Me personally i don't really like mario i don't know what everyone likes about him he is a fat plumber that shoots random bouncing fire out of his hands. POST YOUR REASONS WHY YOU THINK MARIO IS GOOD/COOL or if you agree with me thats cool also
MARIO IS: a Fat Brooklyn Plumber a shroomer a living pogo stick a complete idiot and a person with a vendetta against mushrooms, turtles, football players, birds, a giant dragon/turtle/dinosaur hybrid and pretty much everything but italian plumbers, princesses and mushroom-headed people. and plush stars.
Well, why do you think he got so popular? Back then, people thought you could make games out of ANYTHING! I mean, there's this game on the Jaguar about diabetes with a superhero that destroys sugar-based food enemies. Mario just happened to be the most popular of random games. Thus it grew immensely.
And now its going continuously on hype. I also agree with Shintetsu, anything went for a game, as long as you got to save the princess and beat up the weird looking monsters which counted also as horror in those days.
hes only cool becouse he was the first real hero of video games and the first one to have a real solid (athough weird) backstory. i mean you could not do much with the atari and such.