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First Luigi Appearance?

Posted: March 10th, 2007, 10:25 am
by Alienblue
Okay, prepare to enter..THE MAYBE ZONE!....

Most people think Mario's brother Luigi's first appearance was in the first Mario Bros. coin-op. But WAS it? In the opening scene of Donkey Kong Junior, we see...TWO "marios" lifting Kongs' cage-my guess as to why this REALLY is, is, the programmer needed two figures to lift Kongs heavy cage, but didn't have enough time or memory to put a whole new figure in....but, AHA! Time/memory constraints caused Luigi to be nothing more than a palette swap of Mario in MB and SMB, too-Luigi IS Mario with green shirt and hair instead of blue! So, my "in-world videogame theory" is that either this "other" Mario is a twin brother unknown to us OR, more likely, LUIGI himself. To confuse Junior (and us) he simply dressed up like his brother Mario (twins often wear the same clthing, hairstyle, etc..in the real world)! That means DK Jr. was the VERY FIRST appearance-albeit breif-of LUIGI!

Okay, I have wayyyyy too much time to think don't I?

While we are talking D.K. I also have a less "nutty" (comparitively) query: At what point did Nintendo name the girl in Donkey Kong "Pauline" (after "perils of..")? I have 14 video game books and over 80 magazines from 1981-84, and whenever D.K. is reviewed or commented on or given a strategy session, Mario and Kong are correctly identified, but "Pauline" is NEVER called by that name...she is reffered to either simply as "The Girl / Mario's Girlfreind" or by other names ranging from Nell to Betsy to Lola! My question: Was the girl identified as PAULINE on the D.K. Arcade coin-op? If not, when and where was the name "Pauline" first used? Anyone know or have links on this?

Yep, ol' AB has wayyyyyy too much time to think! (Insomnia)

First Luigi Appearance?

Posted: March 10th, 2007, 3:10 pm
by a1

Well, was Mario called something other than jumpman in Donkey Kong Jr.? Because if he was then Mario hadn't even appeared at that point .


First Luigi Appearance?

Posted: March 11th, 2007, 6:33 am
by Alienblue
a-Mario was Mario long before DK junior. It's true that the first hundred or so DK cabinets didn't refer to the characters by name but by the time I played Donkey Kong in the coin-op, the machine had pictures of the characters and I DO REMEMBER a name under the fat carpenters picture reading "Mario", and "Kong" under the ape- but what I DON'T recall is if the girl was ever named on said cabinet. Again, when DK was liscensed for the home by Coleco- in their manual, which I still have, it identifies objects on the screen "Barrel...Ramp...MARIO..KONG..." annnnd "Mario's GIRLFREIND" (emphasis mine) ... why wouldn't they call her Pauline if she had a name by then? Mario did! - and home versions of DK came out jusst about when junior was hitting the streets; given lead time, again, Mario was long known by now. BTW, did you know their are TWO kinds of birds in DK Jr.? The green ones are STOOKYBIRDS, the blue ones are NITPICKERS. Now u know!