Author: Karen Zraick / Source: New York Times
Mario A. Segale, a Seattle-area real estate developer who unwittingly lent his name to perhaps the most famous video game character in history — Nintendo’s Mario — died at a local hospital on Oct. 27. He was 84.
Kim G. Brown, of the Marlatt Funeral Home in Kent, Wash., confirmed the death.
The cause was not specified.Starting in the 1950s, Mr. Segale built a small empire in construction and real estate in Tukwila, a suburb of Seattle. Around 1980 he rented a 60,000-square-foot warehouse to Nintendo, a Japanese video-game company, as it sought to expand to the American market.
In his book “Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World,” David Sheff wrote that a small company team had gathered in the warehouse one day and was struggling to come up with American names for the characters in the arcade game Donkey Kong. They were stuck on the character of a squat carpenter wearing a red cap when there was a knock on the door.
It was Mr. Segale, who had come to berate Minoru Arakawa, then the president of Nintendo of America, for being past due on the rent.
Mr. Arakawa was already under great pressure to succeed, and Mr. Segale “blasted him” in front of everyone, Mr. Sheff wrote. A flustered Mr. Arakawa vowed that Mr. Segale would get his money soon.
And as soon as he left, Mr. Sheff wrote, the…
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