title: Super Mario

text: In the early 1990s, director and producer Shigeru Miyamoto had conceived a 3D "Mario" design during development of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game "Star Fox" (1993). He considered using the Super FX chip to develop a SNES game, "Super Mario FX", with gameplay based on "an entire world in miniature, like miniature trains". He eventually reformulated the idea for the Nintendo 64, not for its substantially greater power, but because its controller has more buttons for gameplay. "Super Mario 64" was developed over approximately three years, with one year spent on the design concept and approximately two years on production. Production began on September 7, 1994, and concluded on May 20, 1996. "Super Mario 64" is the first 3D and open world game in the series, and a launch game for the Nintendo 64 home console. Each level is an enclosed environment where the player is free to explore in all directions without time limits. The player collects Power Stars from the paintings in Peach's castle to unlock later courses and areas. The Nintendo 64's analog stick makes an extensive repertoire of precise movements in all directions possible. The game introduced moves such as punching, triple jumping, and using a Wing Cap to fly. It is the first "Super Mario" series game to feature Charles Martinet's voice acting for Mario. Mario must once again save Princess Peach from Bowser. The game's power-ups differ from previous games, now being three different hats with temporary powers: the Wing Cap, allowing Mario to fly; the Metal Cap, turning him into metal; and the Vanish Cap, allowing him to walk through obstacles. "Super Mario 64" is considered seminal to 3D video games. A remake of the game called "Super Mario 64 DS" was released for Nintendo DS in 2004 and 2005, adding Yoshi, Luigi, and Wario as playable characters, new abilities, new objectives, multiplayer, and minigames.


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario Sunshine" is the second 3D "Super Mario" game. It was released in 2002 for the GameCube. In it, Mario and Peach travel to Isle Delfino for a vacation when a Mario doppelgänger, going by the name of Shadow Mario, appears and vandalizes the entire island. Mario is sentenced to clean the island with a water-squirting accessory called F.L.U.D.D. "Super Mario Sunshine" shares many similar gameplay elements with its predecessor "Super Mario 64", yet introduces moves, like spinning while jumping, and several other actions through the use of F.L.U.D.D. The game contains a number of independent levels, which can be reached from the hub, Delfino Plaza. Mario collects Shine Sprites by completing tasks in the levels, which in return unlock levels in Delfino Plaza by way of abilities and plot-related events. "Sunshine" introduces the last of Bowser's eight children, Bowser Jr., as an antagonist. Yoshi also appears again for Mario to ride in certain sections.


title: Super Mario

text: After no original 2D game releases in the series since 1995, "New Super Mario Bros." was released on the Nintendo DS in 2006. In it, Mario and Luigi set out to save Princess Peach from Bowser Jr. The gameplay is 2D, but most of the characters and objects are 3D on two-dimensional backgrounds, resulting in a 2.5D effect. The game uses an overworld map similar to those of "Super Mario Bros. Deluxe". Some levels have multiple exits. The classic power-ups (Super Mushroom, Fire Flower and Super Star) return alongside the Mega Mushroom, Blue Shell, and Mini Mushroom.


title: Super Mario

text: "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" (2009) features 4-player co-op and new power-ups: the Propeller Mushroom, the Ice Flower, and the Penguin Suit. All characters can ride Yoshi.


title: Super Mario

text: "New Super Mario Bros. 2" was released in July and August 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS. The player, as Mario or Luigi, tries to save Princess Peach from Bowser and the Koopalings, with the game's secondary goal to collect one million coins. Several gameplay elements were introduced to help achieve this goal, such as the Gold Flower, a rarer variant of the Fire Flower that turns items into coins.


title: Super Mario

text: "New Super Mario Bros. U", the Wii U follow-up to "New Super Mario Bros. Wii", was released in November 2012. It introduces both a Flying Squirrel suit that lets the characters glide through the air, and asymmetric gameplay that allows the player holding the GamePad to influence the environment. In June 2013, "New Super Luigi U" was released as a downloadable content (DLC) package for the game, featuring shorter, but more difficult levels, starring Luigi as the main protagonist instead of his brother. Subsequently, it was released as a standalone retail game on August 25 in North America. The Nintendo Switch port "New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe" includes both the main game and "New Super Luigi U", and new playable characters Nabbit and Toadette.


title: Super Mario

text: Miyamoto explained that when he was developing "Super Mario 64" with Yoshiaki Koizumi, they realized that the title would be more directed towards the "core gamer", rather than the casual, "pick-up-and-go" gamer. After "Sunshine", their focus shifted to more accessible, casual games, leading them to develop "Super Mario Galaxy" with more progression-oriented paths. "Galaxy" was launched in 2007 for the Wii. It is set in outer space, where Mario or Luigi travel between "galaxies" to collect Power Stars, earned by completing quests or defeating enemies. It introduced motion controls to the series. Each galaxy contains a number of planets and other space objects for the player to explore. The game's physics system gives each celestial object its own gravitational force, which lets the character circumnavigate rounded or irregular planetoids by walking sideways or upside down. The character is usually able to jump from one independent object and fall towards another close object. Though the main gameplay and physics are in 3D, there are several points in the game where the character's movements are restricted into a 2D axis. Several new power-ups appear following the new game mechanics.


title: Super Mario

text: The sequel, "Super Mario Galaxy 2", released on May 23, 2010, was initially developed as an expansion pack to "Galaxy", but was eventually developed into its own game. It retains the basic premise of its predecessor and includes its items and power-ups besides the Ice Flower and Red Star. New power-ups include the Cloud Flower, which allows Mario or Luigi to create platforms in mid-air and the Rock Mushroom, which turns the character into a rolling boulder. The character can also ride Yoshi. The game was released to widespread critical acclaim, getting better reviews than its predecessor.


title: Super Mario

text: Two games in the series have attempted to translate the gameplay of the 2D games into a 3D environment, and simplify the control scheme of the 3D games through including more linear levels. "Super Mario 3D Land" was released for the Nintendo 3DS in November and December 2011. It is the first original 3D "Super Mario" game on a handheld console, since all previous handheld games were either 2D or a port of a previous game. It also brought back several older gameplay features, including the Super Leaf power-up last seen in "Super Mario Bros. 3".


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario 3D World", the sequel to "3D Land", was released for the Wii U on November 22, 2013 in North America, and utilized the same gameplay mechanics as its predecessor. Co-operative multiplayer is available for up to four players. The game introduced the ability to turn the characters into cats able to attack and scale walls in order to reach new areas, and to create clones of the characters. Like "Super Mario Bros. 2", it features Princess Peach and Toad as playable characters in addition to Mario and Luigi. Rosalina from "Super Mario Galaxy" is also unlocked later in the game. Miyamoto said that "even though that's a 3D game, it's a little more accessible to everybody."


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario Maker" is a creation tool released for the Wii U in September 2015 which allows players to create their own levels based on the gameplay and style of "Super Mario Bros.", "Super Mario Bros. 3", "Super Mario World", and "New Super Mario Bros. U", as well as to share their creations online. Based on existing games, several gameplay mechanics were introduced for the game, with existing ones also available to be used together in new ways. A Nintendo 3DS version of the game called "Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS", was released in December 2016. It features a few new pre-installed levels, but no online level sharing. "Super Mario Maker 2" is a new version of "Super Mario Maker" with many new items, themes, and enemies, a world-builder, as well as online multiplayer. The game was released on June 28, 2019 for the Nintendo Switch.


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario Run" is a side-scrolling and auto-scrolling video game released in December 2016 on the iOS platform, then in March 2017 on Android. It is the first official "Super Mario" game developed for mobile devices. As such, it features simplified controls that allow it to be played with only one hand. In this game, the character runs automatically, with the player controlling the jumping action to avoid hazards. This is achieved by touching the tactile screens these devices are built with. The longer the player touches the jump button, the higher the character jumps. This game also includes a "Toad Rally" mode, similar to the "VS Boo" mode of "Super Mario Bros Deluxe", in which players have to complete a level faster than a computer-controlled Toad. Success in this mode earns the player access to in-game money to spend on customizing the Mushroom Kingdom map, using mechanics similar to "Farmville". This is the first "Super Mario" game that Princess Daisy is playable in and the first to feature a music track with vocals.


title: Super Mario

text: After having fallen out of favor by the mid-2000s, open-world "collectathon" 3D platformers such as "Super Mario 64", "Banjo-Kazooie" and "Donkey Kong 64" had become less common. For example, the 3D adventure game "" (2008) explicitly mocked the perceived tedium of collecting large quantities of tokens. By the mid-2010s, however, 3D platformers were aiming to replicate such experiences, including "Yooka-Laylee" and "A Hat in Time". "Super Mario Odyssey" is a return to the open-world "sandbox" 3D style of game, with "more open-ended exploration like in "Super Mario 64" and "Super Mario Sunshine"." It was released in October 2017 for Nintendo Switch. After Mario's cap is possessed by a spirit named Cappy, he gains the new move of temporarily "capturing" enemies and objects to utilize their abilities. Like previous sandbox 3D games, the game's worlds contain a large variety of objectives that can be achieved in a non-linear order before progressing. The game features many different kingdoms in addition to the Mushroom Kingdom that Mario's adventures usually take place in.


title: Super Mario

text: "Bowser's Fury" is part of the 2021 re-release of "Super Mario 3D World" on the Nintendo Switch. It implements 3D open-world "free-roaming" gameplay in a similar fashion to "Odyssey", from which it includes many elements. Supporting up to two players, it sees Mario teaming up with Bowser Jr. to collect Cat Shines to restore lighthouses in a land called Lake Lapcat. Periodically, a gigantic incarnation of Bowser known as Fury Bowser awakens to bring darkness upon the land and attacks the island. To beat him, Mario must collect enough Cat Shines to awaken the Giga Bell and use it to fight Bowser.


title: Super Mario

text: Much of the original "Super Mario Bros." music and sound effects have become iconic to the series and incorporated into modern games. The original "Super Mario Bros." theme, composed by Koji Kondo, has become one of the most well known video game themes around the world.


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario Galaxy", released in 2007, became the first game in the "Super Mario" series to feature orchestrated music, which would return in its sequel and other subsequent games such as "Super Mario 3D World".


title: Super Mario

text: The objective of the game is to progress through levels by defeating enemies, collecting items and solving puzzles without dying. Power-up use is integral to the series. The series has installments featuring both two and three-dimensional gameplay. In the 2D games, the player character (usually Mario) jumps on platforms and enemies while avoiding their attacks and moving to the right of the scrolling screen. 2D "Super Mario" game levels have single-exit objectives, which must be reached within a time limit and lead to the next sequential level. "Super Mario Bros. 3" introduced the overworld, a map of nonlinear levels that branches according to the player's choice. "Super Mario World" introduced levels with multiple exits.


title: Super Mario

text: 3D installments in the series have had two subgenres: open world exploration based games and more linear 3D games with a predetermined path. Levels in the open world games, "64", "Sunshine" and "Odyssey", allow the player to freely explore multiple enclosed environments in 360 degree movement. As the game progresses, more environments become accessible. The linear 3D games, "Galaxy", "Galaxy 2", "3D Land" and "3D World", feature more fixed camera angles and a predetermined path to a single goal.


title: Super Mario

text: Most items in the "Super Mario" series appear from item blocks when hit, which originated in "Super Mario Bros." and have persisted throughout the series, where the character hits a block to receive either coins or power-ups. Variations include those that are invisible until hit, advice dispensers, produce another block, move, frozen, contingent on a switch, bouncy, etc. The propeller block lets the character spin up into the air and slowly descend, and the Gold Block generates coins through running. A single block is the unit of measurement in the design of "Super Mario" levels.


title: Super Mario

text: Mushroom power-ups appear in almost every "Super Mario" game. The most iconic of these is the Super Mushroom. The "Super Mushroom" increases the character's size, turning them into a "Super" variant, and allows them to break certain blocks. When hit by an enemy, the character reverts to their smaller size instead of losing a life. When the character is in their "Super" form, most blocks that would contain a Super Mushroom instead offer a more powerful power-up such as the Fire Flower. The Super Mushroom is similar in appearance to the "Amanita muscaria", with an ivory stalk below a most commonly red and white (originally red and orange) spotted cap. Created by chance, Shigeru Miyamoto stated in an interview that beta tests of "Super Mario Bros." proved Mario too tall, so the development team implemented mushrooms to grow and shrink Mario. The "Poison Mushroom", first introduced in the Japanese "Super Mario Bros. 2", is a mushroom that causes damage when touched. The "Mini Mushroom" is a small blue mushroom recurring in the "New Super Mario Bros." series that shrinks the character to miniature size, allowing them to access certain areas and pipes, jump higher, float in midair, bounce off enemies without hurting them, run across the surface of water, and in "New Super Mario Bros. U" run up walls. The "Mega Mushroom", introduced in "New Super Mario Bros." and further appearing in "New Super Mario Bros. 2" and "3D World", grows the character into a towering, invulnerable giant who destroys enemies and the environment by running through them. It has an orange-yellow cap with red spots, like the "Super Mario Bros." Super Mushroom, but with an inflated cap. "64 DS" features an item simply called "Mushroom" that grants the same abilities as the Mega Mushroom. In the "Galaxy" games, the Bee Mushroom gives Mario or Luigi the Bee Suit, the Spring Mushroom puts him inside a metallic coil, and the Boo Mushroom turns him into a ghost.


title: Super Mario

text: Other types of transformation have also appeared. The Wing Yoshi form is available in "World" and "64 DS" and Wing Mario in "64" and "64 DS". Yoshi can also transform into a car, helicopter, train, submarine, and mole in "Yoshi's Island". Transformation into a silver metallic form is available to Mario in "64", Wario in "64 DS", and Luigi in "New Super Mario Bros. 2", in which game Gold Mario and Silver Luigi have coin-based powers. Ghostlike intangibility can be achieved by Mario in "64", Luigi in "64 DS", and both brothers in the "Galaxy" games. A balloon transformation is available to Mario and Luigi in "World" and Mario in "64 DS", to a pink baby Yoshi in "New Super Mario Bros. U", and to all player characters in "Maker 2". Projectile flowers turn the character into a form with shooting abilities, and flight and invincibility are attainable through various transformations.


title: Super Mario

text: Several games have featured the ability to project the will of the player character onto another character, often manifested by headwear. Transformations of the player character with the Tanooki, Bunny, Squirrel, or Fox prefixes are represented by the respective animals' ears appearing on the character's head, and can glide or fly through levels, as can Cape and Flying variants of characters. Mario's war bonnet in "Six Golden Coins" indicates the Fire Mario form. "64" has hat power-ups that turn Mario into Wing Mario, Metal Mario, or Vanish Mario. "64 DS" allows the player character to put on Mario, Luigi, and Wario hats, which put them into the respective character's body. "3D World" features the Double Cherry, which creates duplicate bodies of the player character that the player controls simultaneously. The Mystery Mushroom in "Maker" provides a "costume" featuring the appearance and voice of one of many characters from various franchises, effectively allowing Mario to become that character. Similarly, "Maker 2" features a Triforce powerup that transforms the player character into Link from "The Legend of Zelda". "New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe" features the Super Crown, which places Toadette into the body of Peachette, a humanoid resembling Peach. "Odyssey" prominently features Cappy, a hat spirit that can mentally inhabit hats. With Cappy, Mario's consciousness can take over other characters and objects, controlling their bodies.


title: Super Mario

text: Player characters can gain extra lives in most of the games. The 1-Up mushroom was introduced in "Super Mario Bros.", with the term 1-up subsequently being used generically in other video game series to refer to extra lives. In the monochromatic "Super Mario Land" and "Super Mario Land 2", instead of a differently colored mushroom, the 1-Up is shown as a heart. "Super Mario World" introduced the 3-Up Moon. 1-Ups can also be earned through collecting a certain number of coins or playing minigames.


title: Super Mario

text: The flower power-ups let the player character shoot projectiles. The Fire Flower, introduced in "Super Mario Bros.", transforms the character into a Fire variant who can throw bouncing fireballs at enemies. "Galaxy" is the first 3D "Super Mario" game to have the Fire Flower. In "Land" and "Maker 2", the Superball is a bouncing ball obtained from a Super Flower, which the character can use to defeat enemies and collect coins. The Ice Flower transforms the character into an Ice variant who can shoot balls of ice as projectiles similar to those of the Fire Flower; they freeze enemies in blocks of ice that can used as platforms or thrown as projectiles, as seen in "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" and "New Super Mario Bros. U". In "Galaxy", the Ice Flower turns Mario or Luigi into ice and lets him walk on lava or water for a limited time by freezing the surface. Lastly, "New Super Mario Bros. 2"s Gold Flower lets Mario or Luigi turn bricks into coins and earn bonus coins for defeating enemies.


title: Super Mario

text: Koopa Shells serve as a major projectile in the series, featuring since the original game. The character can throw them to defeat enemies, collect coins, and activate the functions of blocks.


title: Super Mario

text: Power-ups are available for Yoshi to breathe fire in "World", "Yoshi's Island", and "64 DS", breathe freezing air and spit seeds in "Yoshi's Island", spit out enemies in the "World" games, and spit juice in "Sunshine".


title: Super Mario

text: Other power-ups let the character throw bombs, boomerangs, and baseballs and shoot cannonballs. In "Odyssey", Mario can possess characters, some of which can launch various projectiles.


title: Super Mario

text: Flying shoot 'em up gameplay also appears in the series. Mario pilots the armed Sky Pop biplane and Marine Pop submarine in "Land". The Koopa Clown Car, aircraft of Bowser and the Koopalings, can sometimes shoot fireballs in "Maker".


title: Super Mario

text: Invincibility is an effect first appearing in the three "Super Mario Bros." games, where it is granted by a "Starman", an anthropomorphized, flashing star. The star has also been named the "Super Star" in the two "Super Mario World" games as well as the "New Super Mario Bros." games and the "Rainbow Star" in the two "Super Mario Galaxy" games. Picking up the star makes the character temporarily invincible, able to resist any harm. Use of the item is accompanied by a distinctive music track that appears consistently across most of the games. The player character flickers a variety of colors — and in some games, moves with increased speed and enhanced jumping ability — while under the Star's influence. While invincible, the character defeats any enemy upon contact with it. In "", the star gives the normally immobile baby Mario the ability to run as well as become invincible. In "Super Mario 64" and "64 DS", invincibility is provided when the character becomes metal or intangible. The Mega Mushroom provides temporary invincibility with the addition of giant size and environment destruction (see Transformation).


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario" level design traditionally incorporates many distributed coins as puzzles and rewards. Most "Super Mario" games award the player an extra life once a certain amount of gold coins are collected, commonly 50 or 100. Several coin variants exist, such as silver coins, dragon coins, star coins, and more. In "64", "Sunshine", "Galaxy", and "Galaxy 2", coins replenish health (and air, when the character is underwater). In "64" and "Sunshine", collecting 100 coins in a level results in a Power Star or Shine Sprite respectively. There are also stages in that game reward a Power Star for collecting eight red coins in a level, worth two normal coins each. In "64", a blue coin is worth five normal coins. In "Sunshine", blue coins act as a side quest when brought to the Delfino Bank and for every ten blue coins deposited, Mario will earn a Shine Sprite. In the "Galaxy" series, after finishing each game once, stages unlock where Mario or Luigi can collect 100 purple coins to earn a Power Star. In "Galaxy 2", they can also be used to feed some hungry "Luma" characters that can turn into either an item or another planet.


title: Super Mario

text: The games often feature other tokens found in levels in order to progress in the overworld, most frequently with the visual motif of a star. They are typically situated in locations that are not readily found or reached, or awarded for completing stunts, or objectives given by NPCs. They include the Power Stars in "Super Mario 64" and the "Super Mario Galaxy" games, Shine Sprites in "Super Mario Sunshine" and "Bowser's Fury", Star Coins in the "New Super Mario Bros." series and "Super Mario 3D Land", Green Stars in the "Galaxy" games and "Super Mario 3D World", and Power Moons in "Super Mario Odyssey". In "Super Mario Land 2", there are six Golden Coin tokens that must be collected to finish the game.


title: Super Mario

text: Several suits work as power-ups, many of which are based on animals. Debuting in "Super Mario Bros. 3", the Raccoon Suit (provisioned by a Super Leaf) and the Tanooki Suit each provide the character with a tail that acts as a flight propeller. In addition, the Tanooki Suit lets the character spontaneously change into an invincible statue for about five seconds. In "Super Mario 3D Land", the Raccoon Suit reappears and is accompanied by a silver-colored variation called a Statue Leaf. "Super Mario Bros. 3" includes a Hammer Bros. suit, which allows Mario and Luigi to throw hammers as projectiles to defeat enemies at a distance, imitating the enemy of the same name. While wearing the suit and ducking, the character is invulnerable to fire attacks. "Super Mario 3D Land" features a "Boomerang Suit" which provisions long-distance boomerang projectiles. Other animal suits include the Frog Suit, Penguin Suit, Cat Suit and Bee Suit.


title: Super Mario

text: The series often features the option to play as characters other than Mario, usually Luigi. Earlier games have offered an alternating multiplayer mode in which the second player controls Luigi on their turn. Luigi is often only playable by player one in a second, more challenging iteration of the base game, such as in "The Lost Levels", "Galaxy 2", "New Super Luigi U" and the special worlds in "3D Land"; these feature lower gravity and reduced friction for Luigi. Later games allow four player simultaneous play. Playable characters other than Mario and Luigi have included Toads, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Rosalina, Miis, Toadette, Nabbit, Daisy, and Bowser Jr. Characters are sometimes differentiated by special abilities. "Super Mario Maker" (though not "Super Mario Maker 2") includes costumes that depict many more characters.


title: Super Mario

text: The Warp Pipe is a common method of transportation used in many of the "Mario" series games. Warp Pipes are most often green but also appear in other colors (early games included silver pipes, newer games have introduced red, green, blue and yellow pipes), and have many uses in the series. Warp Pipes can also contain enemies, usually Piranha Plants, and sometimes launch the player into the air (most commonly seen in the "New Super Mario Bros." series). In early "Mario" games such as "Super Mario Bros.", special, well-hidden areas known as Warp Zones contain pipes that allow players to skip several worlds (handfuls of levels) at once. In the "New Super Mario Bros." series, pipe-shaped Warp Cannons work similarly to the Warp Zones of the earlier games and are unlocked by finding secret exits in levels. Cannons appear in most of the 3D games in the series starting with "Super Mario 64". The character uses the cannon by jumping into the barrel, aiming themself and being fired at a distant target. This allows the character to progress through a level or reach otherwise inaccessible areas.


title: Super Mario

text: Apart from automated objects in levels that may transport the player character, certain ridable animals and vehicles have appeared that the player controls. Mario's dinosaur friend Yoshi has appeared as a mount to the player character in several "Super Mario" games since "Super Mario World". In "Yoshi's Island" and "64 DS", instead of the player character merely riding on Yoshi's back, Yoshi is the player character. Yoshis generally have abilities including eating enemies, flying, and breathing fire. Miyamoto had originally wished for Mario to be able to ride a dinosaur in "Super Mario Bros.", but this wasn't possible due to the technical restraints of the system. Poochi is a dog featuring in "Yoshi's Island" who Yoshi can ride. Plesiosaurs Dorrie and Plessie can be ridden by the player characters in "64" and "3D World" respectively, with Plessie serving a larger role in "Bowser's Fury".


title: Super Mario

text: Various vehicles that the player character can control have also appeared. These include a magic carpet in "2", flying clouds in several 2D games, submarines in "Land" and "Yoshi's Island", an airplane in "Land", a helicopter, train, and mole tank in "Yoshi's Island", cars in "Yoshi's Island" and "Maker 2", and the Koopa Clown Car aircraft in the "Maker" games.


title: Super Mario

text: Many games in the series feature minigames supplemental to the platforming gameplay, usually offering the chance to win extra lives or power-ups. "Super Mario Bros. 2" and "3D World" feature slot machines. "Super Mario Bros. 3" and the "New Super Mario Bros." games contain Toad Houses that host skill- and luck-based activities such as shell games. The "Land" games feature end-of-level minigames for acquiring extra lives. The Battle Mode in the "All-Stars" version of "Super Mario Bros. 3" and the "Advance" series of remakes all feature versions of "Mario Bros." as a minigame. "Yoshi's Island" enables a minigame when certain conditions are met when completing a level. "64 DS" contains over 30 minigames that can be accessed independently of the original mode of play. "3D World" contains "Luigi Bros.", a version of "Mario Bros." with two Luigis, and the Switch version of "3D World" includes "Bowser's Fury", a 3D platformer of smaller size in one enclosed environment.


title: Super Mario

text: "Super Mario" is one of the best-selling video game franchises, having sold more than units worldwide . The first seven "Super Mario" games (including the first three "Super Mario Bros." titles, the first two "Super Mario Land" titles, and "Super Mario World") had sold units by March 1993.


title: Super Mario

text: Games in the "Super Mario" series have had consistently strong sales, ranking among the best-selling video games of all time. "Super Mario Bros." sold more than units worldwide sold across multiple platforms by 1996. The original NES version sold 40.23 million units and is the best-selling NES game, with its two sequels, "Super Mario Bros. 3" (18 million copies) and "Super Mario Bros. 2" (10 million copies), ranking in second and third place respectively. "Super Mario World" is the best-selling game for the SNES console, selling 20 million copies. "Super Mario World" is also the seventh best-selling game of all time. "Super Mario 64" sold the most copies for the Nintendo 64 (11 million), whereas "Super Mario Sunshine" is the second best-selling game (5.5 million) on the GameCube (second to "Super Smash Bros. Melee"). "Super Mario Galaxy" has sold 12.80 million units , which was the best-selling 3D game in the series until 2019, and is the ninth best-selling game for the Wii. Its sequel "Super Mario Galaxy 2" has 7.41 million units sold, placing in twelfth. "Super Mario 3D World" was the second bestselling game on the Wii U and along with its more popular Switch port has sold over 14 million copies combined making it the 2nd bestselling 3D Mario game. "Super Mario Odyssey" has 23.50 million units sold as of December 2021, making it the best-selling 3D game in the series to date, and among the best-selling games for the Nintendo Switch. "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" has sold 30.32 million copies worldwide, the fourth best-selling game on the Wii, as well as one of the best-selling video games of all time.


title: Super Mario

text: The "Super Mario" series also sold well on handheld consoles. "Super Mario Land" has sold 18.14 million copies, and is the fourth best-selling game for the Game Boy. Its sequel, "", sold 11.18 million copies, placing sixth. "New Super Mario Bros." for the Nintendo DS sold 30.80 million units, making it the best-selling game for the console, and the best-selling portable entry.


title: Super Mario

text: For all console and handheld games that have not been bundled with a console, "Super Mario Bros. 3" is the fourth best-selling game, whereas "New Super Mario Bros." is fifth, "Super Mario Land" is eleventh, and "Super Mario 64" is eighteenth.


title: Super Mario

text: In the United Kingdom, "Super Mario Bros." is the most famous video game brand, recognized by 91% of the UK adult population .


title: Super Mario

text: The "Super Mario" series has seen tremendous critical acclaim from both critics and audiences. The series was ranked as the best game franchise by IGN in 2006. In 1996 "Next Generation" ranked the series as number 5 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", additionally ranking "Super Mario 64" at number 1 although stating the rule that series of games be confined to a single entry. In 1999, "Next Generation" listed the "Mario" series as number 3 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "The depth of the game design was never matched in 2D and has yet to be equaled by a 3D action performer. The gameplay is simply genius – Shigeru Miyamoto wrote the book on platformers." "Electronic Gaming Monthly" attributed the series' excellence to the developers' tireless creativity and innovation, pointing out that "Sega's " Sonic the Hedgehog" series changed very little in its four installments on the Genesis. The Mario series has changed significantly with each new game."


title: Super Mario

text: The original "Super Mario Bros." was awarded the top spot on "Electronic Gaming Monthly"s greatest 200 games of their time list and IGN's top 100 games of all-time list twice (in 2005 and 2007). "Super Mario Bros." popularized side-scrolling video games and provided the basic concept and mechanics that persisted throughout the rest of the series. "Super Mario Bros." sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of the whole series.


title: Super Mario

text: Various other video games of the series were ranked as the best within the series. Games included are "Super Mario Bros. 3", "Super Mario World" and "Super Mario 64" to name a few. Before "Super Mario Odyssey", "Super Mario Galaxy" has been for 10 years the best-ranked game on GameRankings.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Zodiac is a 2007 American mystery thriller film directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt, based on the non-fiction books by Robert Graysmith, "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked", which were published in 1986 and 2002, respectively. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. with Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Donal Logue, John Carroll Lynch, Chloë Sevigny, Philip Baker Hall and Dermot Mulroney in supporting roles.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: The film tells the story of the manhunt for the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, taunting police with letters, bloodstained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The case remains one of the United States' most infamous unsolved crimes. Fincher, Vanderbilt, and producer Bradley J. Fischer spent 18 months conducting their own investigation and research into the Zodiac murders. Fincher employed the digital Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera to photograph most of the film, with traditional high-speed film cameras used for slow-motion murder sequences.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: "Zodiac" was released by Paramount Pictures in North America and Warner Bros. Pictures in international markets on March 2, 2007, and received largely positive reviews, with praise for its writing, directing, acting, and historical accuracy. The film was nominated for several awards, including the Saturn Award for Best Action, Adventure or Thriller Film. It grossed over $84.7 million worldwide on a production budget of $65 million. In a 2016 critics' poll conducted by the BBC, "Zodiac" was voted the 12th greatest film of the 21st century.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: On July 4, 1969, an unknown man attacks Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau with a handgun at a lovers' lane in Vallejo, California. Only Mike survives.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: One month later, the "San Francisco Chronicle" receives encrypted letters written by the killer calling himself "Zodiac," who threatens to kill a dozen people unless his coded message containing his identity is published. Political cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who correctly guesses that his identity is not in the message, is not taken seriously by crime reporter Paul Avery or the editors and is excluded from the initial details about the killings. When the newspaper publishes the letters, a married couple deciphers one. In September, the killer stabs law student Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard at Lake Berryessa in Napa County; Cecelia dies two days later.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: At the office, Avery makes fun of Graysmith before they discuss the coded letters. Graysmith interprets the letter, which Avery finds helpful, and he begins sharing information. One of Graysmith's insights about the letters is that Zodiac's reference to man as "the most dangerous animal of them all" is a reference to the film "The Most Dangerous Game", which features the villainous Count Zaroff, a man who hunts live human prey.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Two weeks later, San Francisco taxicab driver Paul Stine is shot and killed in the city's Presidio Heights district. The Zodiac killer mails pieces of Stine's bloodstained shirt to the "Chronicle" along with a taunting letter. San Francisco police inspectors Dave Toschi and his partner Bill Armstrong are assigned to the case by Captain Marty Lee and work closely with Vallejo's Jack Mulanax and Captain Ken Narlow in Napa. Someone claiming to be Zodiac continues to send taunting letters and speaks on the phone with lawyer Melvin Belli on a television talk show hosted by Jim Dunbar.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: In 1971, Detectives Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax question Arthur Leigh Allen, a suspect in the Vallejo case. They notice that he wears a Zodiac wristwatch, with the same logo used by the killer, and Toschi heavily suspects him. However, a handwriting expert insists that Allen did not write the Zodiac letters, even though Allen is said to be ambidextrous. Avery receives a letter threatening his life; becoming paranoid, he turns to drugs and alcohol. He shares information with the Riverside Police Department that the killer might have been active before the initial killings, angering Toschi and Armstrong. The case's notoriety weighs on Toschi, who cannot sit through a Hollywood film, "Dirty Harry", loosely based on the Zodiac case.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: By 1978, Avery has moved to the "Sacramento Bee". Graysmith persistently contacts Toschi about the Zodiac murders and eventually impresses him with his knowledge of the case. While Toschi cannot directly give Graysmith access to the evidence, he provides names in other police departments where Zodiac murders occurred. Armstrong transfers from the San Francisco Police homicide division, and Toschi is demoted for supposedly forging a Zodiac letter.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Graysmith continues his own investigation, profiled in the "Chronicle", and gives a television interview about the book he is writing about the case. He begins receiving phone calls with heavy breathing. As his obsession deepens, Graysmith loses his job, and his wife Melanie leaves him, taking their children. Graysmith learns that Allen lived close to Ferrin and probably knew her and that his birthday matches the one Zodiac gave when he spoke to one of Melvin Belli's maids. While circumstantial evidence seems to indicate his guilt, the physical evidence, such as fingerprints and handwriting samples, do not implicate him. In 1983, Graysmith tracks Allen to a Vallejo Ace Hardware store, where he is employed as a sales clerk; they stare at each other before Graysmith leaves. Eight years later, after Graysmith's book, "Zodiac", has become a bestseller, Mike Mageau identifies Allen from a police mugshot.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: A textual epilogue indicates that Allen died before police could question him and that the case remains open.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Robert Graysmith first sold the film rights to his true crime book "Zodiac" to Shane Salerno, who he had built up a close relationship with. Salerno managed to make a deal with Ricardo Mestres of Great Oaks Entertainment to co-produce and write the film for Touchstone Pictures. According to Stuart Hazeldine, who was pitched to rewrite, the script would've been about the Zodiac killer resurfacing in Los Angeles.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: James Vanderbilt had read Robert Graysmith's book "Zodiac" while in high school. Years later, after becoming a screenwriter, he got the opportunity to meet Graysmith, and became fascinated by the folklore surrounding the Zodiac killer. He decided to try to translate the story into a script. Vanderbilt had endured bad experiences in the past in which the endings of his scripts had been changed, and wanted to have more control over the material this time. He pitched his adaptation of "Zodiac" to Mike Medavoy and Bradley J. Fischer from Phoenix Pictures, agreeing to write a spec script if he could have more creative control over it.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Graysmith met Fischer and Vanderbilt at the premiere of Paul Schrader's film "Auto Focus," based on Graysmith's 1991 book about the life and death of actor Bob Crane. A deal was made and they optioned the rights to "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked" when they became available after languishing at another studio for nearly a decade. David Fincher was their first choice to direct based on his work on "Seven". Originally, he was going to direct an adaptation of James Ellroy's novel "The Black Dahlia" (later filmed by Brian De Palma), and envisioned a five-hour, $80 million mini-series with film stars. When that failed to materialize, Fincher left that project and moved on to "Zodiac".


title: Zodiac (film)

text: For the young Fincher, he was drawn to the Zodiac story because he spent much of his childhood in San Anselmo in Marin County during the initial murders; he thought the killer "was the ultimate boogeyman". The director was also drawn to the unresolved ending of Vanderbilt's screenplay because it felt true to real life, as cases are not always solved. Fincher felt his job was to dispel the enduring mythic stature of the case by clearly defining what was fact and what was fiction. He told Vanderbilt that he wanted the screenplay rewritten with research done from the original police reports. Fincher found that there was much speculation and hearsay and, therefore, wanted to interview people who were directly involved in the case in-person to see if their stories were believable. He did this because he felt a burden of responsibility in making a film that convicted someone posthumously.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Fincher, Fischer and Vanderbilt spent months interviewing witnesses, family members of suspects, retired and current investigators, the two surviving victims, and the mayors of San Francisco and Vallejo. Fincher said, "Even when we did our own interviews, we would talk to two people. One would confirm some aspects of it and another would deny it. Plus, so much time had passed, memories are affected and the different telling of the stories would change perception. So when there was any doubt we always went with the police reports." During the course of their research, Fincher and Fischer hired Gerald McMenamin, a forensic linguistics expert and professor of linguistics at California State University Fresno, to analyze the Zodiac's letters. Unlike document examiners in the 1970s, he focused on the language of the Zodiac and how he formed his sentences in terms of structure and spelling.Fincher and Fischer approached Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to finance the film but talks fell through because the studio wanted the running time fixed at two hours and fifteen minutes. Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures agreed to share the production costs and were more flexible about the running time. The executives were concerned about the large amount of dialogue, lack of action scenes, and inconclusive ending. When Dave Toschi met Fincher, Fischer and Vanderbilt, Fincher told him that he was not going to make another "Dirty Harry" (which is loosely based on the Zodiac case). Toschi was impressed with their knowledge of the case and realized that he had learned from them. Toschi watched "Zodiac" several times and said "I thought Ruffalo did a good job," but also that the film reminded him of old frustrations that the case was never closed. The Zodiac's surviving victims, Mike Mageau and Bryan Hartnell, were consultants on the film.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Alan J. Pakula's film "All the President's Men" was the template for "Zodiac" as Fincher felt that it was also "the story of a reporter determined to get the story at any cost and one who was new to being an investigative reporter. It was all about his obsession to know the truth." Like in that film, he did not want to spend time telling the back story of any of the characters, focusing, instead, on what they did in regards to the case." Vanderbilt was drawn to the notion that Graysmith went from a cartoonist to one of the most significant investigators of the case. He pitched the story as: "What if Garry Trudeau woke up one morning and tried to solve the Son of Sam"? As he worked on the script, he became friends with Graysmith. The filmmakers secured the cooperation of the Vallejo Police Department (one of the key investigators at the time) because they hoped that the film would inspire someone to come forward with information that might help solve the cold case.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: One of Fincher's earliest conversations on the film's casting was with Jennifer Aniston. She talked about actors she had enjoyed working with; they were Gyllenhaal ("The Good Girl") and Mark Ruffalo ("Rumor Has It"). While researching the film, Fincher considered Jake Gyllenhaal to play Robert Graysmith. According to the director, "I really liked him in "Donnie Darko" and I thought, 'He's an interesting double-sided coin. He can do that naive thing but he can also do possessed.'" In preparation for his role Gyllenhaal met Graysmith, and videotaped him to study his mannerisms and behavior.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Initially, Mark Ruffalo was not interested in the project but Fincher wanted him to play David Toschi. He met with the actor and told him that he was rewriting the screenplay. "I loved what he was saying and loved where he was going with it", the actor remembers. For research, he read every report on the case and read all the books on the subject. Ruffalo met Toschi and found out that he had "perfect recall of the details and what happened when, where, who was there, what he was wearing. He always knew what he was wearing. I think it is seared into who he is and it was a big deal for him."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Fincher thought of Anthony Edwards for the role of Inspector William Armstrong, saying "I knew I needed the most decent person I could find, because he would be the balance of the movie. In a weird way, this movie wouldn't exist without Bill Armstrong. Everything we know about the Zodiac case, we know because of his notes. So in casting the part, I wanted to get someone who is totally reliable." Originally, Gary Oldman was to play Melvin Belli but "he went to a lot of trouble, they had appliances, but just physically it wasn't going to work, he just didn't have the girth", Graysmith said. Brian Cox was cast instead. Lee Norris played the 1969 Mike Mageau, and Jimmi Simpson played the character's older version.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Fincher decided to use the digital Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera to shoot the film. He had previously used the Thomson Viper over the past three years on commercials for Nike, Hewlett Packard, Heineken and Lexus, which allowed him to get used to and experiment with the equipment. He was able to use inexpensive desktop software like Final Cut Pro to edit "Zodiac". Fincher remarked in an interview, "Dailies almost always end up being disappointing, like the veil is pierced and you look at it for the first time and think, 'Oh my god, this is what I really have to work with.' But when you can see what you have as it's gathered, it can be a much less neurotic process."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Contrary to belief, "Zodiac" was not shot entirely digitally. Traditional high-speed film cameras were used for slow-motion murder sequences. Michael Mann's "Miami Vice", as well as his previous effort, "Collateral" (a co-production of Paramount and its current sister studio DreamWorks, and which also starred Mark Ruffalo), were also shot with the camera but mixed in other formats. Once shot on the Viper camera, the files were converted to DVCPro HD 1080i and edited in Final Cut Pro. This was for editorial decisions only. During the later stages of editing the original uncompressed 1080p 4:4:4 RAW digital source footage was assembled automatically to maintain an up-to-date digital "negative" of the film. Other digital productions like "Superman Returns" or "Apocalypto" recorded to the HDCAM tape format.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Fincher had previously worked with director of photography Harris Savides on "Seven" (he shot the opening credits) and "The Game". Savides loved the script but realized, "there was so much exposition, just people talking on the phone or having conversations. It was difficult to imagine how it could be done in a visual way." Fincher and Savides did not want to repeat the look of "Seven". The director's approach to "Zodiac" was to create a look mundane enough that audiences would accept that what they were watching was the truth. The filmmakers also did not want to glamorize the killer or tell the story through his eyes. "That would have turned the story into a first-person-shooter video game. We didn't want to make the sort of movie that serial killers would want to own," Fincher said.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Savides' first experience with the Viper Filmstream camera was shooting a Motorola commercial with Fincher. From there, he used it on "Zodiac". Fincher wanted to make sure that the camera was more inclined towards film production so that the studio would be more comfortable about using it on a project with a large budget. To familiarize himself with the camera, he "did as many things 'wrong' as I possibly could. I went against everything I was supposed to do with the camera." Savides felt comfortable with the camera despite its certain limitations.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Fincher and Savides used the photographs of William Eggleston, Stephen Shore's work from the early Seventies, and actual photos from the Zodiac police files. The two men worked hard to capture the look and feel of the period as Fincher admitted, "I suppose there could have been more VW bugs but I think what we show is a pretty good representation of the time. It is not technically perfect. There are some flaws but some are intended." The "San Francisco Chronicle" was built in the old post office in the Terminal Annex Building in downtown Los Angeles. A building on nearby Spring Street subbed for the Hall of Justice and the San Francisco Police Department. Principal photography began on September 12, 2005. The filmmakers shot for five weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest of the time in Los Angeles, bringing the film in under budget, wrapping in February 2006. The film took 115 days to shoot.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Some of the cast was not happy with Fincher's exacting ways and perfectionism. Some scenes required upward of 70 takes. Gyllenhaal was frustrated by the director's methods and commented in an interview, "You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There's a point at which you go, 'That's what we have to work with.' But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where's the risk?" Downey said, "I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I'm a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags". Fincher responded, "If an actor is going to let the role come to them, they can't resent the fact that I'm willing to wait as long as that takes. You know, the first day of production in San Francisco we shot 56 takes of Mark and Jake – and it's the 56th take that's in the movie". Ruffalo also defended his director's methods when he said, "The way I see it is, you enter into someone else's world as an actor. You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that's new and pushes and changes you, or hold on to what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that's filled with disappointment and anger."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Digital Domain handled most of the film's 200+ effects shots, including pools of blood and bloody fingerprints found at crime scenes. For the murder of Cecelia Shepard at Lake Berryessa, blood seepage and clothing stains were added in post-production. Fincher did not want to shoot the blood with practical effects because cleaning the costumes after every take would take too long, so the murder sequences were done with computer-generated (CG) blood.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: CG was also used to recreate the San Francisco neighborhood at Washington and Cherry Streets where cab driver Paul Stine was killed. The area had changed significantly over the years and residents did not want the murder to be recreated in their neighborhood, so Fincher shot the sequence on a bluescreen stage. Production designer Donald Burt gave the visual effects team detailed drawings of the intersection as it was in 1969. Photographs of every possible angle of the area were shot with a high-resolution digital camera, allowing the effects crew to build computer-based geometric models of homes that were then textured with period facades. 3D vintage police motorcycles, squad cars, a firetruck and street lights were added to the final shot.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Several of the film's establishing shots of the 1970s-era Bay Area were created by the Marin County effects house Matte World Digital (MWD). The "helicopter shots" of the fireworks-laden sky over Vallejo, the San Francisco waterfront, and the overhead shot of the cab driving through San Francisco were CG, as was the shot looking down at traffic from the tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. A time-lapse sequence of the construction of the Transamerica Pyramid was a hybrid of 2D and 3D matte painting, created using reference photos of the Pyramid taken from the rooftop of Francis Ford Coppola's Sentinel Building. MWD visual effects supervisor Craig Barron researched the Pyramid's construction for accuracy.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Originally, Fincher envisioned the film's soundtrack to be composed of 40 cues of vintage music spanning the nearly three decades of the Zodiac story. Fincher and music supervisor George Drakoulias searched for pop songs that reflected the era, including Three Dog Night's cover of "Easy to Be Hard".


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Fincher did not plan an original score for the film, but rather a tapestry of sound design, vintage songs of the period, sound bites and clips of KFRC and "Mathews Top of the Hill Daly City" (home of a prominent hi-fi dealership of the time). He told the studio that he did not need a composer and would purchase various songs instead. They agreed, but as the film developed, sound designer Ren Klyce felt there were some scenes that could have used music. Klyce inserted music from one of his favorite soundtracks, David Shire's score for "The Conversation."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Klyce contacted film and sound editor Walter Murch who worked on "The Conversation," and he connected Klyce with Shire. Fincher sent Shire a copy of the script and flew him in to Los Angeles for a meeting. Fincher only wanted 15–20 minutes of score and based solely on piano. Shire worked on it and incorporated textures of a Charles Ives piece called "The Unanswered Question" and "Conversation"-based cues, he found that he had 37 minutes of original music. The orchestra Shire assembled consisted of musicians from the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet. Shire said, "There are 12 signs of the Zodiac and there is a way of using atonal and tonal music. So we used 12 tones, never repeating any of them but manipulating them". He used specific instruments to represent the characters: the trumpet for Toschi, the solo piano for Graysmith and the dissonant strings for the Zodiac killer.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: An early version of "Zodiac" ran three hours and eight minutes. It was supposed to be released in time for Academy Award consideration but Paramount felt that the film ran too long and asked Fincher to make changes. Contractually, he had final cut and once he reached a length he felt was right, the director refused to make any further cuts. To trim down the film to its official runtime, he had to cut a two-minute blackout montage of "hit songs signaling the passage of time from Joni Mitchell to Donna Summer." It was replaced with a title card that reads, "Four years later." Another cut scene that test screening audiences did not like involved "three guys talking into a speakerphone" to get a search warrant as Toschi and Armstrong talk to SFPD Capt. Marty Lee (Dermot Mulroney) about their case against suspect Arthur Leigh Allen. Fincher said that this scene would probably be put back on the DVD.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: To promote "Zodiac", Paramount posted on light-poles in major cities original sketches of the actual Zodiac killer with the words, "In theaters March 2nd," at the bottom. The film was screened in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2007, with Fincher and Gyllenhaal participating in a press conference afterwards. The director's cut of "Zodiac" was given a rare screening at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City on November 19, 2007, with Fincher being interviewed by film critic Kent Jones afterwards.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: The DVD for "Zodiac" was released on July 24, 2007, and is available widescreen or fullscreen, presented in anamorphic widescreen, and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround track. The initial DVD version of "Zodiac" contained only a few special features. According to producer David Prior, Fincher agreed to release it as Prior needed more time to prepare bonus material. In its first week, rentals for the DVD earned $6.7 million.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: The two-disc director's cut DVD and HD DVD were released on January 8, 2008, with its UK release on Blu-ray and DVD announced for September 29, 2008. Disc 1 contains, in addition to a longer cut of the film, audio commentaries by Fincher and Gyllenhaal, Downey, Fischer, Vanderbilt, and author James Ellroy. Disc 2 includes a trailer, a "Zodiac Deciphered" documentary, previsualization split-screen comparisons for the Blue Rock Springs, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco murder sequences, and three video features: "Visual Effects of Zodiac", "This is the Zodiac Speaking", and a "His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen". Other extras originally intended for the set, including TV spots and features on "Digital Workflow", "Linguistic Analysis", "Jeopardy Surface: Geographic Profiling" (Dr. Kim Rossmo's geographic profile of the Zodiac), and "The Psychology of Aggression: Behavioral Profiling" (Special Agent Sharon Pagaling-Hagan's behavioral profile of the Zodiac) were omitted. However, the latter three features were made available on the film's website.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: For Academy Awards contention, Paramount distributed the director's cut DVD to the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, instead of the official release version; the first time that the studio had done this.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Opening in 2,362 theaters on March 2, 2007, the film grossed US$13.3 million in its opening weekend, placing second and posting a per-theater average of $5,671. The film was outgrossed by fellow opener "Wild Hogs" and saw a decline of over 50% in its second weekend, losing out to the record-breaking "300". It grossed $33 million in North America and $51 million in the rest of the world, bringing its current total to $84 million. In an interview with "Sight & Sound" magazine, Fincher addressed the film's low gross at the North American box office: "Even with the box office being what it is, I still think there's an audience out there for this movie. Everyone has a different idea about marketing, but my philosophy is that if you market a movie to 16-year-old boys and don't deliver "Saw" or "Seven", they're going to be the most vociferous ones coming out of the screening saying 'This movie sucks.' And you're saying goodbye to the audience who would get it because they're going to look at the ads and say, 'I don't want to see some slasher movie.'"


title: Zodiac (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 261 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A quiet, dialogue-driven thriller that delivers with scene after scene of gut-wrenching anxiety. David Fincher also spends more time illustrating nuances of his characters and recreating the mood of the 70s than he does on gory details of murder." At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: "Entertainment Weekly" critic Owen Gleiberman awarded the film an "A" grade, hailing the film as a "procedural thriller for the information age" that "spins your head in a new way, luring you into a vortex and then deeper still." Nathan Lee in his review for "The Village Voice" wrote that director Fincher's "very lack of pretense, coupled with a determination to get the facts down with maximum economy and objectivity, gives "Zodiac" its hard, bright integrity. As a crime saga, newspaper drama, and period piece, it works just fine. As an allegory of life in the information age, it blew my mind." Todd McCarthy's review in "Variety" magazine praised the film's "almost unerringly accurate evocation of the workaday San Francisco of 35–40 years ago. Forget the distorted emphasis on hippies and flower-power that many such films indulge in: this is the city as it was experienced by most people who lived and worked there." David Ansen, in his review for "Newsweek" magazine, wrote, ""Zodiac" is meticulously crafted – Harris Savides's state-of-the-art digital cinematography has a richness indistinguishable from film – and it runs almost two hours and 40 minutes. Still, the movie holds you in its grip from start to finish. Fincher boldly (and some may think perversely) withholds the emotional and forensic payoff we're conditioned to expect from a big studio movie." Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of 4 stars, writing: "The film is a police procedural crossed with a newspaper movie but free of most of the cliches of either. Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather a bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful." Ebert also praised the ensemble cast and, as a longtime columnist for "The Chicago Sun-Times", asserted "Zodiac" was "intriguing in its accuracy" in showing the operation of a major newspaper.


title: Zodiac (film)

text: "Time Out" magazine wrote, ""Zodiac" isn't a puzzle film in quite that way, instead its subject is the compulsion to solve puzzles and its coup is the creeping recognition, quite contrary to the flow of crime cinema, of how fruitless that compulsion can be." Peter Bradshaw in his review for "The Guardian" commended the film for its "sheer cinematic virility," and gave it four stars out of five. In his review for "Empire" magazine, Kim Newman gave the film 4 out of 5 stars and wrote, "You'll need patience with the film's approach, which follows its main characters by poring over details, and be prepared to put up with a couple of rote family arguments and weary cop conversations, but this gripping character study becomes more agonisingly suspenseful as it gets closer to an answer that can't be confirmed." Graham Fuller in "Sight & Sound" magazine wrote, "the tone is pleasingly flat and mundane, evoking the demoralising grind of police work in a pre-feminist, pre-technological era. As such, "Zodiac" is considerably more adult than both "Seven", which salivates over the macabre cat-and-mouse game it plays with the audience, and the macho brinkmanship of "Fight Club"."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Some critics expressed disappointment with the film's long running time and lack of action scenes. "The film gets mired in the inevitable red tape of police investigations," wrote Bob Longino of "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution", who also felt the film "stumbles to a rather unfulfilling conclusion" and "seems to last as long as the Oscars." Andrew Sarris of "The New York Observer" felt that "Mr. Fincher's flair for casting is the major asset of his curiously attenuated return to the serial-killer genre. I keep saying 'curiously' with regard to Mr. Fincher, because I can't really figure out what he is up to in "Zodiac" – with its two-hour-and-37-minute running time for what struck me as a shaggy-dog narrative." Christy Lemire wrote in the "San Francisco Chronicle" that "Jake Gyllenhaal is both the central figure and the weakest link... But he's never fleshed out sufficiently to make you believe that he'd sacrifice his safety and that of his family to find the truth. We are told repeatedly that the former Eagle Scout is just a genuinely good guy but that's not enough." David Thompson of "The Guardian" felt that in relation to the rest of Fincher's career, "Zodiac" was "the worst yet, a terrible disappointment in which an ingenious and deserving all-American serial killer nearly gets lost in the meandering treatment of cops and journalists obsessed with the case."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: In France, "Le Monde" newspaper praised Fincher for having "obtained a maturity that impresses by his mastery of form," while "Libération" described the film as "a thriller of elegance magnificently photographed by the great Harry Savides." However, "Le Figaro" wrote, "No audacity, no invention, nothing but a plot which intrigues without captivating, disturbs without terrifying, interests without exciting."


title: Zodiac (film)

text: Only two 2007 films ("No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood") appeared on more critics' top ten lists than "Zodiac". Some of the notable top-ten list appearances are:


title: Zodiac (film)

text: In the British Film Institute's 2012 "Sight & Sound" polls of the greatest movies ever made, three critics and one director, Bong Joon-ho, named "Zodiac" one of their 10 favorite films. In a 2016 critics' poll conducted by the BBC, "Zodiac" was ranked at 12th place in a list of the 21st century's greatest films.


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: The Haunting of Bly Manor is an American gothic romance drama streaming television miniseries created by Mike Flanagan, and released on October 9, 2020 by Netflix. The second entry in Flanagan's "The Haunting" anthology series, it mostly acts as an adaptation of the 1898 novella "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, but also includes other elements either based on James' other works or created for the show. It features much of "Hill House"s crew and some of the same cast, such as Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Amelia Eve, T'Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, Tahirah Sharif, Amelie Bea Smith, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, and Henry Thomas, though Pedretti, Jackson-Cohen and Thomas returned from "Hill House" as different characters, as did Kate Siegel, Carla Gugino, and Catherine Parker in recurring roles; the two series' narratives are not connected.


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: Following a nonlinear narrative, "The Haunting of Bly Manor" follows the events occurring in the eponymous countryside manor in the United Kingdom, mostly upon the arrival of a young American hired as an au pair for the two children living at Bly, and who is unaware that the manor is haunted. It was released on October 9, 2020, and like its predecessor received positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised the performance of Pedretti. At the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, the series was nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series. At the 1st Critics' Choice Super Awards, it received nominations for Best Horror Series and Best Actress in a Horror Series (Pedretti and Miller). At the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards, Pedretti won the award for Most Frightened Performance.


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: "The story tells of a young au pair hired by a man to look after his niece and nephew at the family country house after they fall into his care. Arriving at the Bly estate, she begins to see apparitions that proceed to haunt the premises."


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: In an interview with "Entertainment Weekly" in October 2018, on the topic of "The Haunting of Hill House", Flanagan said, "I don't want to speculate too much about season two until Netflix, Paramount and Amblin let us know if they want one. What I will say, though, is that as far as I've ever been concerned with this, the story of the Crain family is told. It's done."


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: On February 21, 2019, Netflix announced a follow-up series to "Hill House". Titled "The Haunting of Bly Manor", it is based on "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James. Though it would serve as a follow-up series to "The Haunting of Hill House", it is a standalone story, indicating that there would be "no dramatic link between "The Haunting of Bly Manor" and its predecessor." Although the prominent source for the adaptation is "The Turn of the Screw", the season also adapts (some more loosely) multiple James works, some of which had never been adapted previously, including "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" and "The Jolly Corner".


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: Victoria Pedretti and Oliver Jackson-Cohen return as new characters: Pedretti in the role of Dani, "a governess who takes care of two very unusual children", and Jackson-Cohen portrays Peter, "a charming fellow". Henry Thomas, Carla Gugino, Kate Siegel, and Catherine Parker also returned for "Bly Manor".


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: "The Haunting of Bly Manor" entered production on September 30, 2019, filming in Vancouver, Canada. Filming wrapped on February 21, 2020, less than a month before the response to the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of North America.


title: The Haunting of Bly Manor

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 104 critics positively reviewed "The Haunting of Bly Manor", and the average rating is 7.4/10. The critical consensus reads, "It may not be as scary as its predecessor, but with plenty of spooky tricks inside its haunted halls and a strong sense of heart, "The Haunting of Bly Manor" is another solid entry into Mike Flanagan's growing horrorography." At Metacritic, the series received a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Carlos Santana

text: Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán (; born July 20, 1947) is an American guitarist who rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band Santana, which pioneered a fusion of Rock and roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound featured his melodic, blues-based lines set against Latin American and African rhythms played on percussion instruments not generally heard in rock, such as timbales and congas. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2015, "Rolling Stone" magazine listed him at No. 20 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, and was inducted along with his namesake band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana was born in Autlán de Navarro in Jalisco, Mexico on July 20, 1947. He learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight, under the tutelage of his father, who was a mariachi musician. His younger brother, Jorge, also became a professional guitarist. Santana was heavily influenced by Ritchie Valens at a time when there were very few Mexicans in American rock music. The family moved from Autlán to Tijuana, on the border with the U.S. They then moved to San Francisco, California, where his father had steady work. In October 1966, Santana started the Santana Blues Band. By 1968, the band had begun to incorporate different types of influences into their electric blues. Santana later said, "If I would go to some cat's room, he'd be listening to Sly [Stone] and Jimi Hendrix; another guy to the Stones and the Beatles. Another guy'd be listening to Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaría. Another guy'd be listening to Miles [Davis] and [John] Coltrane... to me, it was like being at a university."


title: Carlos Santana

text: Around the age of eight, Santana "fell under the influence" of blues performers like B.B. King, Javier Bátiz, Mike Bloomfield, and John Lee Hooker. Gábor Szabó's mid-1960s jazz guitar work also strongly influenced Santana's playing. Indeed, Szabó's composition "Gypsy Queen" was used as the second part of Santana's 1970 treatment of Peter Green's composition "Black Magic Woman", almost down to identical guitar licks. Santana's 2012 instrumental album "Shape Shifter" includes a song called "Mr. Szabo", played in tribute in the style of Szabó. Santana also credits Hendrix, Bloomfield, Hank Marvin, and Peter Green as important influences; he considered Bloomfield a direct mentor, writing of a key meeting with Bloomfield in San Francisco in the foreword he wrote to a 2000 biography of Bloomfield, "Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues – An Oral History". Between the ages of 10 and 12, he was sexually abused by an American man who brought him across the border. Santana lived in the Mission District, graduated from James Lick Middle School, and left Mission High School in 1965. He was accepted at California State University, Northridge and Humboldt State University, but chose not to attend college.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana was influenced by popular artists of the 1950s such as B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Javier Batiz, and John Lee Hooker. Soon after he began playing guitar, he joined local bands along the "Tijuana Strip" where he was able to begin developing his own sound. He was also introduced to a variety of new musical influences, including jazz and folk music, and witnessed the growing hippie movement centered in San Francisco in the 1960s. After several years spent working as a dishwasher at Tic Tock Drive-In No2 and busking to pay for a Gibson SG, replacing a destroyed Gibson Melody Maker, Santana decided to become a full-time musician. In 1966, he was chosen along with other musicians to form an ad hoc band to substitute for that of an intoxicated Paul Butterfield set to play a Sunday matinee at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium. Graham selected the substitutes from musicians he knew primarily through his connections with the Butterfield Blues Band, Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane. Santana's guitar playing caught the attention of both the audience and Graham.


title: Carlos Santana

text: During the same year he and fellow street musicians David Brown (bass guitar), Marcus Malone (percussion) and Gregg Rolie (lead vocals, Hammond Organ B3), formed the Santana Blues Band. Playing a highly original blend of Latin-infused rock, jazz, blues, salsa, and African rhythms, the band gained an immediate following on the San Francisco club circuit.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana's band was signed by Columbia Records, which shortened its name to simply "Santana". It went into the studio to record its first album in January 1969, finally laying down tracks in May that became its first album. Members were not satisfied with the release, dismissed drummer Bob Livingston, and added Mike Shrieve, who had a strong background in both jazz and rock. The band then lost percussionist Marcus Malone, who was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Michael Carabello was re-enlisted in his place, bringing with him experienced Nicaraguan percussionist José Chepito Areas.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Major rock music promoter Bill Graham, a Latin Music aficionado who had been a fan of Santana from its inception, arranged for the band to appear at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival before its debut album was even released. Its set was one of the surprises of the festival, highlighted by an eleven-minute performance of a throbbing instrumental, "Soul Sacrifice". Its inclusion in the "Woodstock" film and soundtrack album vastly increased the band's popularity. Graham also suggested Santana record the Willie Bobo song "Evil Ways", as he felt it would get radio airplay. The band's first album, "Santana", was released in August 1969 and became a hit, reaching No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard 200.


title: Carlos Santana

text: The band's performance at Woodstock and the follow-up sound track and movie introduced them to an international audience and garnered critical acclaim. The sudden success which followed put pressure on the group, highlighting the different musical directions Rolie and Santana were starting to go. Rolie, along with some of the other band members, wanted to emphasize a basic hard rock sound which had been a key component in establishing the band from the start. Santana, however, was increasingly interested in moving beyond his love of blues and rock and wanted more jazzy, ethereal elements in the music. He became fascinated with Gábor Szabó, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, and John Coltrane, as well as developing a growing interest in spirituality. At the same time, Chepito Areas was stricken with a near-fatal brain hemorrhage, and Santana hoped to continue by finding a temporary replacement (first Willie Bobo, then Coke Escovedo), while others in the band, especially Michael Carabello, felt it was wrong to perform publicly without Areas. Cliques formed, and the band started to disintegrate.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Consolidating the interest generated by their first album, and their highly acclaimed live performance at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, the band followed up with their second album, "Abraxas", in September 1970. The album's mix of rock, blues, jazz, salsa and other influences was very well received, showing a musical maturation from their first album and refining the band's early sound. "Abraxas" included two of Santana's most enduring and well-known hits, "Oye Como Va", and "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen". "Abraxas" spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart at the end of 1970. The album remained on the charts for 88 weeks and was certified 4× platinum in 1986. In 2003, the album was ranked number 205 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Teenage San Francisco Bay Area guitar prodigy Neal Schon joined the Santana band in 1971, in time to complete the third album, "Santana III". The band now boasted a powerful dual-lead-guitar act that gave the album a tougher sound. The sound of the band was also helped by the return of a recuperated Chepito Areas and the assistance of Coke Escovedo in the percussion section. Enhancing the band's sound further was the support of popular Bay Area group Tower of Power's horn section, Luis Gasca of Malo, and other session musicians which added to both percussion and vocals, injecting more energy to the proceedings. "Santana III" was another success, reaching No. 1 on the album charts, selling two million copies, and yielding the hit "No One to Depend On".


title: Carlos Santana

text: Tension between members of the band continued, however. Along with musical differences, drug use became a problem, and Santana was deeply worried that it was affecting the band's performance. Coke Escovedo encouraged Santana to take more control of the band's musical direction, much to the dismay of some of the others who thought that the band and its sound was a collective effort. Also, financial irregularities were exposed while under the management of Stan Marcum, whom Bill Graham criticized as being incompetent. Growing resentments between Santana and Michael Carabello over lifestyle issues resulted in his departure on bad terms. James Mingo Lewis was hired at the last minute as a replacement at a concert in New York City. David Brown later left due to substance abuse problems. A South American tour was cut short in Lima, Peru due to unruly fans and student protests against U.S. governmental policies.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In January 1972, Santana, Schon, Escovedo, and Lewis joined former Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles for a concert at Hawaii's Diamond Head Crater, which was recorded for the album "Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles! Live!", which became a gold record.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In early 1972, Santana and the remaining members of the band started working on their fourth album, "Caravanserai". During the studio sessions, Santana and Michael Shrieve brought in other musicians: percussionists James Mingo Lewis and Latin-Jazz veteran, Armando Peraza replacing Michael Carabello, and bassists Tom Rutley and Doug Rauch replacing David Brown. Also assisting on keyboards were Wendy Haas and Tom Coster. With the unsettling influx of new players in the studio, Gregg Rolie and Neal Schon decided that it was time to leave after the completion of the album, even though both contributed to the session. Rolie returned home to Seattle; later, he and Schon became founding members of Journey.


title: Carlos Santana

text: When "Caravanserai" did emerge in 1972, it marked a strong change in musical direction towards jazz fusion. The album received critical praise, but CBS executive Clive Davis warned Santana and the band that it would sabotage the band's position as a "Top 40" act. Nevertheless, over the years, the album achieved platinum status. The difficulties Santana and the band went through during this period were chronicled in Ben Fong-Torres' "Rolling Stone" 1972 cover story "The Resurrection of Carlos Santana".


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 1972, Santana became interested in the pioneering fusion band the Mahavishnu Orchestra and its guitarist, John McLaughlin. Aware of Santana's interest in meditation, McLaughlin introduced Santana and his wife Deborah to his guru Sri Chinmoy. Chinmoy accepted them as disciples in 1973. Santana was given the name Devadip, meaning "The lamp, light and eye of God". Santana and McLaughlin recorded an album together, "Love, Devotion, Surrender" (1973) with members of Santana and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, along with percussionist Don Alias and organist Larry Young, both of whom had made appearances, along with McLaughlin, on Miles Davis' classic 1970 album "Bitches Brew".


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 1973, Santana, having obtained legal rights to the band's name, "Santana", formed a new version of the band with Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas on percussion, Doug Rauch on bass, Michael Shrieve on drums, and Tom Coster and Richard Kermode on keyboards. Santana later was able to recruit jazz vocalist Leon Thomas for the tour supporting "Caravanserai" in Japan on July 3 and 4, 1973, which was recorded for the 1974 live, sprawling, high-energy triple vinyl LP fusion album "Lotus". CBS records would not allow its release unless the material was condensed. Santana did not agree to those terms, and "Lotus" was available in the U.S. only as an expensive, imported, three-record set. The group later went into the studio and recorded "Welcome" (1973), which further reflected Santana's interests in jazz fusion and his increasing commitment to the spiritual life of Sri Chinmoy.


title: Carlos Santana

text: A collaboration with John Coltrane's widow, Alice Coltrane, "Illuminations" (1974), followed. The album delved into avant-garde esoteric free jazz, Eastern Indian and classical influences with other ex-Miles Davis sidemen Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland. Soon after, Santana replaced his band members again. This time Kermode, Thomas and Rauch departed from the group and were replaced by vocalist Leon Patillo (later a successful Contemporary Christian artist) and returning bassist David Brown. He also recruited soprano saxophonist, Jules Broussard for the lineup. The band recorded one studio album "Borboletta", which was released in 1974. Drummer Leon "Ndugu" Chancler later joined the band as a replacement for Michael Shrieve, who left to pursue a solo career.


title: Carlos Santana

text: By this time, Bill Graham's management company had assumed responsibility for the affairs of the group. Graham was critical of Santana's move into jazz and felt he needed to concentrate on getting "Santana" back into the charts with the edgy, streetwise ethnic sound that had made them famous. Santana himself was seeing that the group's direction was alienating many fans. Although the albums and performances were given good reviews by critics in jazz and jazz fusion circles, sales had plummeted.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana, along with Tom Coster, producer David Rubinson, and Chancler, formed yet another version of "Santana", adding vocalist Greg Walker. The 1976 album "Amigos", which featured the songs "Dance, Sister, Dance" and "Let It Shine", had a strong funk and Latin sound. The album received considerable airplay on FM album-oriented rock stations with the instrumental "Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile)" and re-introduced "Santana" to the charts. In 1976, "Rolling Stone" ran a second cover story on "Santana" entitled "Santana Comes Home". In February 1976, Santana was presented with fifteen gold disc in Australia, representing sales in excess of 244,000.


title: Carlos Santana

text: The albums conceived through the late 1970s followed the same formula, although with several lineup changes. Among the new personnel who joined was current percussionist Raul Rekow, who joined in early 1977. Most notable of the band's commercial efforts of this era was a version of the 1960s Zombies hit, "She's Not There", on the 1977 double album "Moonflower".


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana recorded two solo projects in this time: "Oneness: Silver Dreams – Golden Reality", in 1979 and "The Swing of Delight" in 1980, which featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams.


title: Carlos Santana

text: The pressures and temptations of being a high-profile rock musician and requirements of the spiritual lifestyle which guru Sri Chinmoy and his followers demanded were in conflict, and imposed considerable stress upon Santana's lifestyle and marriage. He was becoming increasingly disillusioned with what he thought were the unreasonable rules that Chinmoy imposed on his life, and in particular with his refusal to allow Santana and Deborah to start a family. He felt too that his fame was being used to increase the guru's visibility. Santana and Deborah eventually ended their relationship with Chinmoy in 1982.


title: Carlos Santana

text: More radio-friendly singles followed from Santana and the band. "Winning" in 1981 (from "Zebop!") and "Hold On" (a remake of the Canadian artist Ian Thomas' song) in 1982 both reached the top twenty. After his break with Sri Chinmoy, Santana went into the studio to record another solo album with Keith Olson and legendary R&B producer Jerry Wexler. The 1983 album "Havana Moon" revisited Santana's early musical experiences in Tijuana with Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love" and the title cut, Chuck Berry's "Havana Moon". The album's guests included Booker T. Jones, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Willie Nelson, and even Santana's father's mariachi orchestra. Santana again paid tribute to his early rock roots by doing the film score to "La Bamba", which was based on the life of rock and roll legend Ritchie Valens and starred Lou Diamond Phillips.


title: Carlos Santana

text: The band "Santana" returned in 1985 with a new album, "Beyond Appearances", and two years later with "Freedom".


title: Carlos Santana

text: Growing weary of trying to appease record company executives with formulaic hit records, Santana took great pleasure in jamming and making guest appearances with notables such as the jazz fusion group Weather Report, jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, Blues legend John Lee Hooker, Frank Franklin, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, and West African singer Salif Keita. He and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead later recorded and performed with Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who conceived one of Santana's famous 1960s drum jams, "Jingo". In 1988, Santana organized a reunion with past members from the Santana band for a series of concert dates. CBS records released a 20-year retrospective of the band's accomplishments with "Viva Santana!" double CD compilation. That same year, Santana formed an all-instrumental group featuring jazz legend Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophone. The group also included Patrice Rushen on keyboards, Alphonso Johnson on bass, Armando Peraza and Chepito Areas on percussion, and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler on drums. They toured briefly and received much acclaim from the music press, who compared the effort with the era of "Caravanserai" (1972). Santana released another solo record, "Blues for Salvador" (1987), which won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 1990, Santana left Columbia Records after twenty-two years and signed with Polygram. The following year he made a guest appearance on Ottmar Liebert's album, "Solo Para Ti" (1991), on the songs "Reaching out 2 U" and on a cover of his own song, "Samba Pa Ti". In 1992, Santana hired the jam band Phish as his opening act. On his 1992 tour, Santana regularly invited some or all of the members of Phish to jam with his band during his headlining performances. Phish also toured with Santana in Europe in 1996.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana kicked off the 1990s with a new album "Spirits Dancing in the Flesh" in 1990. This was followed by "Milagro" in 1992, a live album "" in 1993 and "Brothers" (a collaboration with his brother Jorge and nephew Carlos Hernandez) in 1994, but sales were relatively poor. Santana toured widely over the next few years but there were no further new album releases, and eventually, he was even without a recording contract. However, Arista Records' Clive Davis, who had worked with Santana at Columbia Records, signed him and encouraged him to record a star-studded album with mostly younger artists. The result was 1999's "Supernatural", which included collaborations with Everlast, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, Eric Clapton, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, CeeLo Green, Maná, Dave Matthews, KC Porter, J. B. Eckl, and others.


title: Carlos Santana

text: However, the lead single was what grabbed the attention of both fans and the music industry. "Smooth", a dynamic cha-cha stop-start number co-written and sung by Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, was laced throughout with Santana's guitar fills and runs. The track's energy was immediately apparent on radio, and it was played on a wide variety of station formats. "Smooth" spent twelve weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming in the process the last No. 1 single of the 1990s. The music video, set on a hot barrio street, was also very popular. "Supernatural" reached number one on the US album charts and the follow-up single, "Maria Maria", featuring the R&B duo the Product G&B, also hit number one, spending ten weeks there in the spring of 2000. "Supernatural" eventually shipped over 15 million copies in the United States, and won 8 Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, making it Santana's most successful album.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Carlos Santana, alongside the classic "Santana" lineup of their first two albums, was inducted as an individual, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. He performed "Black Magic Woman" with the writer of the song, Fleetwood Mac's founder Peter Green. Green was inducted the same night.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2000, "Supernatural" won nine Grammy Awards (eight for Santana personally), including Album of the Year, Record of the Year for "Smooth", and Song of the Year for Thomas and Itaal Shur. Santana's acceptance speeches described his feelings about music's place in one's spiritual existence. Later that year at the Latin Grammy Awards, he won three awards including Record of the Year. In 2001, Santana's guitar skills were featured in Michael Jackson's song "Whatever Happens" from the album "Invincible".


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2002, Santana released "Shaman", revisiting the "Supernatural" format of guest artists including Citizen Cope, P.O.D., and Seal. Although the album was not the runaway success its predecessor had been, it produced two radio-friendly hits. "The Game of Love" featuring Michelle Branch rose to number five on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and spent many weeks at the top of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, and "Why Don't You & I" written by and featuring Chad Kroeger from the group Nickelback (the original and a remix with Alex Band from the group the Calling were combined towards chart performance) which reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. "The Game of Love" went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. In the same year, he was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In early August 2003, Santana was named fifteenth on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In 2004, Santana was honored as the Person of the Year by the Latin Recording Academy.


title: Carlos Santana

text: On April 21, 2005, Santana was honored as a BMI Icon at the 12th annual BMI Latin Awards. Santana was the first songwriter designated a BMI Icon at the company's Latin Awards. The honor is given to a creator who has been "a unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers."


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2005, Herbie Hancock approached Santana to collaborate on an album again using the "Supernatural" formula. "Possibilities" was released on August 30, 2005, featuring Carlos Santana and Angélique Kidjo on "Safiatou". Also, in 2005, fellow Latin star Shakira invited Santana to play the soft rock guitar ballad "Illegal" on her second English-language studio album "Oral Fixation, Vol. 2".


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana's 2005 album "All That I Am" consists primarily of collaborations with other artists; the first single, the peppy "I'm Feeling You", was again with Michelle Branch and the Wreckers. Other musicians joining the mix this time included Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Kirk Hammett from Metallica, hip-hop artist/songwriter/producer will.i.am, guitarist/songwriter/producer George Pajon, hip-hop/reggae star Sean Paul, and R&B singer Joss Stone. In April and May 2006, Santana toured Europe, where he promoted his son Salvador Santana's band as his opening act.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2007, Santana appeared, along with Sheila E. and José Feliciano, on Gloria Estefan's album "90 Millas," on the single "No Llores". He also teamed again with Chad Kroeger for the hit single "Into the Night". He also played guitar in Eros Ramazzotti's hit "Fuoco nel fuoco" from the album "e²".


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2008, Santana was reported to be working with his longtime friend, Marcelo Vieira, on his solo album "Acoustic Demos", which was released at the end of the year. It features tracks such as "For Flavia" and "Across the Grave", the latter said to feature heavy melodic riffs by Santana.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana performed at the 2009 American Idol Finale with the top 13 finalists, which starred many acts such as KISS, Queen and Rod Stewart. On July 8, 2009, Santana appeared at the Athens Olympic Stadium in Athens with his 10-member all-star band as part of his "Supernatural Santana – A Trip through the Hits" European tour. On July 10, 2009, he also appeared at Philip II Stadium in Skopje. With a 2.5-hour long concert and 20 000 people, Santana appeared for the first time in that region. "Supernatural Santana – A Trip through the Hits" was played at the Hard Rock hotel in Las Vegas, where it was played through 2011.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana is featured as a playable character in the music video game Guitar Hero 5. A live recording of his song "No One to Depend On" is included in game, which was released on September 1, 2009. More recently, in 2011, three Santana songs were offered as downloadable content (DLC) for guitar learning software Rocksmith: "Oye Como Va", "Smooth", and "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen". In the same year, Santana received the Billboard Latin Music Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Carlos Santana

text: Santana, since 2007, has opened a chain of upscale Mexican restaurants called "Maria Maria". It is a combined effort with Chef Roberto Santibañez. They were located in Tempe, Arizona, Mill Valley (now closed), Walnut Creek, Danville, San Diego, Austin, Texas, and Boca Raton, Florida. As of 2021, the only open location is in Walnut Creek.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2012, Santana released an album "Shape Shifter" consisting of mostly instrumental tracks. On February 23, 2013, there was a public announcement on ultimateclassicrock.com about a reunion of the surviving members (minus Jose “Chepito” Areas) of the Santana band who recorded Santana III in 1971. The subsequent album was titled Santana IV. On May 6, 2014, his first ever Spanish language album "Corazón" was released.


title: Carlos Santana

text: On September 12, 2015, Santana appeared as a member of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh's band Phil Lesh and Friends at the third annual Lockn' Festival. He has continued to act as a mentor to a younger generation of jam acts, like Derek Trucks and Robert Randolph.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2016, Carlos Santana reunited with past Santana band members Gregg Rolie, Michael Carabello, Michael Shrieve, and Neil Schon to release the album: "Santana IV" and the band embarked on a brief tour. A full set from this lineup was filmed at the House of Blues in Las Vegas and was released as a live album and a DVD titled "Live at the House of Blues Las Vegas".


title: Carlos Santana

text: In 2017, Santana collaborated with the Isley Brothers to release the album "The Power of Peace" on July 28, 2017.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In December 2018, Santana published a guitar lesson on YouTube as part of the online education series MasterClass.


title: Carlos Santana

text: In October 2019, Santana was featured on the American rapper Tyga's song "Mamacita" alongside American rapper YG. The song's music video premiered on YouTube on 25 October.