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Holiday Treat #16: Mario Breaks Through the Iron Curtain

Added 2023-12-15 18:49:11 +0000 UTC

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Mario has a big announcement: He’s broken through the Iron Curtain!

In this rare flyer from 1989, Nintendo is flexing their muscle about getting the exclusive rights to publish Tetris on home video game platforms in North America. There are several great documentaries about Tetris' licensing story - our recommendation is BBC's From Russia With Love - but the short version relevant here is that Nintendo was able to secure the rights that Atari felt that they had. The underlined section, "No other company in the world is now, nor has ever been, licensed to market the Tetris home video game title" is a very clear signal and, perhaps, middle finger to Atari, which had recently defected from Nintendo's licensee program to market "unlicensed" cartridges of their own.

We also love the painting of Mario meeting with a representative of the Soviet Union. It’s such a great time capsule of this exact moment in world history and how it applied to pop culture. We can’t imagine today’s Mario meeting with… well, any world leader!