Nintendo Switches Questionable Name Of ‘Super Mario Bros’ Villain Ahead Of Film

If you were one of the original Super Mario Bros fans, you might remember when Nintendo released Wrecking Crew, the second installment of the title, which debuted in 1984.
 
In the game, players would play as Mario or Luigi and had one task: to wreck walls. However, it wouldn’t be a Super Mario game if there weren’t any enemies lurking around. One, in particular, was the brother’s ex-boss called Spike—or ‘Blackie’ in the Japanese market.
 
Different names for respective markets are not uncommon. Other titles under Nintendo, such as Pokémon, have characters known by one label in one country and another somewhere else. One such example is Ash Ketchum, known as Satoshi in Japan, in tribute to the franchise’s creator Satoshi Tajiri.

Unfortunately, Spike’s Japanese moniker is not in homage to any of the team that worked on the game and is a slightly demeaning title that has reduced him solely to his color.

ファミリーコンピュータ向けソフト『レッキングクルー』などに登場するキャラクター「ブラッキー」の名称を、欧米での名称と同じ「スパイク」に変更いたします。なお、2023年4月28日に公開される『ザ・スーパーマリオブラザーズ・ムービー』での名称も、同様に「スパイク」となっています。 pic.twitter.com/HhTXEOmzxn

— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) April 20, 2023

Merriam-Webster has also issued previous accounts of the word “blackie” that tied it to more offensive denotations. It’s not stated if the change was explicitly due to racial issues per se, but it’s not hard to misconstrue the name for something else.
 
Spike also appears in the Super Mario Bros Movie, which could have spurred the renaming. Other than that, Nintendo might have changed it before its release in Japan on April 28 in light of societal and cultural movements that look more inclusive and sensitive to the feelings of others.
 
“The name in The Super Mario Bros Movie, which will be released on April 28, 2023, will be ‘Spike’ as well,” the company announced in a tweet posted to its official Japanese Twitter account.
 
 
 
[via TechTimes and CNN, cover image via Nintendo]