We all have that one sibling or cousin in the family who’s always glued to the TV screen with a joystick in hand and hurling abuses at their virtual opponent or cheering for their own player. For hardcore gamers, gaming is their entire world, their religion. Their food and even their sleep. Gaming has become a major hobby these days and is an addiction of its own unique kind. An astonishing 50%of the entire American population indulges in video games these days. Here are some interesting facts that I’ll bet you didn’t know about video games

Fact 1: The Famous Mario
Mario is a character that almost every person on this planet must be familiar with, in fact he has appeared in a whopping 125 games and was named after the landlord of the first warehouse rented by Nintendo, Mario Segale.

Fact 2: Mario’s super mushrooms exist for real
The super mushrooms that appear in Mario actually exist and take their shape and form after the fungi ‘Amanita Muscaria’. These mushrooms have the property of making the user believe that they are increasing in size, a fact that was also portrayed when Alice grows into a giant in Alice in the wonderland.

Fact 3: Atari
Every 90’s kid has been the proud owner of an Atari. The word Atari is Japanese of origin and means Success.

Fact 4:
The Mario Brothers became so popular in the year 1983 that many parents began naming their newborns Mario.

Fact 5: Negative press, positive press
We often hear of people paying the press to write positive reviews on them but in the case of the famous ‘Grand Theft Auto’ it was completely the opposite. Rock star’s Public Relations Guru Max Clifford planted controversial stories in all major newspapers so that the game would get the disapproval of right wing politicians and activists. This story indeed makes us wonder about the heights people would go to get hype for their product.

Fact 6: The PlayStation
The idea of a play station was initially coined by Nintendo, with designs for it to be a Nintendo console and Sony would manufacture the Inside components, However Nintendo had a change of mind regarding the execution of their plans for the console and Sony went ahead and became the sole creator of the PlayStation. I’m sure Nintendo regrets their backing out of the plan now!

Fact 7: Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong was meant to be a Popeye game at first but became a Mario one instead. Mario played the role Popeye was supposed to have, Pauline took Olive oyl’s role and DK took the role which was meant for Bluto. Most games require the purchase of an extension pack but Donkey Kong 64 came with the upgrade included, Ever wondered why that happened?  Turns out that Nintendo made a fatal programming error and the game wouldn’t even function without the extension pack, Interesting indeed.

Fact 8: Pokémon
It would certainly come as a big shock to know that Pokémon was intended to end with the Pokémon Gold and Silver version which was released in 1999. In fact the whole Pokémon franchise was supposed to end after this, be it the games or the trading cards.

Fact 9: The Mario brothers appear in Porn
The Mario brothers actually have two porn movies design after them, Thankfully Nintendo bought the rights to these movies so that they’d never be released again.

Fact 10: Harmless pigs
The little green piggies in the famous mobile game Angry Birds are completely harmless and get beaten upon by those mean birds for absolutely no reason at all.