Marios Game Gallery

Mario's Game Gallery is a 1995 release that Interplay produced under licence from Nintendo, a collection of classic tabletop games hosted by Mario himself. Instead of platforming, it gathers familiar pastimes - checkers, dominoes, Go Fish, backgammon, Yahtzee-style dice and the like - and lets the player face off against the plumber across a virtual game table.

Its real historical footnote is the voice work: this is widely cited as the first time Charles Martinet performed Mario, the actor who would go on to define the character's chirpy delivery for decades. Throughout the games Mario chatters, taunts and reacts, giving the otherwise straightforward board-game package a genuine dose of personality that set it apart from generic tabletop compilations.

As a collection it is modest and aimed at a family audience, and the games themselves are the standard classics rather than anything invented for the disc. But as the debut of Martinet's Mario voice, and as an unusual entry in the mascot's PC appearances, it holds a small but real place in Nintendo trivia.