I looked at a promotional image from Harmoknight recently.

It reminded me of some of the old Japanese Super Mario Bros. artwork from the NES/Famicom era.

I would like to know who was the artist behind these Super Mario Bros. pictures? Is he or she also the artist of the Harmoknight picture or is it an homage? Thanks for your help.

The Harmoknight thing is probably just a homage or a coincidence.

I'm curious about the original artist though. Those Mario pictures are pretty damn good.

It's probably just an homage. And I want to point out how awesome it is that Bowser looks completely different in each of those pictures.

@mariachimacabre said:

That second one is Wart, not Bowser.

I totally forgot about Wart.

I don't know about the other 2 games; however, when the original manga artist came late to the cover of Super Mario Bros., Shigeru Miyamoto drew the original box art for the game, which is your first example. It was probably then cleaned up by the professional artist when he did arrive, and then was imitated in all games afterwards.

@jewunit: It may be a year later, but it's still certainly worth answering.

To my best understanding, Shigeru Miyamoto designed the overall look and characters, but it was then cleaned up by other Nintendo in-house artists, including Yoichi Kotabe. Based on Shigeru Miyamoto's work, Yoichi Kotabe then did most of the illustrations for subsequent Super Mario games. He took the lead beyond the initial design phase, leading to a refinement of what the series style would become.

I believe HarmoKnight's cover was done by Ken Sugimori, who has also done the art for the Pokemon games. The person who conceptualized and led the game's art design was James Turner of Game Freak.

The artist you so enjoy is Yoichi Kotabe, whose style has been on Super Mario from the beginning. You have Miyamoto to thank for leading the design but Kotabe to thank for realizing Nintendo's vision and eventually making it his own.

you know, now a days a lot of these Japanese artist might be on social media. So it's not impossible to find this guy, most of the gamefreaks guys have come out compared to 15 years ago when we knew no one.