In 1992, DC Comics made massive public waves with a major crossover event that announced the death of Superman.
At the time, it was an unprecedented move for a comic book publisher to kill off its iconic character and spawned a gallery of replacement characters, some of whom are still active today. But of course, any modern comic fan is likely aware that this stunt didn’t last forever and Superman was indeed resurrected before the decade was out.
And in the years since, enough comic characters have died and returned that the trick has essentially become old hat by now.
But since it’s not quite so common for video game companies to consign their most popular (and lucrative) characters to a similar fate, it seems that some fans were given the impression that Nintendo was gearing up to pull a similar stunt for the first time.
However, it turns out that this was based on a common misreading of memes criticizing one of the company’s business decisions.
To understand how people even jokingly got it into their heads that Mario is about to die, we have to harken back to the the 35th anniversary of his landmark game.
As CNN Business reported , Nintendo celebrated this occasion with two remastered collections known as Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros 35 for the Switch.
The former is a collection bundling together Super Mario 64 , Super Mario Sunshine , and Super Mario Galaxy while the other is a multiplayer variant of the first Super Mario Bros. game.
However, both of these games will be delisted from the Switch’s online store as of March 31.
According to CNN Business, Nintendo hasn’t provided any kind of explanation for this end date, which made fans suspicious that it’s a completely arbitrary cutoff.
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And whether they meant it seriously or not, some Twitter users speculated that this hard closure to Mario’s 35th anniversary celebration would precede an announcement that Mario himself was dead.
And in case anybody needs any reassurance, it is extremely unlikely that any such announcement is imminent.
Even taking aside the fact that it’s almost April Fool’s Day, it seems that this end date will not affect Mario-related titles such as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury , Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit , and an online version of Super Mario All-Stars .
Not only is Mario probably going to remain alive and well, but it turns out that not as many people genuinely believed otherwise as it may have seemed.
And if anyone did actually think it was going to happen, this appears to be the result of them taking memes too seriously.
As one Twitter user said , “I do hope people realize that the whole ‘Mario was gonna die thing’ was just making fun of the fact that Nintendo is gonna delist some Mario games.”
Such memes were not only based on people’s annoyance at the seemingly arbitrary cutoff point for the soon-to-be delisted games, but also on their disappointment in what those games turned out to be.
As another user elaborated , “Lol no video game fans are making sardonic jokes about a cutesy character because one of the most hyped re-releases has amounted to a cheap cash grab and the whole thing feels emblematic of Nintendo’s archaic and money hungry business choices.”
So to summarize, Mario is alive and well and one of Nintendo’s business decisions rubbed their fans the wrong way. In other words, business as usual.
h/t: CNN Business