Video Game Hero Mario Petitions For New Hollywood Walk Of Fame Category

REDMOND, Wash., March 30, 2005 - He starred in dozens of video games. He proved himself a more bankable celebrity than either Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise. Now Mario^TM, the biggest star in video game history, moves to his next challenge: requesting that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce create a new Interactive Entertainment category for its world-famous Walk of Fame. The category would honor video game characters and their creators, who provided millions of fans with billions of hours of immersive entertainment.

"Video games are a huge part of the entertainment industry," explains George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "Revenues from the video game industry routinely equal or top revenues from the film industry's U.S. box office. That's how big we are."

With an impressive flourish and an entourage befitting a star of his stature, Mario today delivered a proposal to honorary Hollywood Mayor Johnny Grant asking the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to consider adding a video game category. As part of the campaign, fans carried signs of support while their hero arrived in a convertible. Ads in support of the worldwide movement also ran today in Hollywood trade magazines.

"I spent my whole life chasing stars," says Mario. "And now my fans want to give me one? Woo-hoo!"

More than 3,300 video game fans from all over the world so far have signed an online petition at www.petitionspot.com/petitions/walkoffame to support the new category. Fans left comments in several languages, including English, Spanish, Polish, French and Portuguese, demonstrating the broad, worldwide appeal of video games.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame now honors entertainment legends from areas as diverse as Film, Recording, Radio, Television and Stage. A new Interactive Entertainment category would recognize the enormous contributions of video games to the entertainment world and make the Hollywood Walk of Fame accessible to new generations of fans.

While films, TV shows and music provide experiences that last a specified amount of time, video games provide open-ended, interactive experiences, and often let players determine the outcome. For many years, all forms of entertainment, video games included, have seen a convergence. Top TV shows and video games feature hot music by top artists. Video game stars get their own movies, and film stars voice video game characters. And these days no major animated or action film debuts without an accompanying video game counterpart.

The worldwide leader and innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home and portable video game systems. Each year, hundreds of all-new titles for the best-selling Game Boy^® Advance SP, Nintendo DS^TM and Nintendo GameCube^TM systems extend Nintendo's vast game library and continue the tradition of delivering a rich, diverse mix of quality video games for players of all ages. Since the release of its first home video game system in 1983, Nintendo has sold more than 1.9 billion video games and more than 336 million hardware units globally, creating enduring industry icons such as Mario^TM and Donkey Kong^® and launching popular culture franchise phenomena such as Metroid^®, Zelda^TM and Pokémon^®. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the Western Hemisphere.

For more information about Nintendo, visit the company's Web site at www.nintendo.com.