I awoke this morning at roughly the same time as my girlfriend. I told her I was getting up but she talked me into staying in bed to watch “The Wizard”. If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing “The Wizard”, it is a 1989 movie starring Fred Savage and Jenny Lewis (later to sing in Rilo Kiley). The tag line is as follows :
They’re on a cross-country adventure to the world’s greatest video championship. It’s more than a game…it’s the chance of a lifetime.
Basically there is a kid called Jimmy who is the half brother to Fred Savage’s character, Corey Woods. Jimmy seems to have Autism as he is has a very inward personality, barely speaks and tries to walk from Utah to California. So naturally my diagnosis is Autism. He and Fred decide to run away and stop of at a garage of some sort. There Jimmy is given a quarter to play Double Dragon while Fred Savage works on a plan. Jimmy gets 50,000 points on his first attempt. Jenny Lewis follows them and decides they should go to Reno and compete in the video game championships where the prize is $50,000. Along the way to the championships they meet some arrogant bastard called Lucas. Lucas scared the shit out of me when I was a kid and first saw this film. He had a device called “the power glove” which seems to have predicted the Wii nearly twenty years before it’s release. He keeps this glove in a special case and can destroy anything 8-bit that gets in his path. Like the Wii remote, when he wears the glove which ever way he moves his hand his character/vehicle moves the same way. Freaky.
We meet Lucas once again when he faces Jimmy, and quite frankly some other forgettable doe-bag, in the final of the gaming championships. This is where the genius of the film shines through and this essay passes over to Mario. Nintendo had partly funded the film and in a master stroke of PR they had Mario Bros 3 appear as the final gaming challenge of the competition. Nobody outside of Nintendo had ever seen Mario Bros 3 at this stage as it wasn’t even released. Everyone in the crowd pisses their pants at the potential carnage that will surely ensue. Jenny Lewis watches in the crowd and delivers her career defining line “Get the star Jimmy! The Star!”. I wont spoil the ending as you should give it a watch some Sunday afternoon.
After watching the film there was only one thing I had to do. I went to my living room turned on Super Mario Bros and tried to complete it without using any warps. I managed to get to World 2-3 without getting hit by an enemy once and I dared to dream that maybe I was a wizard and could complete the game without getting hit once. I managed to make it to World 7-4 where the the real danger is at a boil. I died and my game was over, I managed to rack up 569050pts.
The game is so simple in design yet there aren’t many games more complicated or sick. I refer to this conundrum as “Japanese.” The plot is so neat. You go through eight worlds, each divided into four levels. In the the final quarter of each world you go to a castle and hope to find the princess only to be told she is in another castle. The controls are utterly flawless. Run, Jump and combined together, Higher Jump. This is where I feel Mario has always stood out against his most dangerous rival, Sonic the Hedgehog. In Sonic’s Megadrive debut the controls are touch and go. It can take an age to walk up a hill. If you try and jump while walking up a hill then you go down the hill. It is very frustrating. With Super Mario Bros the controls become part of you.
I am a lover of most Mario Games, (save Mario 2, more later) but where this game has the real beauty over them all is the simplicity of setting and graphics combined with the difficulty and skill required for completion. In Super Mario Bros you start with three lives. Whenever the screen says you have one life remaining that is what you have got. 0 lives is not a life unlike in Super Mario 3. You also have to embrace with an open heart all the treats and goodies available to you. In most other Mario’s after this one coins are irrelevant and uncool. In this game though you must set out to get the coins as you really need the extra life that gathering 100 coins will bring. The same can be said for the Mushroom or “Mushy” as I like to call them. In Mario 3 the mushy is a beautifully designed, coloured item. It is cute and adorable, an item you could possibly have framed on your wall. Yet outside of Super Mario Bros debut it is often frowned upon.
“Oh great, a mushroom”
This is what one could expect to hear if one were watching someone play Mario 3 and they are given one, for free, at a Toad House. In the original I have actually prayed to God to let me find a mushy. The irony is that in the original the mushroom isn’t easy on the eye. In fact in all honestly it looks like a pixilated, half rotten mushroom with nil to zero charisma or personality. How cruel it is to base this on looks but it’s how we have been raised. Yet the original mushy has the last laugh. In the debut the mushy is a prince. A saint of an item. An item that helps you on your quest like no other. In Mario 3 the “beautiful” mushy is ignored, abused and cast aside.
In later Mario games you can be small and come across a Raccoon Leaf or a Flower and instantly transform into a Super Mario with special powers. How insulting. The mushy isn’t even required to make you big anymore. If you get hit then you loose your powers but are still big, yet there is again the likely hood of hearing
“Great, I’ve lost my powers. For Fuck sake!”
The power of being big is completely taken for granted. In the original you can only get a luxury item such as Flower Power if you are big. If you expose a flower from a question box and are made small before you grab it then even if you reach it you will only be made big. Some people probably think that is unfair and are harsh towards the flower, yet I thank the flower for giving me the courtesy of growth enhancement. It is not the Flower’s fault if I am too small to fully embrace it’s powers. It is thanking you for exposing it and letting it see the light yet most likely it will be called pathetic or even worse, a glitch. The same attitude is presented towards the 1-up mushy in the numerous sequels. In the original it is truly an occasion to find a hidden extra life. In Mario 3 and beyond you can usually find yourself with twenty or so lives within a hour of playing. It is a rare breed that can accumulate 10+ lives in the original without taking advantage of the Koopa Troopa Shell glitch.
Despite all the advantages of having Flower power in the original you are never more than one hit away from being small or two hits away being dead. If you have played well enough to be big by the time you reach a question box and it grants you a flower you should take it with utmost understanding that your time together is sacred and always one touch away from being over. In consequent sequels however you can be Flower mario, get hit, be Super Mario, get hit again, be small Mario and then require another hit to die. And if you die who cares? You have probably saved and continued. Just start the game again from where ever you died with plenty of lives. Super Mario Bros doesn’t reward this modern day save and continue culture.
In the original, “King Koopa” demands respect and isn’t some pussy. If you die in World 8-3 and have lost your lives then you go back to World 1-1 a little more experienced and with a little more tact you try again. “King Koopa” has earned the right to have the princess for a longer period as her hero has failed to conquer his kingdom, has failed to destroy the power of the Goomba. I have always admired the Goomba from World 1-1 as he was the first solider ever sent out by his leader. He was the first troop sent out to destroy the enemy. He was trusted with the job of tackling mario at his most fit and self assured.
In later additions his ancestors are a joke and often looked on as cute cartoon characters. The original Goomba probably turns in his grave at the thought of “celebrity Koopa Troopas” pleading with Mario to let them have a Kart in the Mario Kart franchise. I can share his view of disgust. But I also recognize that times have changed since his day and as can happen with the older folk, he wouldn’t embrace change well. There is certainly something honorable about his attitude but he is also a little closed minded. However, I can’t help but feel sorry for the Goomba of more recent generations. While the Goomba has persistently been loyal to their master, the “Koopa Troopa” has been dicking around in many fancy karts and bikes in Mario Kart. If there is a sell out it is the “Koopa Troopa”. Congratulating Mario or Luigi on a record lap or a Gold Cup while the Goomba waddles along the tracks picking up rubbish and routinely being driven over.
Secrets or Glitches?
For a game that is so simple and neat I have rarely come across a game as dark and complicated. Famous are “The Warp Whistles” from Mario 3 and the Secret Key and Lock scenarios in “Super Mario World” on the SNES. Yet you are expected to come across these items, certainly in the latter if you want to complete the game you must! Yet hidden in the original is probably the most diseased and sacred of all tricks and mysteries. In World 1-2, the level famous for warps to level 2 and beyond, you must ignore what you believe is the slick, secret shortcut and simply continue to the end until you see the pipe through which you can complete the level. You need to stand on top of this pipe, crouch and spend an age trying to jump at wall. If done right, what ever right may be, you pass through the wall to the area that looks like the warp zone to level four yet if you decide to go down the pipe you come to the minus world. The level is simply stated as World -1.
If like me you have the glory of being born in Europe then you will find yourself in an underwater level that no matter how much you try you cannot escape from. The only way to leave is for the time to run out and death to snatch you from all that you thought you had discovered. It is a conundrum that has caused people to make “fake levels” and post photos online showing what happens if you escape the level. It leads addicts with little else to do other than fantasize about what the level could mean and wishing their life away in order to discover the secret of the minus world. If you have the Japanese version then once you enter the minus world you have three levels in which you can compete. These levels are to put it frankly, totally fucked up. There is a world where you swim through the air and multiple Bowsers and Princesses sit motionless in strange locations. There are other levels where bloopers swim through the air rather than water and in the final castle level, there is no lava but only water and once you get to the axe at the end there isn’t even a Koopa to fight for it. Whoever first discovered this outside of Nintendo was probably thrown in an asylum.
Super Mario Bros is the holy grail of computer gaming. How exciting it must have been to hear that a sequel was on its way. I should mention that I am speaking as a gentlemen who lived in Northern Ireland and had little knowledge or use for the internet until about the year 2000. The 2nd game in the series went totally over my head. I do not have any memory of playing it. I seemed to jump from Mario Bros to Mario Bros 3. It was only when Super Mario All-stars came out that I had the horror of playing Mario 2 and discovering that it was in fact a pile of wank. As I became more familiar with the internet I decided to investigate what the hell had gone wrong. How could Nintendo go from the Top Selling game of all time (until wii sports) to the most pathetic fart with a little bit of follow through. The answer is down to Howard Lincoln who was then the head of Nintendo of America.
Mario 2 was developed to challenge players who had mastered the original. It wasn’t intended to revolutionize gaming as it’s predecessor did. I mean the Nintendo guys in Japan had developed the greatest game of all time so I think it’s wonderful to simply create a similarly designed game with horrifically more difficult levels. It’s like bands. I don’t worry when a band doesn’t develop it’s sound. If I love a band and adore their album then who cares if they release an album in exactly the same style. Im all for it. Howard Lincoln however felt the game was too difficult and would frustrate the American audience. He also felt the game did little to innovate the Mario Franchise. I can see his point but then why do you need to innovate the most successful gaming franchise of all time? What happened as a result was Nintendo took an already existing game called “Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic” and simply changed the characters in the game to Mario characters. How bent. This is in fact how Birdo and some other characters became known to the Mario world as they were characters in the weirdly titled game originally.
In Japan those geniuses actually got a proper follow-up, the game we know as “The Lost Levels”. To add to this strange mystery, in September 2007 the Japanese version of “The Lost Levels” appeared online to download courtesy of the virtual console, however it came with a note saying it would only be available for two weeks. Why there was such a catch I guess is “Japanese” but it seemed pretty cruel as people probably didn’t even realize it was available until much too late, I for example only found out last week. However in August 2008 it appeared back on the virtual console for good. Why the change of heart? It’s something we will never understand. But I am away to download it now and try and complete it. I hear if you complete it eight times in a row then you get secret worlds called World A, World B, World C and World D. There apparently is some other disgusting level known as World 9.
Thanks for reading but our writer is in the other castle. Sad Pun to end on.
[...] In the meantime as we await our new camera and to begin our most ambitious documentary you can read an essay about the beauty and mystery of Super Mario Bros. [...]