Mario Kart Wii

Princess Peach Toadstool is a character in Nintendo's Mario series. She is the Princess of the fictitious Mushroom Kingdom and often plays the... damsel in distress role within the series. In 2007, Princess Peach landed on Forbes magazine's Wealthiest Fictional People list, with a fortune upwards of $1 billion. She is ranked 10th in Electronic Gaming Monthly's Top Ten Video Game Politicians list. Princess Peach's initial appearance was drawn by Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto later asked Yōichi Kotabe to redraw Peach with his instructions. He had asked Kotabe to draw her eyes to be "a little cat-like" and that she should look "stubborn, but cute". With Kotabe's influence, Princess Peach changed considerably throughout her gaming system. Peach was not a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. Wii because it would require special programming on how the game handles her dress, however, she is the main protagonist in Super Princess Peach and is a playable player in most side Mario games like Mario Party and Mario Kart. She is said to have a love relationship with Mario, and her best friend and partner is Princess Daisy.
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Luigi is a fictional character, featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by prominent game designer Shigeru Miyamoto,... Luigi is portrayed as the slightly younger fraternal twin brother of Nintendo's mascot Mario, and appears in many games throughout the Mario series, frequently as a sidekick to his brother and the deuteragonist of the series. Luigi first appeared in the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. as the character controlled by the second player, and retained this role in Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and other titles. The first game where he was available as a primary character was Super Mario Bros. 2. In more recent appearances, Luigi's role became increasingly restricted to spinoffs such as the Mario Party and Mario Kart series, though he has been featured in a starring role on two occasions: first in the 1991 educational game Mario is Missing, later in Luigi's Mansion for the Nintendo GameCube in 2001 and in Luigi's Mansion 2 for the 3DS. In both of these games, he is called upon to act as the hero because Mario, the usual hero within the franchise, is in need of rescue.
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Yoshi , is a fictional dinosaur-like character who appears in video games published by Nintendo. His debut was in Super Mario World on the Super... Nintendo Entertainment System as Mario and Luigi's sidekick , and he later established his own series with several platform and puzzle games, including Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. He has also appeared in many of the spin-off Mario games including the Mario Party, the Mario Kart, and the Super Smash Bros. series, as well as in other various Mario sports titles. Yoshi also appears in New Super Mario Bros. Wii as the characters' companion and steed, similar to his original debut role in Super Mario World. As with the names of several other characters in the Mario series, Yoshi is a common part of Japanese names . Yoshis come in many different colors, though the original and most common color is green. Yoshi's most recent appearance is in Mario Kart 7. Shigeru Miyamoto stated that Nintendo had wanted Mario to have a dinosaur companion ever since Super Mario Bros.
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Birdo, known in Japan as Catherine , is a fictional character in the Mario series of video games, who first appeared in Yume Kōjō: Doki... Doki Panic, which was localized for English audiences as Super Mario Bros. 2 and is an enemy to Mario. Since her appearance, Birdo has been a recurring character in the series, more frequently in the Mario sports games as a playable character, as well as Mario Party titles. Birdo has also made several cameos, particularly in the Super Smash Bros. series and the Wii video game Captain Rainbow. Birdo's gender in the original manual for Super Mario Bros. 2 asserts that Birdo is a boy who believes that he is a girl, and would rather be referred to as "Birdetta". Later releases of Super Mario Bros. 2 lacked any mention of her gender in either the game or the manual. Nintendo eventually established Birdo as female, first in Mario Tennis which depicted Birdo and Yoshi as boyfriend and girlfriend. However, several games portray her as male, such as Captain Rainbow, or refer to the gender confusion without assigning one, such as in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
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Satoru Iwata is the fourth president of Nintendo, succeeding the long-standing previous president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi in 2002. He was responsible in great part for defining Nintendo's strategy both before and during the release of its Nintendo GameCube video game console in 2001, a vision which helped Nintendo generate a forty-one percent increase in sales at the end of the 2002 fiscal year. Barron's Magazine named Iwata one of the... world's top CEOs, due mostly to the Wii and Brain Age sales, as well as Nintendo's increased stock price. Satoru Iwata was born in Sapporo, Japan. He expressed interest in the creation of video games early on, and began producing electronic games at his home during his high school years. The several simple number games Iwata produced made use of an electronic calculator he shared with his schoolmates. Following high school, Iwata was admitted to the prestigious Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he majored in computer science. While attending the school, he did freelance work for HAL Laboratory, Inc., a subsidiary of Nintendo, as a programmer. Satoru Iwata is married.
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