Luigi (, Ruīji?) is a video game character created by Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the younger brother of Nintendo's official mascot, Mario. Luigi first appeared in the arcade game Mario Bros., where he was featured as a main character alongside Mario.

Since his debut, Luigi has appeared in many games in the Mario series, most often accompanying Mario as a central protagonist, but has also starred as the main character in Mario Is Missing!and Luigi's Mansion. In most games of the main series where a two-player mode is available, Luigi fills the role of the second player's character, but he has also appeared occasionally as a playable character in a single-player game, either as part of a secret revealed in-game or an unlockable.

While Luigi was originally created as a character identical to Mario except for being colored green instead of red, his rise in prominence in the Mario series lead to the adoption of a personality and style of his own. He is normally depicted as cowardly, but when he does get the courage to step up, he can be tough and overcome his fears. His voice is performed by Charles Martinet, the same actor who provides the voice for Mario, Wario, Waluigi and other characters in the Mario franchise.

The events leading to Luigi's creation began in 1981, during the development of Donkey Kong, where the famous Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto had created Mario (then known as "Jumpman") hoping that he would be able to recast the character in a variety of different roles in future games. Miyamoto had been inspired by the game Joust to create a game with a simultaneous two-player mode, which lead to his development of the game Mario Bros. in 1983, with Luigi filling the role of Mario's brother as the second playable character.

In accordance with Nintendo's marketing policy of naming and promoting individual characters, the new character was given the name Luigi, which was inspired by a pizza parlor near Nintendo of America's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, called "Mario & Luigi's".While Mario was originally portrayed as a carpenter in Donkey Kong, the duo of Mario and Luigi in Mario Bros. were styled as Italian plumbers. Software constraints of the time (similar to those that gave Mario his distinctive look in Donkey Kong) meant Luigi's first appearance was restricted to a simple palette swap of Mario designed to represent the second player.

Graphically and in terms of gameplay, the characters were completely identical, except for their color schemes.

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