Examples of Iconic Characters - Mario

Since Shiney Money aims to create their own iconic character, I feel as if it's important to research other Iconic characters first of all. Below I'll write about a couple of different Iconic characters, and discuss why they are iconic. This should help me get ideas as to what sort of character I should create for Shiny money, and

First of all, let's discuss Mario from Nintendos popular Super Mario Bros franchise.

Mario is the title character from the Super Mario games, first appearing in Donkey Kong in 1981, he has since then stared in his own games, the first being "Mario Bros" which was released in 1983, however Marios breakout game was Super Mario Bros which came out in 1985 for the NES. Due to Mario existing for a long peroid of time, he has underwent several changes as the years went on. Some examples of this are below:

Here is an example of how Marios character design has changed through his ingame sprites. Due to the colour limitations of the NES his trademark blue overalls had to be sacrificed due to limitations. However once Mario hit the SNES with Super Mario world, his overalls were blue consistently from that point in time. Here we can see that once Super Mario Bros 2 came out. the ingame graphics of Mario started to closely resemble the promotional artwork that appeared on the games boxart.

The images found on the Suepr Mario Bros 2-Super Mario World were used ont he games boxart. Once Super Mario 64 came out the majority of the games promotional artwork was 3D renders of Mario.

Now onto what's appealing about Marios design:

We can see that Mario is a character that appeals a lot to kids. He seems very kid friendly and cartoony. Parents who are looking to buy a video game for their child could tell that a game with a character like Mario would be very appealing to their kid. Marios design also tells you that he'll be a Happy, cheerful and friendly character. The artstyle that Mario is presented in also gives him a recognizable silhouette as shown below:

The Artstyle that Mario is presented in also compliments the game play quite well considering how physics in Mario games are rather toony. Mario can jump high, flatten enemies into a pancake (or even be flattened himself) for example. It should also me mentioned that Marios design is quite mangaish, which is no suprise considering how his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto was originally going to draw manga. However this gives Mario an edge in Japan, making him very appealing to the Japanese market.