Main Mario cast, in this context, are: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Wario, Waluigi and Rosalina. Baby versions of them are included of course.
Humans besides the main Mario cast and some minor ones like Pauline and Stanley are surprisingly elusive in the Mario games:
- The Mario RPG games didn't have any human NPCs besides Peach and Luigi, and the closest to one are Toads, who straddles the line between human and fantastical species.
- Many of Mario's sports series (Strikers, Baseball) settle for existing Mario species like Koopas, Toads and Shy Guys to fill in for Mario audience.
- Mario Kart didn't really delve too much in making more human characters besides baby and metal versions of established cast.
- Square-Enix's Mario games have the White Mage, Black Mage and Ninja, which are original takes of Final Fantasy's versions of the characters, but since they are crossover creations, they will never appear outside Square-Enix's efforts
- Super Mario Odyssey's New Donk City have realistic human NPCs, but they have little characterisation due to their uniform designs. Because they are clearly designed to originate from a single location (so we can spot the foreigner in other Kingdoms), they are still considered elusive.
And we are left with some cases where humans other than the main Mario cast have regular presence:
- Mario's multiple animated series, especially Super Mario Bros. Super Show, have human characters every now and then, and many of them are exaggerated cartoonish proportions similar to Mario, Luigi and Princess.
- Camelot's Mario games add their own human characters and have them interacted with Mario, and they appear in two generations of Mario Golf and Tennis games (the N64/GBC and GCN/GBA ones). Their human characters are cartoonish people who are moderate in body proportion and have a plain face save for large eyes, matching up with how Peach, Daisy and Rosalina (and to a lesser extent Luigi) look. There are a few outliers, but very few are exaggerated in a way that Mario, Wario and Waluigi are. It's very clear that their tendency to design human characters is due to Camelot's roots in RPGs, where they do have a huge human cast.
- Mario's educational games like Mario's Time Machine and Mario is Missing have human characters, but due to their oddity and existence as license games, we will never see them again.
- Techincally Wario's series have other human characters, but they never quite mix with Mario so we don't count that until they properly crossed over.
Human characters are an odd case for Mario. Outside of the main cast, Mario tend to prefer using the fantastical species that are introduced in Super Mario games to fill the crowd, which is something I can understand since their designs stand out, and some are even rather friendly too! Moreover, the case for human characters is a precarious case: on one hand, they tend to have a generic feel in their designs so they might hardly stand out. On the other hand, because of the rarity of human characters, if a new human character were to be introduced, they must have a valid reason to exist, which rarely happens since the last time this happened was Rosalina back in Super Mario Galaxy.
Looking at this from another point of view, Mario is a human character so the sense of isolation as a human can bother some people. After all, since Mario is a human, surely other human characters besides Mario's main cast are around too. That would make the extra humans appearing in some Mario works a sort of relief.
What is your opinion of humans in Mario games: do you like to see more of them, or are they considered unnecessary in the grand scheme of things?
Thank you for reading.
