could come in such a small package. That's why it's surprising that when you find screenshots of 🐽the game online, most of those pictures are actually way bigger in file size than the original game. Sure, a lot of it has to do with format and overall quality of the picture, but it is still baffling in a sense how a game that has eight worlds could be smaller than a simple image from the game.

17 Th🌟ey Weren't All Good Memories...

The original Mario Party made its debut back in 1998 and has had numerous sequels over its twenty year lifespan. Mario Party was one of the most innovative games for its time, popularizing the idea of party games on what seemed like th🧸e perfect console with its four sep🍨arate controller ports actually allowing a group of people to play together.

It wasn't all fun and games, though. Unlike games like Mario Kart which pitted you against everyone, there was a certain level of strategy in Mario Party, oftentimes forcing players to get involved in Mario Party politics. Alliances were formed, players were backstabbed, and people would gang up on particular players for the benefit of everyone else. Mario Party may not have always played fair, but neither did its players. If one thing was for certain, this game could easily turn friends 🌃against one another.

16 Please Don't Apply This Tꦗo Real Life Injuries 🍎

It's really hard to find logic in a game that is essentially about a plumber who tries to save a princess from a dinosaur so it is usually better to not think about the game's logistics too much. Despite that, there are some things in Mario's games that make absolutely no sense at all. While a life bar might make more sense than a mushroom that gives you health and makes you bigger, Super Mario 64's life bar made little sense.

Whether it was intentional or caused by the developer's laziness is questionable, but Mario's life bar is the same as his oxygen bar in the game. When under water, his life bar will turn blue and slowly deplete... but if Mario resurfaces, he'll breathe in some oxygen thus restoring his oxygen bar back to full, and by default, his life bar as well. This൩ was typically taken advantage of as when Mario was low on health, players could just dive underwater and then resurface, thus completely regaining full health.

15 𝓀 ๊ Better Wait And See

This is a problem that most players have faced throughout a majority of the Super Mario Bros. titles, specifically the side scrolling titles. Green pipes are usually used for two purposes in Mario games: either to serve as a warp pipe thatꦍ Mario could go through taking him to a new area or to house one of the longest running enemies in the franchiseꦫ, the Piranha Plant.

Piranha Plants usually stuck their heads out at regular intervals and woul🐟dn't come out when actually standing on top of the pipe, but that didn't stop us from being cautious when around a particular pipe. All too often, it would feel like we would wait to make sure a Piranha Plant wouldn't pop out only to eventually try to pass it and have one of those jerks come out and kill us. While this enemy is typically easy to avoid, when approaching a pipe that appears to be empty, it is usually better to be safe than sorry.

14 Those🅺 Jumps Are Still Savage

Maybe this is a matter of opinion, but I've always found the side scrolling Mario games to typically be more difficult than its 3D counterparts. There's something just more difficult about making certain jumps than there is in later titles in the series, and that couldn't be more true than in the original Super Mario Bros.

Even though the original game in the franchise had physics that were a little bit more difficult to handle than in later installments (Mario took longer to gain or lose momentum), those jumps would still be difficult for any iteration of Mario to handle. Certain 🐷gaps were just plain brutal to cross, and would force us to land on a particularly small ledge. Even after years of practice, it is still challenging to cross over these pits. It's no wonder that Mario's first outing still remains one of his most difficult adventures.

13 𝔉 Eighth Time Is A Charm

It's weird looking back at the original Super Mario Bros. game and realizing that we initially played 𒉰it without actually knowing how long the game was. With t♓hat said, it was easy to think that we were actually entering a castle and that we were going to save a captured Princess Toadstool at the end only to realize our princess was in another castle this whole time.

Even though the original Super Mario Bros. lacked in plot, we couldn't help but wonder why Princess Toadstool was always in a different castle. Were King Koopa's minions dragging her from castle to castle? Did Mario simply check in the wrong castle to begin with? Why does King Koopa have so many castles to begin with? Whatever the reason, one thing was for certain: we're glad we don't have to go through this level of disappointment every time we finish up a world in newer Mario games.

12 💟 You're Never Safe In First 🍸

Mario Kart games have evolved drastically over the years, introducing a new number of items and mechanics that we didn't see in earlier titles. While the original Super Mario Kart offered a more balanced playing field, later installments incorporated a sort of rubber-banding m☂ethod, ꦅallowing players in lower ranks the ability to get better items, thus allowing them to bounce back from last place... thus making whoever is in first always in harm's way.

The blue shell debuted in Mario Kart 64 with the ability to track down the player in first and hit it with an almost guaranteed percentage rate, which could completely ruin that player's chance of coming in at first. This meme takes from a popular scene from the movie Taken where Liam Neeson threatens the captors of his daughter over the phone. If the blue shell from Mario Kart had a 🅠quote to go with it, there's no doubt that this would be the on♈e for it.

11 ✨ This Really Didn't W🀅ork Too Well In The Game

Taking the leap from 2D to 3D doesn't always go as smoothly as planned, but for a game that was experimenting with the third dimension for the first time, Super Mario 64 does a hell of a job making that transition. Systems like the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation ushered in a whole new era and style of games that we hadn't seen on systems like the SNES, yet 3D games were still new and not every title was able to amount to what Super Mario 64 did (I'm looking at you, Bubsy 3D).

With that said, not everything was perfect with the move to 3D. Mario got a whole new arsenal of attacks and moves that we hadn't seen in previous Mario games like a punch attack or ground stop. One move in particular that didn't work as well as planned was the wall kick, thankfully only needed to get a limited number of stars in the game. The move would return in other 2D titles, but it was simply horrendous in Super Mario 64. Even though it was innovative a✃t the time, the 3D camera was less than stellar, despite being fairly ♈good for its time, making those wall kick segments extremely difficult to pull off.