Player

From the Super Mario Wiki

Player is a term used for video games, obviously meaning the being who is playing a certain game. The first Mario game, Donkey Kong, was originally first played and tested by Shigeru Miyamoto and a few of his employees, trying out the game and at the same time seeing who could beat it first; The main aspect in playing Donkey Kong with friends. Although most players are human, Mario media has also shown the series' specific species to enjoy certain video games, which are usually fictional.

In some games, mostly Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, many characters break the Fourth Wall and talk to the player; these characters include Goombella, Lord Crump, and Professor Frankly. It is also worth noting that several characters use Mario (or whatever playable character) as a device to talk to the player; for instance, Mario's RPG adventures often show supporting characters giving Mario commands like "press the A button". These instructions are actually directed to the player. Super Paper Mario makes a point out of this by having Mario ask what the person exactly means by "press the A button".

In Super Paper Mario, characters such as Bestovius refer to the player as a deity-like being existing within another dimension. Thoreau states the player as the great being who watches them when Mario asks what the "1 Button" is. It may be worth noting that the manual of Super Mario Bros. 2 explains the dream-based origin of certain enemy characters (for instance, it establishes that Cobrats come from Toad's dreams), and it happens to state that Ninjis "appear in the dreams of NES players". Finally, one last in-game reference to the player was given in Super Mario World's Funky level, which featured a formation of Coins that spelled out the phrase "YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER !!".

Sometimes the word player is also used in the meaning of "life", as seen in the Super Mario World instruction booklet.