Thinking Out Loud: Super Mario Man

Is Super Mario a Superhero? This question has kept popping up for me as I play through Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Odyssey during my slow periods between assignments. Part of this is a broader question about weather or not video game characters in general can be considered superheroes. Now, some video games feature characters that are already superheroes from other media, Spider-Man and Batman being perennial favourites, and plenty of games feature original superheroes as their protagonists, the inFamous and Prototype series being examples I've played. But what about other characters that tread the line? Megaman regularly fights for humanity against legions of killer robots, that sounds lot like Magnus, so is Megaman a superhero? What about Samus? We know she's a bounty hunter, but she's also responsible for repeatedly dismantling a large criminal organisation, that's pretty superheroic, like a more mercenary Iron Man. And the big question, what about the granddaddy of the medium, Super Mario?

In most games, Mario has powers and abilities far beyond the people and creatures around him, or at least certainly those we can consider to be native inhabitants (Toads, Luma, etc), which implies some inherent ability that they don't possess. In the old USA continuity, Mario was a human who traveled to the Mushroom Kingdom, providing a kind of "John Carter" explanation for the increased ability, which works and does, indeed, put Mario in that nebulous "hero" area adjacent to characters like Carter and Tarzan. Due to the debatable nature of what can be considered Mario "cannon", there is essentially no real consistency to Mario's abilities, excepting that most outside of the jumping require a kind of external power-up, be it a Mushroom or new kind of hat. Even just sticking to what can be broadly considered the main Mario games, and thereby avoiding any Karts, Parties and/or hotel management, probably the most heroic action Mario engages in is fighting the villain with plans of conquest, which almost works better as a "Knight/Princess/Knave" read than anything superheroic.

All-in, I do not tend to consider Mario a superhero in the same sense that I do characters like Spider-Man and She-Hulk; nor is he as much a superhero in my mind as other video game characters like Ratchet or Captain Falcon. Mario is, essentially, the ur-text of the "Mascot Platformer" genre, so trying to parse his existence within terms of other genres, will always be fraught. There is a reading of Mario as superhero to be had if you really want to find it, as games like Odyssey certainly open that possibility, with the globe-trotting and battling huge bosses, even giving Mario a fantastic vehicle and a sidekick, so if you really want a chubby plumber who jumps high on your team, there's not much to stop you. For myself, I'll be holding off on adding much Mario content beyond my "Melee of Champions" Super Mission Force games, as it doesn't quite gel as well as throwing Ratchet and Clank in with my Guardians of the Galaxy or Solid Snake with my SHIELD forces.