Of Mario and Men

For most people, there’s Mario games, and then there’s Mario games.

By and large if someone that’s wholly unfamiliar with video games passes by a console and they see that familiar red-capped fellow on their screen (read: your parents, your roommate, your cat you have assigned a personality to), they’re likely to remark, ‘Oh, a Mario game! That’s nice. When are you taking out the trash?’ Usually these are games like Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Dr. Mario or even Tetris Attack (which had everything from Mario games EXCEPT Mario in it).

The game that sparked the debate. Also it’s pretty great.

But the real Mario games we know without explanation and all it takes is an emphasis on the Mario. These games have always had a firm grounding in two principles – you gotta jump, and you gotta move right. On occasion, we even need to mix these two tactics in a fashion that would make Sun Tzu jealous to overcome obstacles set forth by Bowser Koopa and a multitude of threatening enemies such as Goombas (whose main attack is walking slowly towards you), Koopa Troopas (same thing, but providing a weapon afterwards) and holes in the ground (simply existing). I poke fun, but Mario games are known for the blunt simplicity that eludes many game designers today – when you pick up Mario, young, old, or alien, within five seconds you usually know what to do. Well, mostly.

Mario, like it or not, has changed – there are changes all over in design of his game and it’s worth looking at. The story of Mario is, in many ways, the story of gaming.

In Which The Author Cries

There was a simpler time.

I’m going to go full disclosure here. Mario was great and all when I was a kid but me? I was all about Sonic the Hedgehog. I…I gotta go fast.

However, Sonic had a major flaw as a franchise that many fans wage war over to this day:  too many characters. …like a lot of characters. The next gen game series that started the decline in many eyes, Sonic Adventure, not only gave you several new characters with very different play styles as a large majority of the content. Sonic Adventure 2 outright forced you to play as them. And some of these levels were terrible. Terrible. Big the Cat had levels that were essentially fishing simulators.

I don’t want to fish! I want to play as Sonic! I WANT TO GO FAST*(%#!*%&.

Mario had none of this, and pretty much one thing has been established in Mario’s existence – he’s a-gonna jump, and he’s a-gonna move to the right. Super Mario 64, the mirror to Sonic Adventure, just had Mario and for the most part, point A and point B. It was in 3D, sure, but the point was the same. AND it was JUST Mario. Other characters would come along – Yoshi, Wario, Waluigi, sure, you bet. But ultimately they were playable characters in side stories, and in Yoshi’s case, just gave Mario more to do to make him better, like a power-up.

And that’s all a lot of us wanted. Mario’s about more than just playing by yourself, but if you WANT to? You can. Mario’s cast never really REPLACES Mario in a true Mario game – no, nowadays they just join him: either optionally, like in Super Mario 64 DS, as a party game (as the saying goes, there ain’t no party like a Mario Party) or just everyone playing Mario, Luigi, and two Toads saving the Princess. That’s just an excuse for everyone to play Mario at the same time. It’s a damned good excuse. It’s also probably why I’m sleeping on the couch tonight but that’s in my next article, ‘Mario Like You Want To Win: Why I Jumped Off My Wife’s Head For Three Coins’.

Control-Alt-Elite

I maintain that any game lives and dies by its control scheme. It doesn’t matter how good your plot is if you have to hit Up and L to jump.

Mario games never have those problems. The big difference that’s showed up over the years is that Mario just has so much to DO now in addition to running and jumping. Now, depending on the game, he can stomp things with his butt, double jump, sometimes triple jump, do a crouching SUPER jump, use a washing thingy, punch out some dudes, do a slide on his stomach, and god forbid you get any POWER-UPS. Then you can make clouds, fly in the air (in an assorted manner of styles), throw hammers, throw fireballs, throw SUPER fireballs, and that’s just the tip of the mushroom.

A valid viewpoint that makes people shy away from Mario in the 3D era was that a lot of this seemed like too much. Sure, in Super Mario Sunshine Mario could wash things away with FLUDD, but really, at the core of it, couldn’t I just be jumping on something by now? When you come for Mario you come for platforming and sometimes the gimmicks take away from that.

But man, Nintendo has struggled to keep players with platforming – the New Super Mario Bros series has just been Mario, but more (More-io?). The power-ups remain, but really they just, like Yoshi before, make Mario better than he already is. They don’t require much nuance or learning of controls – you can learn it in five seconds just by playing. The scope has changed, but Nintendo kept it simple. If you die? It’s YOUR goddamned fault. Not the controls’s, and not Mario’s.

You leave him out of this.

Contractually Obligated To Catch Them All

This is the big change, really …Mario never used to be about getting all of the coins. Sometimes I even just ran past. Coins? Ain’t nobody got time for that! There’s mushrooms right THERE.

But now? You want all the coins.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is so coin obsessed I have to charge my 3DS away from my wallet. Super Mario 64 probably started it, hungry for stars – all of them! Every single star! And the 3D games just took it from there.

And 1 Ups. So many 1 Ups.

It’s hard to really define the relative worth of a 1 Up since Super Mario Bros. 3. In most Mario games now, when you continue, be it from a save or a game over, you’re probably starting with 5 lives no matter how many 1 Ups you had;, so getting 70 1 Ups is only good if you’re playing Mario for 5 hours and die a lot.  On the other hand, if you CAN save with all of those 1 Ups, they accumulate – very very quickly. And if you’re chugging through and don’t die that often, that’s gonna be a lot of 1 Ups just…sitting there. But are you gonna throw your wife down a cliff to get a 1 Up mushroom first? Yes! Yes, you are! (Unless she’s reading this then no, honey, no!) Because Mario games these days have ingrained that collecting into us. We want all the stars and the coins and the 1 Ups. We might not even NEED them, but getting them is fun, and it’s not the whole point. That part is still moving to the right and jumping. But will I jump to get a Yoshi coin? Hells yes I will. That’s like points.

I Might Have Lied

You know what? Mario’s changed, but Mario is a lesson in how to do it gracefully – how to do it right. There’s subtle changes, but Mario, to this day, is still doing the thing that made him famous. Mario games are fun, simple, and when you play a Mario game, you know you’re going to have a good time. Maybe it’ll be a little more complex, maybe it’ll be a little more crowded since you’ll be playing with some help, or maybe you’ll be taking a detour for your 187th life.

But hey, I am still fairly certain that the Princess is still going to be in the castle at the end of the first level.

I am reasonably positive.

Probably.