For games not lucky enough to get their own film, Disney's Wreck-It Ralph has stepped in to offer cameos to all those neglected characters. Set in an arcade where video game characters can jump from game to game after the arcade closes for the night, the movie incorporates a litany of pixelated favourites from games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter, and Dance Dance Revolution to Q*bert, Frogger, and Pong. But while Super Mario Bros.' Bowser is in attendance at Wreck-It Ralph's Bad-Anon meetings (for recovering baddies), Mario himself—one of the most iconic gaming characters of all time—is absent.
Director Rich Moore wanted to include the character in the animated film, but he couldn't find the right moment for him. "Over the course of developing the story I was always looking for the perfect moment or scene to include Mario," said Moore in an interview with Digital Spy. "But it had to be organic, it had to feel like [the scene] was made for him and unfortunately as we were developing the story and taking it to where it needed to go, that moment never made itself clear." The director made sure to mention that Mario's absence had nothing to do with Nintendo licensing snafus (Bowser, after all, did have his small part).
Moore made it clear that if a second Ralph movie gets made, audiences will be seeing some Super Mario: "If we're lucky enough to have a sequel then we'll create that moment that's perfect for him," said Moore. Okay, great—now what about Yoshi?
