---
title: "Which came first, Mario or Windows?"
description: "Mario vs Windows: Mario came first, by 4 years — 1981 against 1985. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/super-mario-vs-windows/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Mario or Windows?

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

1981 — 4 years before Windows

Mario came first, by 4 years. Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong.

## Side by side

|  | Mario | Windows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1981 | 1985 |
| Date | — | 1985-11-20 |
| Category | media | technology |
| What happened | Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong. | Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0. |

## 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.

## Windows

Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985, twenty-two months after the Macintosh, and it was not an operating system — it was a graphical shell running on top of MS-DOS, and remained so until Windows NT in 1993 and the consumer transition with Windows XP in 2001. Version 1.0 could not even overlap windows: they tiled, because Apple's legal position on overlapping windows was unresolved.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Mario or Windows?

Mario, by 4 years — 1981 against 1985.

### When did Mario start?

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

### When did Windows start?

1985. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

## Related pages

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- [Microsoft or Mario?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-super-mario/)
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- [email or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-windows/)
- [email or Mario?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-super-mario/)
- [the Macintosh or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-windows/)
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- [Windows or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [Windows or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-youtube/)

## Sources

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