NintendoMario had bid his plumber days farewell.
At least, that's what it seems like thanks to a newly updated profile of the beloved video game character posted to Nintendo's Japanese website. Among notes of his athletic side, the profile mentions his plumbing career, but there's a catch.
"All around sporty, whether it's tennis or baseball, soccer or car racing, he [Mario] does everything cool. As a matter of fact, he also seems to have worked as a plumber a long time ago," it reads, according to a translation from Kotaku.
While it sounds like he's pushed aside his plumbing duties to take on racing full-time, Mario wasn't even always a plumber to begin with. According to the character's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario started out in a different trade.
"If you go back to (1981's) Donkey Kong, it was a 16-by-16 (inch) screen area. The character I came up with to fit that best was this small little guy with a big nose and a mustache, the characteristics that would stand out in that medium. We created the game design first and then we put the characters in to fit that. With Donkey Kong, we have this gorilla who grabs this gal and runs away with her and you have to go chase the gorilla down to save the lady. And the game's stage was a construction site, so we made him into basically a carpenter," he said in an interview with USA Today.
"With (1983's) Mario Bros., we brought in Luigi and a lot of the game was played underground so we made him to fit that setting and, we decided he could be a plumber. The scenario dictates his role."
With plumbing in his rear-view mirror, fans don't know how to feel. As one fan wrote on Twitter, "If he's no longer a plumber, then what is he?"
How do you feel about the change? Sound off in the comments below!