Our not-so-young plumber friend Mario has been around for quite some time now. He’s been around for so long that Super Mario Bros. is now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Yeah, I know, it’s bonkers how long it has been. Not only has he starred in practically every type of game, but has also transcended the medium like no other character. Over these past mushroom-filled years, the mustachioed adventurer has also been through plenty of cosmetic changes. Starting from a blocky little pixelated man, Mario is now being beautifully rendered in full HD. Started from the bottom indeed.

YouTube user aryoksini took it to the next level, an unreal level. He posted the above video of Mario running on some of the best tech in the industry, Unreal Engine 4. Here are his notes about the video:

“Here is Mario running in Unreal Engine 4, all the environment assets were taken from the Unreal marketplace, all the character actions were scripted using blueprints only, all animations were re-created from scratch as well as the PBR ready textures.”

Mario looks absolutely fantastic, but it’s not like we haven’t seen him look great before. His character model looks to be on par with Super Mario 3D World, which is impressive that aryoksini was able to make the model look pretty much indistinguishable when compared to Nintendo’s own work. Even his animations look top notch.

What’s strangest about the whole thing is watching the contrast of the our hero’s almost cartoony look to the uber-realistic Unreal Engine environments. Now that’s freaky.

Hop into the comments section below and let us know what you think of this awesome video.

[HT: Aryoksini]