100 Billion Views: A Closer Look at "Mario"

The world-saving plumber, Mario, may be one of the most recognizable characters on the planet. One indicator of that fame is that videos related to the Mario series of video games have been viewed over 100 billion times. That’s over 10 views for every single person on this planet!

Over time, uploads of videos related to the Super Mario series have continued to experience annual growth. In fact, last year, there were more videos uploaded related to the Super Mario Series than ever before. Every 20 seconds someone is uploading a video related to the Super Mario Series.

After all of these years, it’s the original Super Mario Bros. game that remains the most-viewed of all of the Super Mario series of games. The top ten most-viewed Super Mario games spans the history of the series, featuring newer entries like Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and classics like Super Mario 64.

Older games like Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Bros lend themselves to the craft of speedrunning, which is why among the Speedrunning community, the Super Mario series is the most-uploaded game series.

One of the most interesting aspects of viewership related to Mario is that two countries, the United States and Japan, dominate it. Not only that, but last year, there were almost as many views of videos related to the Super Mario series in Japan as there were in the U.S. Japan’s love for Mario also asserts itself in views of videos related to Super Mario Maker, where over 60% of those views can be attributed to Japan!

Gamers and Fans

In YouTube’s earliest days, people were already uploading videos related to the Super Mario series. The earliest videos could be grouped into two categories: gameplay and fandom. Gameplay videos were those that reflected expert gameplay, especially speedrunning, which was prevalent among early uploads. Fandom videos were those that expressed a fandom for the Super Mario series. In particular, many of the earliest videos were covers of the theme song, something creators still upload today, but fandom-related videos cover any video that connects a creator’s love of Mario with a personal interest or hobby. This balance of gaming and fandom content persists to this day. In fact, currently, there are over 2000 channels that focus a significant portion of their content on Mario, and those channels include those that focus on gameplay and those that focus on creative expressions of fandom.