They’ve never all appeared together at once, except on lists of video game legends. And, surely, in the dreams of some gamers. They would certainly make a peculiar group: a mustachioed plumber, a fearless archeologist, a lightning-fast hedgehog, a warrior and a princess, a monkey in a tie, a marsupial in jeans and a strange yellow rodent. Outlandish, to those unfamiliar with them. But for those who know of their existence, these creatures are global icons.

In 2026, they’re celebrating with milestone birthdays: Mario and Donkey Kong are turning 45; Zelda and Link will be 40; Sonic turns 35, while members of a younger generation will be 30: Pikachu, Lara Croft and Crash Bandicoot. Indeed, this year is a true tribute to an era of unbridled creativity — the one that invented the first icons of consoles and computers. It’s also a reminder of the industry’s progress to this day. And, incidentally, it’s an opportunity to ask how they transcended the screen to leave their mark on popular culture… and why other video game celebrities have barely managed to do so since then.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the 2018 Nintendo Switch title, came closest to bringing them all together: only Lara Croft was missing, while Crash just made a brief appearance. The game also featured the protagonists of Metroid and Castlevania, two other key franchises now celebrating their 40th anniversaries.

It’s impossible to gather so many stars in any other art form. And lately, this is even the case when it comes to video games themselves, which are increasingly successful, mainstream, and populated. “When they first became popular, there were only a few titles. Mario [Bros.] was literally the first thing a generation of gamers ever played. Everyone was playing the same thing, so the most fascinating characters were known to everyone,” Chip Carter reflects. He currently hosts a television show, Where the Food Comes From, but was previously a pioneer of video game journalism, with a column in The Chicago Tribune launched back in 1990.

Mario and Donkey Kong had been on the market for almost a decade by then, since the 1981 game, where the plumber dodged the barrels that the gorilla threw at him. Shortly after, Nintendo decided to give each of these characters their own game series. And it was such a smash hit that the company’s only rival at the time, Sega, tried to regain lost ground with a rapid expansion.

“We wanted a character that kids could draw,” one of Sonic’s creators, Naoto Oshima, told the entertainment website Polygon back in 2018. Another co-creator, Hirokazu Yasuhara, explained that companies used to look for disposable protagonists, until those years changed the paradigm. They considered an armadillo, or another mustachioed fellow, who would end up being the villain. Finally, in addition to the blue hedgehog, the creators invented his backstory: he was supposedly inspired by the hair of a 1940s airplane pilot.

“At first, it was more or less the Wild West: totally free creativity, not a single suited executive in sight. [But] everything changed when Sony launched the first Playstation,” Carter points out.

This brought more competition, variety and Crash Bandicoot. The company needed a visual identity for its brand-new console. They took inspiration from the most famous ones: they tried to create a three-dimensional Mario and christened their first prototype “Sonic’s Butt,” because the 3D visuals often showed the protagonist’s rear end. It was initially going to be a Tasmanian devil… until they discovered the Australian bandicoot. Of course, the character was created without a neck, for the same reason they put a cap on the first Mario’s head: technological limitations.

Lara Croft herself emerged in the same year, 1996, from a similar creative impulse. She was supposed to have the surname “Cruz” and be of Latin American origin, while her creators projected that the game featuring this character would sell around 100,000 copies. Ultimately, however, her last name changed… and so did the result: seven million copies sold. This was thanks to a different formula: a saga that was finally female-driven (although conceived by a man, hypersexualized and an unintentional symptom of an industry that still needs to make strides toward equality) and very serious, in contrast to the lighthearted entertainment and humor of its rivals.

Carter literally witnessed the birth of Sonic and Tomb Raider: he had access to early versions of both games. He even played with Shigeru Miyamoto, the celebrated creator of Mario, Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda. And he still has a photo with Bubsy, a reminder that not all digital mascots survive the test of time: charisma is necessary, but so is the ability to innovate.

“The original Super Mario Bros. [from 1985] was full of surprises and hidden wonders. However, after many years, those things have somehow become commonplace,” the developers of Wonder — one of the most recent installments in the saga — reflected in their development diary. The game attempted to recapture that old sense of wonder, with the idea of a realistically proportioned Mario humming the classic music and exclaiming “Boing!” whenever he jumped. Perhaps the most striking thing about the character is his achievements: as of March 31, 2025 (the latest available data), the series had sold over 452 million copies.

“[The characters aren’t] popular just because of their games, but also because of how people grew up with them, associate them with childhood, friendships and passion, and have invested in them in terms of fan creations, conversations…” says Kirk Sigmon, a lawyer at Banner & Witcoff Ltd., a firm specializing in intellectual property. Oftentimes, the public even claims ownership of certain characters, as well as the right to make decisions about them.

The lawyer clarifies: “When a fan invests any kind of capital, they develop a sort of private property. It doesn’t mean they can create their own works and usurp copyright, but it does suggest that their passion should be granted some leniency. Without it, many characters wouldn’t have their popularity.” However, the expert also emphasizes that so-called “fandom” can become a cage, preventing certain icons from exploring new avenues, or simply doing something different from what their followers adore and demand.

Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong and Crash — among other characters — have also driven cars, competed in the Olympics and tried their hand at the most unusual disciplines in other installments of their respective franchises. Lara Croft will soon be in two new video games and her story will be told via a television series, following two previous attempts in film. Meanwhile, Zelda (2027) awaits its debut, while the plumber and the blue hedgehog are already enjoying success. Add to that clothing, toys, television series, and all sorts of merchandise and media coverage. The archeologist Croft even appeared in the 1999 Sanremo Music Festival, where Italian singer Eugenio Finardi sang Amami, Lara. It’s difficult to find similar milestones among more recent video game icons, such as Ellie from The Last of Us, Kratos from God of War, or Agent 47 from Hitman.

“These are characters that have managed to become ingrained in popular culture and the collective imagination,” says Antonio Planells de la Maza, a professor at the TecnoCampus of Pompeu Fabra University. This expert focuses specifically on two: “Link — the warrior from the Zelda saga — is the epitome of the updated hero’s journey, capable of becoming a symbolic canon that has survived for decades in the most unexpected ways. For example, his soundtrack has become an anthem played by classical orchestras around the world.”

Planells also returns to the blue hedgehog. He recalls how Sonic became an environmental icon, since in the character’s early games he freed caged animals. “Furthermore, the Sega-Nintendo rivalry — in which Sonic and Mario represented their respective companies — cemented a part of gaming culture for decades. With Sega’s demise, we thought Sonic would follow the same fate… but he’s been given a new lease of life through film, which has led to further installments of the games,” Planells details. Ultimately, to become an icon, a controller isn’t enough. Nor is past glory.

Several characters, in fact, are celebrating their 2026 anniversary with new titles, from Mario Tennis Fever to Pokémon Pocopia, as well as Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.

“If it wasn’t for that [2013] reboot [for a video game], Lara probably would have died a lonely, sexist death. People would have gone: ‘Remember the dark days when we had that weird woman with the gigantic breasts?’” Esther MacCallum-Stewart, a professor of game studies at Staffordshire University, told The New York Times in 2018. And part of the renewed success was due to the changes introduced by screenwriter Rihanna Pratchett: “We wanted to show a protagonist who was scared and insecure… something not so common in video games.” The result was equally impressive: the game sold 18 million copies.

“[Today], there are so many more games, of much more variable quality. Even if I tried my best, I’d die before completing all the ones in my library. [As a result], my attention span is less focused and each game is probably less memorable,” Sigmon adds. “There’s also a debate about whether current games are too postmodern, in the sense of tending to be unusual through their narratives. Some developers seem allergic to keeping their games simple and entertaining; in the worst cases, they fill them with content to make them unnecessarily long,” the intellectual property lawyer explains.

The truth is that the industry has matured, with its offerings and complexity exploding. However, at the same time, it suffers from the same problem as other artistic fields: an overwhelming number of releases, competing for the public’s time, both with each other and with films, TV series, books, and music. Donkey Kong Bananza was among the best titles of 2025 with precisely the opposite approach, as its development diary boasts: “You can enjoy it without having to rack your brain.”

It turns out that simplicity and originality never age, no matter how many years pass. Neither does the gorilla: so many acrobatics and not a single ailment at the age of 45. You just need to be a legend… and a video game.

Adriana Barraza likes to remember the Miami of the end of the 1980s as she would an old lover: with gratitude, wonder and nostalgia. The Mexican actress, who is today well-known in Hollywood, walked the halls of the city’s first Hispanic studios, right when their industry was beginning to take shape. She remembers this time with surprisingly clarity, as if she could still hear the echoes of those first rehearsals, the frenetic rhythm of shoots and the mix of accents that for many, turned Miami into a starting point on the way to bigger things.

“Everybody knows that in 1988, telenovelas [Latin American soap opera] began in Miami,” Barranza states precisely, having been a firsthand witness to this foundational era. Something new was being born, a meeting point in which Latino stories could be told from the United States, within reach of an audience that was growing quickly.

“If the viewer turned on the television and said, ‘Where is this from?’ you had already lost them,” remembers the actress, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work on the movie Babel in 2006.

The mecca of Latino melodrama

That Miami was a city in transformation. Its migratory growth brought new voices, new talents and new work. Its audiovisual industry was developing through studios that had been founded alongside expanding pathways and neighborhoods where Latino communities were beginning to define social and economic landscapes.

Against this backdrop, three production companies arose that would characterize the era: Venevisión International, Fonovideo and Telemundo Studios. The three produced between seven and 10 telenovelas a year between them, a volume that would leave Miami the primary center of production of Spanish-language productions in the United States. No other place in the country had anything like it.

This generated a job market for actors, directors, technicians, makeup artists, stylists, scriptwriters, caterers… all found their place within Miami’s panorama.

“There was fresh money, very fresh,” remembers Venezuelan director Luis Manzo, who came to Miami to counter the dominant production of telenovelas coming out of Mexico at the time. “The dream was to make a competitive product in the United States,” says the producer of shows like Perro Amor (Dog Love) and Silvana sin lana (Rich in Love).

His Mexican colleague Fez Noriega points to another structural factor: diversity. “Miami enjoyed the tremendous advantage of having actors from all throughout Latin America,” he says. It was a blend that enriched stories and facilitated international distribution. An Argentine would play the villain, a Colombian the male romantic lead, a Mexican the female protagonist… and the public saw it all as believable, because the city functioned as an intersection of identities.

One show followed another. The city’s studios were at work nearly 24/7. Miami was a constant set: residential areas turned fictitious mansions, beaches, offices turned backdrops for scenes at the workplace…

For actors, Miami represented a professional leap, “like playing in Division I,” says Pablo Azar, who arrived in 2005 to record El cuerpo del deseo (Second Chance). He sums things up thusly: “If you made a good telenovela, you earned a very large public.”

At the time, the Hispanic market was comprised of two major players: Telemundo and Univision, the Spanish-language TV channels that continue to dominate the market today. “There was no social media. There were no streaming platforms,” remembers Azar, who fought so that telenovela actors could join the SAG-AFTRA union and have better working conditions. “People saw what they broadcasted. And if you were on a good project, half the Americas saw you,” he remembers.

The city’s attraction was twofold: exposure and stability. “Many actors wanted to go to Miami because they would earn in dollars, and you could live well,” says Azar. The area’s cost of living was moderate, with accessible rents and continuous audiovisual projects allowing one to imagine a well-rounded life in the city.

There were months of regular work, reasonable wages and economic activity that benefited a metropolitan area that was in the midst of a growth period. Miami became, for more than two decades, the biggest factory of non-English-language productions in the United States. Some called it the “Hollywood of telenovelas.”

The market shift

For years, Miami believed that its machinery was unstoppable. But three factors changed the equation in recent times: streaming, increases in cost of living, and the elimination of tax incentives in Florida.

Streaming fragmented consumption and pulverized old habits of daily watching loyalty. 120-episode telenovelas were replaced by shorter and more sophisticated series that required less shooting time and had distributed budgets differently.

Concurrently, Miami has become one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets. “Costs are not as attractive as they were before,” admits Manzo.

And finally, the most important factor: the state of Florida retired the fiscal incentives that allowed it to compete with Mexico and Colombia. For the industry, this was a knockout punch

“[Taking away] the incentives was to blame, 100%,” states Azar. “With them went the shoots. And with the shoots, a lot of the telenovela jobs.” Mexico offered 30% tax incentives; Colombia, 40%; Florida, zero. The results were immediate: Venevisión stopped producing locally, Fonovideo disappeared. Telemundo Studios continued working in southern Florida — and still does — though it has outsourced some productions to the other locations.

At the Telemundo headquarters, which opened its newest studios in 2018, perspectives are more mixed. Javier Pons, chief content officer and director of Telemundo Studios, steers clear of any fatalism. “I don’t think the telenovela has lost strength,” he says. “What is happening is that it is diversifying. I don’t like labels. We have adapted.”

According to Pons, Telemundo Studios has resisted, transformed its model. And it hasn’t just survived — it has grown. “Before, we only did long telenovelas. Now we make long series, short series for streaming, films… we have multiplied our production,” he says. Pons is convinced that the company, which currently produces between three and four projects a year, has not only moved past the era when everything revolved around melodrama, but has also successfully adapted to the new era with formats that better match current audience interests.

The company, whose parent company is Comcast through its NBCUniversal division, continues to be the biggest producer of Spanish productions in the United States, with 22 studios.

Though Pons doesn’t hide the fact that producing in the United States is more costly than it was a decade ago, he says the natural home of Telemundo remains in the country. He’s still betting on the nation where the brand was born.

“We are committed to producing here, in the United States,” he explains. “Our audience is here, and we owe it to them.” That tie to the Hispanic public — “an enormous and extremely loyal audience” — is, he says, the motor that guides the studio’s creative and strategic decisions.

In addition, Pons says that audiovisual production has a significant economic impact on the region: “When one invests in these productions, the amount of money that enters and the quantity of jobs that are generated is enormous.”

The challenge of tax incentives

But even Telemundo recognizes that without tax incentives, it will be hard to get back to the massive production that once characterized Miami. A variety of those involved agree with him. Alejandra Palomera doesn’t mince words on the subject: “Incentives are incredibly important. Miami needs incentives, and many of them.”

And Miami-Dade County Commissioner René García, who is in charge of the government office that coordinates, facilitates and — when they exist — manages incentives for audiovisual productions in the area, confirms this perception. “I am trying to bring better conditions for film and television productions, but those incentives have to come from Florida. The state’s philosophy does not include them, and that makes it difficult to compete,” he says.

When he was a state senator, a position he held for over a decade, García ran a local $10 million fund geared towards attracting productions, but he recognizes that this isn’t enough. State-level incentives are the ones that drive large projects, and those simply don’t exist anymore.

Despite the decline of productions in Miami, the telenovela has taken on new life. Streaming platforms have reclaimed the genre, exporting it to new audiences, turning it into crossover content.

In the United States, the Latino community now totals more than 62 million, a gigantic market for any channel. Telenovelas, newly baptized with other names like “super series” and “premium series,” still work, and are still part of the Hispanic cultural DNA. What has changed is where they are produced, not what they represent.

When you ask those who lived through Miami’s golden age of Latino media whether the city can get back its shine, responses vary between prudence and hope.

“It’s necessary that we re-evaluate the telenovela,” says Barraza, who was there at the start of it all. “Of course there is hope,” says Azar, though he conditions this with “as long as the incentives come back”. Palomera thinks it’s possible, with better public policy. And García insists, “Miami is still the perfect place to shoot… but we need support.”

Miami is no longer the absolute capital of Latino melodrama, but it still has its spark. It only needs someone to blow on it. And perhaps — as in any good Latino telenovela — there are unexpected twists still to come.

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If you scroll through TikTok or Instagram long enough, you’ll inevitably stumble across the line: “Your frontal lobe isn’t fully developed yet.” It’s become neuroscience’s go-to explanation for bad decisions, like ordering an extra drink at the bar or texting an ex you swore not to.

The frontal lobe plays a central role in higher level functions like planning, decision-making and judgment.

It’s easy to find comfort in the idea that there’s a biological excuse for why we sometimes feel unstable, impulsive or like a work in progress. Life in your 20s and early 30s is unpredictable, and the idea that your brain simply isn’t done developing can be oddly reassuring.

But the idea that the brain, particularly the frontal lobe, stops developing at 25 is a pervasive misconception in psychology and neuroscience. Like many myths, the “age 25” idea is rooted in real scientific findings, but it’s an oversimplification of a much longer and more complex process.

In reality, new research suggests this development actually extends into our 30s. This new understanding changes how we view adulthood and suggests that 25 was never meant to be the finish line in the first place.

Where did the ‘age 25’ myth come from?

The magic number stems from brain imaging studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In one 1999 study, researchers tracked brain changes through repeated scans in children and teens. They analyzed gray matter, which consists of cell bodies and can be thought of as the “thinking” component of the brain.

Researchers found that during the teenage years, gray matter goes through a process called pruning. Early in life, the brain builds an enormous number of neural connections. As we age, it gradually trims back the ones that are used less often, strengthening those that remain.

This early work highlighted that gray matter volume growth and loss is key for brain development.

In influential follow-up work led by neuroscientist Nitin Gogtay, participants as young as four had their brains scanned every two years. The researchers found that within the frontal lobe, regions mature from back to front.

More primal regions, like areas responsible for voluntary muscle movement, develop first, while more advanced regions that are important for decision-making, emotional regulation, and social behaviour had not fully matured by the final brain scans around age 20.

Since the data stopped at age 20, researchers couldn’t say precisely when development finished. The age of 25 became the best estimation for the assumed endpoint, and eventually became enshrined in the cultural consciousness.

What newer research reveals

Since those early studies, neuroscience has moved on considerably. Rather than looking at individual regions in isolation, researchers now study how efficiently different parts of the brain communicate with one another.

A recent major study assessed efficiency of brain networks, essentially how the brain is wired, through white matter topology. White matter is made up of long nerve fibres that link different parts of the brain and spinal cord, allowing electrical signals to travel back and forth.

Researchers analyzed scans from more than 4,200 people from infancy to 90 years old and found several key periods of development including one from age nine to 32, which they coined the “adolescent” period.

For anyone well into adulthood, it may feel jarring to be told that your brain is still an “adolescent,” but this term really just signifies that your brain is in a stage of key changes.

Based on this study, it seems that during brain adolescence, the brain is balancing two key processes: segregation and integration. Segregation involves building neighbourhoods of related thoughts. Integration involves building highways to connect those neighbourhoods. The research suggests this construction doesn’t stabilize into an “adult” pattern until the early 30s.

The study also found that “small worldness” (a measure of network efficiency) was the largest predictor for identifying brain age in this group. Think of this like a transit system. Some routes require stops and transfers. Increasing “small worldness” is like adding express lanes. Essentially, more complex thoughts now have more efficient paths throughout the brain.

However, this construction doesn’t last forever. After around the age of 32, there is a literal turning point where these developmental trends switch directions. The brain stops prioritizing these “expressways” and shifts back to segregation to lock in the pathways our brains use most.

In other words, your teens and 20s are spent connecting the brain, and your 30s are about settling down and maintaining your most used routes.

Making the most of a brain under construction

If our brains are still under construction throughout our 20s, how do we make sure we are building the best possible structure? One answer lies in boosting neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire itself.

While the brain remains changeable throughout life, the window from age nine to 32 represents a prime opportunity for structural growth. Research suggests there are many ways to support neuroplasticity.

High-intensity aerobic exercise, learning new languages and taking on cognitively demanding hobbies like chess can bolster your brain’s neuroplastic abilities, while things like chronic stress can hinder it. If you want a high-performance brain in your 30s, it helps to challenge it in your 20s, but it’s never too late to start.

There is no magical switch that turns on at age 25, or even 32 for that matter. Like your brain, you’re in a decades-long construction project. Stop waiting for the moment you become an adult and start making active choices about how to support this project. Make mistakes, but know that the concrete hasn’t set quite yet.

Taylor Snowden is a postdoctoral fellow in Neuroscience at the University of Montreal.

This article was originally published in The Conversation.

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