Mario Games Cosplay Retrospective Gallery

It’s Mario Day today, so obviously I pulled together a gallery of cosplays of characters from the various games. The game Super Mario came out in 1985, introducing the world to Mario and his brother Luigi, Princess Peach and Bowser. Over the next 35 years the franchise expanded into movies, cartoons and many more games, introducing a slew of new characters.

Then in September 2018, everything changed.

Malaysian artist Ayyk92 posted in an online comic a gender-swapped, sexy version of Bowser that came to be known as Bowsette. A handful of Japanese artists picked up the idea and created their own takes on the Bowsette character, and within days it had spread across the globe like wildfire. Or a pandemic. Just three weeks later I took my first photo of a Bowsette cosplayer, at New York Comic Con.

For the better part of a year, the gender-bending of Mario villains — Ghostette, Booette, Toadette and more — was one of two dominant hot new cosplay trends, sharing that status with the K/DA Pop-Stars. It would probably have lasted even longer if the pandemic hadn’t shut down conventions for more than a year, to date.

Among the cosplayers in this gallery are BelleChere, MicroKitty, Bunny Moon Cosplay, Chrysmuu Cosplay, Not Professional Cosplay, Pasta Sauce Cosplay, Deadlysymmetry, whiskifox, smallsproutcosplay, co.ttard, _ellystar_, zimmermanjoe21, gracedbycosplay, italianpeachcosplayfit, pandanopants, Stolen Soul Photography, bt_costumes, savage83, Ryuu Lavitz, Lady Cels, Cares O-Lot Cosplay, Biggursky art/design, missleadcosplay, Kurious Costumes, Zachary Hare, Chelsea Von Chastity Cosplay, jamal_johns, A-Rok, Miss Vonne Bittercup, Mink the Satyr Cosplay, Dragoness Cosplay, Mieu, maplesaurcosplay, Nimbus Grey Cosplay, smoochum302, 24aphillips, asgardian.latina, wakandantitan, and many more.

We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.

To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.

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