Jumpman vs. Mario

[Mary McManus]

Patrick Scott Patterson: "Pretty neat... but it still bugs me that so many people claim Mario was called Jumpman when Donkey Kong was released. Not true... as can be seen on the very sales flyer that introduced the game."

Any response from those that herald that he was originally called Jumpman?

Mine: Read the instruction sticker on the machine.

Agreed! The stickers on the game state Jumpman. DK was never meant to be as successful as it became so a "real" name was not christened to the character at its initial release.

I imagine when the game became popular and more DK units were produced, the name "Mario" was given, however I doubt nintendo wanted to spend the extra expense to re-print the instructions just to make a name correction.

[marinomitch13]

Here's a link to mine and PSP's discussion on the issue. Anyone that want's to add thoughts is welcome!
https://www.facebook.com/jdlowe/posts/10151776987968143?comment_id=28690432&offset=0&total_comments=23&notif_t=share_reply

[stella_blue]

For the record, I was the lone "Mario" vote, and not because I believed it was correct.

I've always considered "Jumpman" to be an unimaginative choice, even worse than "guy" (at least Guy is a real name).  It's as if they were all sitting around, when someone suddenly said, "Hey!  We need a name for the main character."  So somebody else spent about 15 seconds scribbling on a napkin, showed it to the rest of the group, and they said, "Yeah, let's go with that.  Anything else we need to cover?  Ok, another round over here!"

[Zetherman]

i voted jumpman since it's on the stickers and in the manual itself. flyers can easily be changed once the game takes off. he was originally intended to be jumpman, obviously.