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Mario Segale
Mario Segale
	Segale in 2016
Born	April 30, 1934; Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Died	October 27, 2018 (aged 84); Tukwila, Washington, U.S.
Occupations	Businessman; real estate developer;
Years active	1950–2018
Spouses	Donna Segale (m. 1957)
Children	4

Mario Arnold Segale (April 30, 1934 – October 27, 2018) was an American businessman and real estate developer.^[1] He was involved in various development projects in the Seattle area from the 1950s onwards.^[2] Nintendo's mascot, Mario, was named after Segale while he was leasing a warehouse to Nintendo.^[3]^[4]

Business career

Segale was born in Seattle in April 1934 to two Italian immigrants, Louis and Rina Segale, and was their only child.^[5]^[6] He graduated from Highline High School in 1952^[7] and started a construction company with a single truck in 1957, the same year that he married his wife Donna. The couple worked to develop a privately owned asphalt and construction business, M. A. Segale Inc., which grew into a major regional contractor and was sold for $60 million in 1998 to Irish concern CRH plc, for integration into its Oldcastle Materials unit.^[8] In 1978, the company was awarded a contract to construct a section of Interstate 82 near Prosser, Washington.^[9]

Segale and his son Mark were involved in other ventures, including real estate investments in the Seattle area. His company sold the land rights to the Emerald Downs racetrack in Auburn to the Muckleshoot tribe in 1996 for $73.6 million. Segale was also heavily involved in Tukwila-area projects, including a 490-acre (2.0 km²) development project called Tukwila South in the 2010s.^[10]^[11]

Political activities

A 2004 study by the Seattle Times found that Segale was one of the top 50 political contributors in the state of Washington.^[12] Overall, Mario and Mark Segale donated more than $90,000 to Democratic Party candidates and organizations between 2000 and 2007.^[10] Some of these contributions were to elected officials who worked to secure state legislative earmarks for roads in a privately owned development proposed by a Segale company.^[10]

Nintendo character

The video game company Nintendo began renting one of Segale's Tukwila warehouses in 1981 for use as their American headquarters. According to a widely circulated story first published in David Sheff's 1993 book Game Over, during development of the arcade game Donkey Kong, Segale visited the warehouse to collect overdue rent from Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa and berated him in front of employees. However, Segale gave them time to come up with the money for rent, and Arakawa and the other developers subsequently renamed the Donkey Kong player character to Mario, who was previously known as Jumpman.^[3]^[7] This story is contradicted by former Nintendo of America warehouse manager Don James, who stated in 2012 that he and Arakawa named the character after Segale as a joke because Segale was so reclusive that none of the employees had ever met him.^[13] James repeated this account in 2018.^[14]

Due to a spelling error in Sheff's Game Over, for years it was thought that Segale's last name was spelled "Segali". Sheff's story of the naming of Mario later appeared in Steven L. Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games in 2001, and thereafter spread widely on the internet.^[7]^[15] Mario's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, confirmed in 2015 that Mario was indeed named after Segale, without specifying the story behind the naming.^[4] Segale told The Seattle Times in 1993, "You might say I'm still waiting for my royalty checks."^[7]^[16]

Death

Segale died on October 27, 2018, at his home in Tukwila, Washington, aged 84.^[3] He was survived by four children—Lisa Atkins, Mark Segale, Tina Covey, and Nita Johnson—and nine grandchildren.^[3]^[6]

References

^ "Bill Gates' Big Water Bill". ABC News. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
^ Pryne, Eric (March 27, 2010). "Powerful Segale family has massive vision for Tukwila expanse". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on September 23, 2018. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Zraick, Karen (November 2, 2018). "Mario Segale, Developer Who Inspired Nintendo to Name Super Mario, Dies at 84". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 27, 2019. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
^ ^a ^b "Mario Myths with Mr Miyamoto". YouTube. Nintendo UK. September 10, 2015. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
^ Chappell, Bill (November 2, 2018). "Mario Segale, Inspiration For Nintendo's Hero Plumber, Has Died". NPR. Archived from the original on March 5, 2024. Retrieved November 2, 2018.
^ ^a ^b "Mario A. Segale". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on November 3, 2018. Retrieved November 2, 2018 – via Legacy.com.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Edwards, Benj (April 25, 2010). "The True Face of Mario". Technologizer. Archived from the original on June 25, 2011. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
^ Jones, Dow (May 2, 1998). "Company news; Ireland's CRH agrees to buy Segale for $60 million". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 20, 2018. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
^ "Ellensburg-Prosser link due to be finished in '82". Tri-City Herald. February 18, 1979. p. B35.
^ ^a ^b ^c Garber, Andrew (August 19, 2007). "From sports complex to roads, lawmakers' pet projects on rise". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on June 23, 2018. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
^ Whale, Robert (November 1, 2018). "Mario 'the visionary' leaves his legacy". Auburn Reporter. Archived from the original on November 3, 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
^ "Washington's top 50 political contributors in 2003-04" (PDF). The Seattle Times. July 25, 2004. p. A19. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 23, 2018. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
^ Kohler, Chris (February 17, 2012). "Game Life Podcast: When Jay Mohr Met Tomonobu Itagaki". Wired. Archived from the original on April 17, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2024. And so we thought, 'This guy [Segale] is a recluse. No one's ever actually met him.' So we thought, 'Wouldn't it be a great joke if we named this character Mario?' And so we said, 'That's great,' and we sent a telex to Japan, and that's how Mario got his name. Interview with Don James starts at 51:16. Quotation occurs at 52:00.
^ "Nintendo Treehouse Live - E3 2018 - Arcade Archives Donkey Kong, Sky Skipper". YouTube. Nintendo Everything. June 14, 2018. Archived from the original on October 3, 2023. Retrieved September 28, 2024. Mr. Arakawa, who was the president, and myself looked at the character, and we had a landlord that happened to be named Mario as well, and we'd never met the guy, so we thought it'd be funny to name this main character Mario after our landlord in Southcenter. And that's actually how Mario got his name. Quotation occurs at 2:25.
^ Kent, Steven L. (2001). The ultimate history of video games : from Pong to Pokémon, the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world (1st ed.). Roseville, Calif.: Prima. p. 159. ISBN 0761536434. Archived from the original on June 13, 2024. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
^ "Waiting On Royalty | The Seattle Times". archive.seattletimes.com. Archived from the original on July 21, 2023. Retrieved July 21, 2023.