It's-a me, South Dakota! The 605 state gets a Mario-themed makeover

Symmone Gauer, Sioux Falls Argus Leader
·2 min read
Miguel Alfaro's finished map design for South Dakota. Alfaro makes maps in the style of Mario Bros. and often asks followers on Reddit which landmarks he should include in his designs.
Miguel Alfaro's finished map design for South Dakota. Alfaro makes maps in the style of Mario Bros. and often asks followers on Reddit which landmarks he should include in his designs.

What would South Dakota look like as a map in an old-school Mario game?

Miguel Alfaro has the answer.

The Peru resident designs maps of countries and states in the style of Super Mario Bros. for the SNES, and he just finished one for South Dakota. The 30-year-old "Geography Pin" illustrator has been designing maps for years and started with making educational geography videos on YouTube.

“I got into map-making by trying to figure out creative ways to display information about a country … in an appealing way other than just pasting photos of places floating above a marker,” Alfaro said.

He soon began receiving so many custom requests that he began making Mario maps, exclusively, 14 months ago.

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“[Mario] reminds me of my childhood, and I loved that the game always uses map exploration as a goal,” he said. “I wanted to combine my passion for geography and travel and get to know places around the world with that.”

His map of South Dakota includes landmarks like Mount Rushmore, the Dignity sculpture near Chamberlain, the Corn Palace and the Old Courthouse museum in Sioux Falls. A gold super star marks the Capitol building in Pierre.

Alfaro uses Adobe Illustrator to build everything from scratch by placing dots, dragging lines and filling in colors. Each tree, rock and landmark is unique to the place he’s creating, and it takes him about two days to make each map.

Miguel Alfaro from Peru designs maps in the old-school graphic style of Mario Bros.
Miguel Alfaro from Peru designs maps in the old-school graphic style of Mario Bros.

Alfaro will typically do a Google search on the area he’s mapping, but he also often asks Reddit or his followers what landmarks he should include.

“Sometimes there are gems that only locals know,” he said.

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While he doesn’t include every landmark people suggest, Alfaro said he might update them in the future once he’s finished all 50 states.

So far, Alfaro’s designed about 80 Mario maps, including 41 states, several Canadian provinces, and countries like the United Kingdom, Brazil and Japan.

People can purchase framed prints or tee-shirts of their favorite map on the Geography Pin website or follow along with his progress on Instagram.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: South Dakota map gets a Super Mario-themed makeover from Miguel Alfaro