Though Luigi has become less prominent in the games lately, he would accompany Mario in all of his jumps to other forms of media, with the exception of the Saturday Supercade, which came out at roughly the same time as his first appearance. His film debut came in the obscure 1986 Mario anime movie, The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach, where he was voiced by Mizushima Yu. He does not appear in the three Super Mario Bros. 3 OVA films until the end of the Shirayukihime story.

Afterwards, Luigi was a regular on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which cast Danny Wells as both his live portrayal and voice actor. Like his brother, Luigi's voice actor changed in later cartoons, in his case to Tony Rosato. Ironically, even though he is not the starring character, Luigi managed to appear in every episode of the three DiC Mario cartoons (91 episodes in total), one of which Mario himself did not appear in (to be more exact, "Life's Ruff" in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3). He also appeared alongside Mario in several comic book incarnations, including the Nintendo Comics System.


Luigi played quite a different role in the Super Mario Bros. movie, where he was portrayed by John Leguizamo. There, Luigi was a more easy-going character in contrast to the cynical Mario of the film. Because he was played by a younger, more relatable actor (as opposed to Bob Hoskins, who played Mario), Luigi was presented as the main character for the movie, even gaining the affection of Princess Daisy. Luigi is so much younger that Mario was the one who raised him. The film implies that their parents died shortly after Luigi was born, leaving Mario as Luigi's only "parents". One odd note; the brothers do not acquire their iconic outfits until well into the film, and oddly enough Luigi has a tendency to wear red clothing while in plain-clothes, while Mario has a tendency to wear green. In addition, Luigi's moustache is missing.

Luigi's first appearance was in the arcade game Mario Bros. in 1983. During the development of the earlier Donkey Kong, designer Shigeru Miyamoto had created Mario -- then known as Jumpman -- with the hope in mind that he would be able to recast the character in a variety of different roles in future games.Demaria, R: "High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games", page 238. McGraw Hill-Osbourne, 2002 With Mario Bros., Miyamoto had been inspired by the game Joust to create a game with a simultaneous two-player mode, which resulted in his creation of the Luigi character. Because of software constraints of the time, Luigi's first appearance was a simple palette swap of Mario designed to represent the second player, while it was the first player that controlled Mario himself. In accordance with Nintendo's marketing policy of naming and promoting individual characters, Luigi was given a name, but the only definite biographical detail provided for the new character was that he was Mario's brother who was also a plumber. Graphically and in terms of gameplay, the characters were completely identical except for their color schemes: Mario wore blue and red while Luigi wore green and black.

Luigi was introduced to a wider audience in the breakthrough hit Super Mario Bros., functioning again as second-player palette swap of Mario, this time appearing with matching white hat and overalls and a green shirt, to contrast with Mario's red cap and overalls and brown shirt. It wasn't until the Japan-only sequel Super Mario Bros. 2 was released that Luigi began to become distinguished from Mario. In that title, Luigi was a better jumper than Mario though with less accuracy and traction; similar to the character of "Mama" in Miyamoto's Doki Doki Panic of the same era. In 1988, a version of Doki Doki Panic with the graphics altered to represent characters from the Mario franchise was released in the United States as Super Mario Bros. 2, after the Japanese sequel was deemed to be too difficult for American audiences. In this version, the "Mama" character was redesigned as Luigi in his new taller, thinner look, marking the introduction of the new design to English-speaking audiences. Luigi's thinner, taller appearance and color scheme were later adopted in Japan as well, and has since remained consistent in most subsequent promotional art and in-game appearances depicting him.

Much like his brother, Luigi's outfit colors have gone through some changes. In the original Mario Bros., Luigi was given green overalls with a white shirt and hat, to allow the player not to confuse him with Mario while playing a 2-player game. When the original Super Mario Bros. was released, his overalls and shirt colors were swapped, however when touching a fire flower, he would don a red shirt, utilizing the same sprite as Mario. This was changed to be his Super Luigi sprite in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe to avoid confusion with Fire Mario and the Super Luigi and normal Luigi sprites were changed to be green overalls over a brown shirt. It was not until Super Mario Bros. 2 that Luigi donned his traditional blue overalls, green shirt/hat combination. The white shirt/green overalls are now used to signify when a fire flower is received (and is also an alternate costume for Luigi in Super Smash Bros. Melee). It should also be noted that since Super Mario World Luigi's overalls have been portrayed as a darker blue (or even purple) than his brother Mario's. Although this trait first started in Super Mario World, numerous games after that depicted him with the same color as Mario's overalls (Super Smash Bros. excepted).