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Please read: If you are going to replace the current information on the Featured template, please see here before doing that and look at which order our next FA's will be put on this page. The Mario franchise is a media franchise consisting of video games published and produced by the Japanese company Nintendo. The title character is a fictional Italian-American plumber who serves as the hero of a realm called the Mushroom Kingdom. The franchise was created by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and its first installment was the arcade game Donkey Kong, released on July 9, 1981. The games are primarily published and/or developed by Nintendo itself, with some games in the franchise being developed by other companies under Nintendo's supervision, such as Hudson Soft, Camelot Software Planning, Intelligent Systems, and AlphaDream. Most Mario games have been released for Nintendo's various video game consoles and handhelds, from the third generation onwards.