Mario - Modern Colors Amiibo

Mario Modern Colors is the partner figure to Classic Colors, and the joke they're telling together is about which Mario is the real Mario. Modern Colors is a 3D-pixel sculpt (same blocky proportions as Classic Colors) but rendered in the post-NES palette: blue overalls, red shirt, red cap, brown shoes. This is the Mario most modern players picture when they hear the name. Released September 11, 2015 alongside Classic Colors for the 30th Anniversary of Super Mario Bros.

Here's the wrinkle: the modern color scheme didn't exist on the NES. The original Super Mario Bros. used the brown-overalls palette because of NES color limits; Super Mario World on SNES (1990) was the first mainline game that locked in the blue-overalls look. So Modern Colors is essentially a 3D-pixel sculpt of a sprite that never actually existed in pixel form during the NES era.

The figure: Voxel form, modern palette, blocky proportions, hard-edged stairsteps in the silhouette. He pairs with Mario Classic Colors as the 30th Anniversary pair or 8 bit Link. Owning Modern Colors without Classic Colors is buying half a joke. The two figures are designed to make you ask 'wait, which Mario is real?' and the answer is 'both, depending on when you started playing.'