Nintendo Super Mario Bros. 3
When this commercial first started airing ahead of Super Mario Bros. 3’s release in October of 1988, a family member insisted the chants of “Mario!, Mario!” were straight out of a cult’s playbook, in what I now assume was another attempt to further the popular narrative of the time that video games were evil. The unsolicited opinion didn’t dissuade us from thinking it was cool that thousands of people across the country got together to form a giant version of Mario’s face across North America in support of a video game: a feat that seems less impressive now that we all know about visual effects.
