About
Real Time Mario, also referred to as Mario’s Head, is a version of the character Super Mario from the PC game Mario Teaches Typing that is often used in promotional booths for Nintendo products at electronics conventions. The character became a prominent subject in YouTube Poop and YTPMVs in 2007. .
Origin
A disembodied head version of Mario was first used at promotion booths for the Super Mario franchise at the 1992 Summer Consumer Electronics Show (shown below, left). The character would interact with convention-goers in real-time while being controlled by a human wearing a helmet controller device. A “Real Time Wario” character made was subsequently shown at conferences several years later (shown below, right).
Both Real Time Mario and Real Time Wario were used in “Nintendo Power Previews” booths (shown below, left), while Real Time Mario alone was featured in the PC game series Mario Teaches Typing (shown below, right).
In 2007, an updated version of Real Time Mario made an appearance at the E3 electronics convention (shown below, left) and has been used at the Nintendo World Store in New York (shown below, right).
Spread
Despite his official name being “Real Time Mario”, many Internet users refer to him either as the “Mario Head” or “Mario’s Head.” On November 9th, 2007, the earliest known YouTube Poop instance titled “Mario Head Fun” was uploaded by Misselaineous10 (shown below, left). In the first six years, the video gained over 245,000 views and 470 comments. On January 26th, 2008, YouTuber Cloaytonem2 uploaded a video titled “Youtube Poop: MARIO’S HEADGOESCRAZY!!!”, which accumulated more than 660,000 views and 1,700 comments in the following five years.