I love how old photos look in 1080p. Also this means that one of videogaming's most famous and beloved (if a little misunderstood) titles was in fact originally a licensed game for a specific event, not at all unlike that horrible Atlanta "Izzy/Whatzit" mascot who was so annoying that the game itself got shelved (I think), or any other corporate-sounding "let's make game $$$ out of this" title. Thanks for posting this.
2 was the first one that felt like the more open-ish world of Mario games today. Neither 1 or 3 are bad games, but there were better 2D platformers in the form of Treasure games, and there really wasn't much like Mario 2 except for Metroid, and that really doesn't feel like a platformer at all either.
I saw that too. According to the card shown later that's some kind of a mascot for their matchmaker thing. This uh... Rhino with the horns sawed off and romantic candles shoved in the holes.