Mario is no longer a plumber, Nintendo officially says

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Mario is no longer a plumber, Nintendo has officially said.

The famous moustachioed, red-wearing, portly Italian has long been known to work in plumbing. But a newly-updated profile on Nintendo's Japanese website makes clear that he has given up that job.

"All around sporty, whether it’s tennis or baseball, soccer or car racing, he [Mario] does everything cool," it says, according to a translation provided by Kotaku. "As a matter of fact, he also seems to have worked as a plumber a long time ago..."

Mario has never actually been seen doing any plumbing, but apparently was given the job because he spent a lot of time underground. His creators have said that once it was decided he worked as a plumber, many of the other parts of his character – including the fact that he is Italian, and lives in something like New York – followed.

It's far from the only recent revelation about the character. Last year, his creators revealed that Mario was only 24 or 25 years old – and that he's not the middle-aged man many had presumed.

Indeed, creator Shigeru Miyamoto said that Nintendo had been careful to define only the age of the character, so that his other details could change according to the games.

Even his job as a plumber has been subject to change, for instance. When Mario first appeared in 1981's Donkey Kong – then only identified as "Jumpman" – was "basically a carpenter" because the game took place on a building site, said Mr Miyamoto.