Super Mario 64™ Question Mark Block – 71395 – LEGO® Super Mario™ – LEGO® Shop US

Mario (Japanese: マリオ; , ) is a character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the Mario franchise, a recurring character in the Donkey Kong franchise, and the mascot of the Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario is an Italian plumber who lives in the Mushroom Kingdom with his younger twin brother, Luigi. Their adventures generally involve rescuing Princess Peach from the villain Bowser while using power-ups that give them different abilities. Mario's distinctive characteristics include his large nose and mustache, overalls, red cap, and high-pitched, exaggerated Italian accent.

Mario debuted as the player character of Donkey Kong, a 1981 platform game. Miyamoto created Mario after he was unable to obtain the license to use Popeye as the protagonist. The graphical limitations of arcade hardware influenced Mario's design, such as his nose, mustache, and overalls, and he was named after Nintendo of America's landlord, Mario Segale. After Donkey Kong, Mario starred in Mario Bros. (1983). Its 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System sequel, Super Mario Bros., began the successful Super Mario platformer series. Charles Martinet voiced Mario from 1991 to 2023, when he was succeeded by Kevin Afghani.

Mario has appeared in over 200 video games. These include puzzle games such as Dr. Mario, role-playing games such as Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, and sports games such as Mario Kart and Mario Tennis. He lacks a set personality and consistent profession, allowing him to take on many different roles across the Mario franchise. Mario is often accompanied by a large cast of supporting characters, including friends like Princess Daisy, Toad, and Yoshi and rivals like Bowser Jr., Donkey Kong, and Wario. Mario has also appeared in other Nintendo properties, such as the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games.

Mario is an established pop culture icon and is widely considered the most famous video game character in history. His likeness has been featured in merchandise, and people and places have been nicknamed after him. He inspired many video game characters, including Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and unofficial media. The Mario franchise is the bestselling video game franchise of all time, with more than 800 million units sold worldwide. Mario has been adapted in various media; he was portrayed by Bob Hoskins in the live-action film Super Mario Bros. (1993) and voiced by Chris Pratt in the animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023).

A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms, typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered.

Questions come in a number of varieties. For instance; Polar questions are those such as the English example "Is this a polar question?", which can be answered with "yes" or "no". Alternative questions such as "Is this a polar question, or an alternative question?" present a list of possibilities to choose from. Open questions such as "What kind of question is this?" allow many possible resolutions.

Questions are widely studied in linguistics and philosophy of language. In the subfield of pragmatics, questions are regarded as illocutionary acts which raise an issue to be resolved in discourse. In approaches to formal semantics such as alternative semantics or inquisitive semantics, questions are regarded as the denotations of interrogatives, and are typically identified as sets of the propositions which answer them.