Today-a, YouTube Gaming-a announced that-a… sorry, I’ll stop with the Mario voice now. Anyway, YouTube announced that content related to the squeaky-voiced little Italian has racked up more than 100 billion views on the platform.
A video from YouTube celebrating the milestone traces the origins of Mario content on the platform from early viral videos to more modern expressions of fandom like cosplays. “From arts and crafts to cooking, makeup to nail art, to IRL, music and even weddings… the Mario community on YouTube has grown into its own ecosystem where fans can create and share their own unique take on one of the world’s most recognizable characters,” YouTube said in a blog post.
More than two million YouTube channels have uploaded Mario videos, and a new one is uploaded on YouTube every 20 seconds. Two thousand channels are dedicated to the Mario universe, and more speedruns of Mario are uploaded to YouTube than of any other game series (in speedruns, gamers test how quickly they can finish a game or section of a game).
YouTube also notes the outsized effect of Japanese creators on the growth of Mario content, which is no surprise given the character’s origins. Apparently, people love to create new Super Mario game levels using a tool called Super Mario Maker, and 60 percent of those creators are from Japan. One of the country’s top YouTube creators, Hikakin, first gained attention thanks to a viral Super Mario beatboxing video.
Though he’s never really gone away, Mario has recently been back in the spotlight thanks to today’s release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the recent opening of Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood which was captured — you guessed it— in hundreds of YouTube vlogs.
