Mario - Classic Colors Amiibo

Mario Classic Colors is a 3D-pixel sculpt of the original 1985 Super Mario Bros. NES sprite, translated directly into plastic. Released September 11, 2015 to mark Super Mario Bros.'s 30th anniversary. The entire figure is a 3D-rendered version of the 16x32 pixel sprite, blocky stairsteps and limited palette unchanged as the NES would have drawn it. Pixel-art-as-3D-figure is a design choice you commit to or you don't, and Nintendo committed.

The palette is the historically accurate one: red shirt, brown overalls, red cap, brown shoes, dark mustache. Most modern players don't realize this is what Mario actually looked like in 1985. The blue-overalls Mario everyone pictures came later, after the SNES hardware unlocked richer colors.

Tap him on Super Mario Maker to unlock the Classic Colors Mario Mystery Mushroom. The franchise made a 3D figure of an 8-bit sprite, then made the figure unlock a Mystery Mushroom that turns 3D Mario back into an 8-bit sprite. (There's a recursive joke about which Mario is real that the figure is asking the player to consider, and I think about this more than is healthy.)

He pairs with Mario Modern Colors as the 30th Anniversary duo. The two together represent the entire history of how Mario has been colored over forty years: one is 1985 Mario in pixel form, the other is modern Mario but with the 1985 palette. The joke only works when you have both. Mario was always brown-overalls Mario. The blue came later.