mario

Nintendo celebrated the 30th birthday of Super Mario Bros. with the release of this excellent little video documenting the creation of that iconic game.

Shigeru Miyamoto explains his inspiration and process for how the lasting gem came into being.

Technically, Sept. 13 was the 30th anniversary, but who knows when that is relative to today, what with modern time zones and all. So, Google got into the spirit today with a nifty little Easter egg.

If you type "Super Mario Bros." into search, a question box will appear in the results and you can go ahead and collect all the coins you want.

Unfortunately, you do not receive an extra life if you click it 100 times.

Happy belated b-day Super Mario Bros. Thanks for introducing me to a life long habit of reality avoidance.

Nintendo will release Super Mario Maker Sept. 11 and the game includes a new power up for the red-overalled plumber. Unfortunately, it gives him the ability to look really deformed.

The game will have a Luigi Mushroom, which is meant to make the titular hero more like his green-sporting brother and not only in the taller and thinner appearance. The 'power up' will also make him jump higher and have less traction.

The Mario wiki tells the origin of the new mushroom:

According to Takashi Tezuka, the form came from a bug that happened in development that made Super Mario skinny. It looks similar to a normal Mushroom with a short cap and a very thin base. It is randomly found in Question Blocks, along with Super Mushrooms, but Luigi Mushrooms are rarer. A Super Mushroom can't overwrite the effect of this mushroom,.. but they can fuse together.

Yeah, but it also makes Mario look like a hunchbacked buffoon! A lanky, awkward creep who slinks his way oilily into the upper reaches of the stratosphere only to grab gobs more mustache wax off the highest gross shelf.

Watch the weirdo do things here:

We're not the only ones who think this. Kotaku expressed their disgust well.

Nintendo will team with Facebook for a "hackathon" July 28 that has absolutely no hacking in it.

Essentially, Nintendo wants those supposedly smart people behind Facebook to take a crack at using the creation tools in Super Mario Maker. A press release on explains it further:

The Super Mario Maker hackathon is exclusively for Facebook employees to design a special level in the game. At the event, participants will be using the demo version of the game that drew rave reviews at the recent E3 video game trade show to create levels using the in-game tools that will become available to a wider audience when the game launches exclusively for Wii U on the 11th of September. The event will culminate with designers presenting their creations to a panel of judges from Nintendo and Facebook. The winning individual or team has the opportunity to make the level available for Super Mario Maker owners to play after the game's launch.

One of the big things that Nintendo hopes to offer with Super Mario Maker is a robust community of new player-created levels after the game's release. So, this partnership can be seen as a chance to kickstart the levels available at launch.

That all depends on how much you want your Mario levels designed by the employees of Facebook. Surely both will roll out a large nostalgic PR campaign once the competition closes.

Nintendo hasn't denied it, but Super Mario Maker probably won't come with a computer mouse or a fly swatter game.

Mario's outfit from Mario Open Golf has been revealed as an alternate costume in the upcoming Super Smash Bros game.

This awesome infographic looks at 7 of the most popular power flowers alongside a time line with all of the Super Mario Bros Nintendo games to date. The flower names are included, along with the power-up each one provides.