---
title: "Which came first, Mario or Wikipedia?"
description: "Mario vs Wikipedia: Mario came first, by 20 years — 1981 against 2001. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/super-mario-vs-wikipedia/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Mario or Wikipedia?

**Which came first, Mario or Wikipedia?: Mario**

1981 — 20 years before Wikipedia

Mario came first, by 20 years. Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong.

## Side by side

|  | Mario | Wikipedia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1981 | 2001 |
| Date | — | 2001-01-15 |
| Category | media | technology |
| What happened | Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong. | Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia. |

## Mario

Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong in 1981, credited as Jumpman, four years before Super Mario Bros. of 1985 made him a household name. He wears a cap because animating hair at that resolution was impossible, and dungarees because they made his arm movements legible against his body — the design is entirely a consequence of an 16×16 pixel sprite.

## Wikipedia

Wikipedia launched in January 2001 as a scratchpad for Nupedia, a peer-reviewed encyclopedia project started in 2000 that had produced about two dozen articles in a year. The wiki produced more than that in its first month and Nupedia was abandoned in 2003. Wikipedia is older than Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the iPhone.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Mario or Wikipedia?

Mario, by 20 years — 1981 against 2001.

### When did Mario start?

1981. Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong.

### When did Wikipedia start?

2001. Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]