Photo: Steven Miller, Flickr Creative Commons
It's-a-us – Luigi and Mario.
It was a time of great war in the 1980s. Men were forced to wield wrenches and descend into giant, dirty pipes to track sentient fungus. Women were kidnapped by hulking creatures that were hybrids of turtles and gorillas. Plants spit fire at us while a turtle in a cloud dropped objects onto our heads. Consuming copious amounts of mushrooms and being very good at jumping were the only ways we could survive in the Mushroom Kingdom. And now the skirmish has continued for decades.
According to a study from BetOhio, Buckeye State residents never fully left the battlefield, and their lives are honored on March 10, Mario Day (Mar-1-0). Per BetOhio's report, which was released March 8, Ohio is ranked No. 9 as the state with the most interest in the Mario character as well as in his brother Luigi, their friend Princess Peach and their sidekick Toad from the Mario video game and entertainment franchise. The sports-betting website dug into trending Google data to determine the ranking.
Ohio's interest in the Mario franchise was bested by Illinois, Utah and Arizona, which ranked as Nos. 1-3, respectively. Ohio's neighbor Indiana placed at No. 8.
Mario and his friends have been fighting Bowser, Wario and other villains since 1981's Donkey Kong arcade game, but things really took off with 1983's Mario Bros. arcade game and 1995's Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). There are now more than 200 games starring the franchise's characters, along with countless comic books, television series and films. On April 5, Nintendo and Universal Pictures will release The Super Mario Bros. Movie, an animated film featuring the voices of Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key and Seth Rogen.
But no Mario Day would be complete without remembering the fantastically bad Super Mario Bros. live-action film of 1993. Starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Samantha Mathis and Dennis Hopper, the movie largely was panned as one of the worst films ever made.
Below, watch the trailer for the original Super Mario Bros. film.
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