"It's a-me !" -- just an imitation of an Italian accent or something more?

I've seen and heard this at various times:

It's a-me! [first name]!

(Most of the time, seemingly as a reference to Mario.) I was wondering what the intent was behind the construction "a-me".

Is it just to transcribe an Italian accent? In that case, what is it about it that sounds Italian to a native English speaker?

Or maybe is it conveying something more, like perhaps a lack of education?

The phonotactics of Italian does not include a sequence -tsm-, therefore Italian speakers naturally pronounce it dropping a vowel between -ts- (rendered as [ʦ] as in "razza", 'race' /ˈraʦʦa/ or, in phonemic notation, [ˈratːsˑa]) and -m-. The standard epenthetic vowel in Italy is [e]: e.g. in Tuscan, "sport" is, again, naturally pronounced [ˈspɔrte].

Epenthesis is a widespread phonetic phenomenon in substandard speech across Italy.

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Actually, transcribing an Italian accent, I would probably write It's-a me. Done that way because our mythical Italian is not used to words ending in consonants.

It's always attributed to Mario because he would say that in Super Mario 64 (audio)... When you started up the game, he would say "It's a-me, Mario"... There are likely other places that used this, but this is the reason it's attributed to Mario.

Admittedly, I have heard it used as a terrible Italian accent, but Gen Y grew up hearing it on video games :)