OK Malstrom, I’ve been reading all of the Mario-related posts you’ve made recently. Lots of trips down good ol’ SMB memory lane. Clearly you think SMB3 was the pinnacle of the Mario series, and I can’t say I disagree with you. And you’re absolutely right about the mythos of the series; recent attempts at making new 2D classics (Super Princess Peach, NSMB, etc..) have lacked *content* and left oldschoolers like you and I feeling very empty. But looking at your posts, it also seems that you think the SNES withered away post-’92, which makes me ask: Aren’t you forgetting something?
I don’t think SNES withered away post- 1992. I withered away. I got sick of the stupid 16-bit ‘console war’. Games stopped being fun for me then. The consoles were no longer interested in battling disinterest but were attacking one another. Instead of new forms of games, games began to increasingly grow violent and rise up the graphical scale to retain their spectacle (“OMG, did you see Mortal Kombat? Such blood!” “You see Killer Instinct? The graphics!!! OMG!!!!!”).
PC gaming at that time, however, was in a remarkable period. While kids were arguing that their console was better than the other, I was busy playing Wing Commander, Ultima 7, Warcraft 2, Command and Conquer, and other classics. PC gaming was far more exploratory and fun compared to console gaming at that time period.
For starters, I don’t think it’s fair to say that SMB3 was the last Mario game to expand the mythos of the series, or that SMW was somehow worse for being set in Dinosaur Land.
You can’t expand the mythos. If I wanted to mean ‘mythology’, I would have distinctly said ‘mythology’. Words mean things. I said, instead, ‘mythos’, which is something very different.
Mythos has various interpretations by modern scholars but is generally misinterpreted from Aristotle’s Poetics. There is no point in going in huge detail about it (think of massive books on the subject. It is a headache), but I thought I had explained mythos pretty succinctly. My favorite illustration of mythos is Alice in Wonderland being a mythos behind Super Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers could not exist without Alice in Wonderland. One could say that Alice in Wonderland was a seed and Super Mario Brothers was the plant.
You can’t expand the mythos because Alice in Wonderland has already been written.
Mythos is a type of source material but only a shadow of it. Part of Star Trek’s mythos was Horatio Hornblower. Now, Star Trek developed into a fictional history with its canon and characters. I am not referring to that. The further Star Trek got away from its ‘Horatio Hornblower’ roots, the more vapid and less ‘magical’ (if you may) it became. Star Wars mythos is, I believe, Asian myth and legends. There has been much research on Star Wars in that form so I tend to direct my attention to more unexplored areas. I think finding all these sources is all fascinating.
I recently watched the Bonus Round about ‘Gaming during the Recession’. David Jaffe, surprisingly to me, flashed off some great insights (such as, “Are we paying too much attention to the hardcore?” haha YES). At one point, Jaffe says something like, “You know, the games we are doing with shooting bad guys and all is stuff that has been done before and will always be done. We were playfully shooting bad guys as kids. We still watch movies of it. It’s eternal.” OK, maybe he didn’t say anything quite like that, but the meaning was there in one of his comments. He noticed some element of immortality being represented in the games, this element he witnesses in Human nature over the ages. It is this that I am referring as mythos.
It doesn’t have to have any grand meaning or anything. Mythos of Pong was tennis. In other words, tennis was the seed and Pong was the plant. If there was no tennis, Pong could not exist. Pong may not be immortal, but the mythos inside it is. Today, we find that torch being carried by Wii Tennis and its marketplace impact is fascinatingly similar to Pong in drawing out new players.
The great thing about Super Mario World was it was the first Mario game to step out of the 8 World
format and show a totally different part of the Mushroom World. It made sense, too. Mario just saved the world from Bowser three times, why wouldn’t he go on vacation to some exotic locale on the other side of the world? SMW also introduced Yoshi, who was pretty cool before they gave him an annoying voice in the late 90’s. So there’s your dose of mythos-enrichment right there. Great new characters, great new settings.
I agree about the voice. I preferred Yoshi when he ‘squeaked’ and then drums would be added to the music. I also praised the addition of Yoshi in that post.
Super Mario World was a great game. It just didn’t seem as ‘epic’ as Super Mario Brothers 3. I do wonder if the Ghost Ship in Super Mario World was one of the SMB 3 airships that crashed into the sea.
I’m not negative really at Super Mario World. It was a rushed game. It was a launch game. And it did add some new elements. However, the developers ran out of time with it. (I would give anything to see Miyamoto and Nintendo create a 2d Mario with a modern budget. NSMB Wii looks like it is being ‘phoned in’.)
But the one game I’m shocked that, amidst all this talk of legendary Mario games, you haven’t mentioned. I’m talking of course, about Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.
Yoshi’s Island was not well received when it came out. And the game had like four different directors for it if I recall.
Yoshi’s Island had little to do with Super Mario World, but that’s part of why it was so damn good. SMW, as you have pointed out, was just a watered-down SMB3 (which still makes for a great game, but does nothing to push the series forward). But Yoshi’s Island was an entirely-new platforming treat that felt fresh and familiar at the same time. Inspired music? Check. Mythos expansion? Double-check: Anyone familiar with the game’s intro, ending, and all the wildly imaginative enemies in-between can tell you that this game is sort of a love letter penned by Shigeru Miyamoto to Mario fans. The near-addictive gameplay doesn’t hurt either.
-Controversial graphics? Check. Extremely annoying whining baby? Check. Things that made no sense such as Yoshi turning into a helicopter? Check. Scavenger-Hunt and Collect-a-thon gameplay? Check. No branching map paths? Check.
Yoshi’s Island is a great game, as are many Nintendo games. But you need to understand that I am referencing 2d Mario not in some celestial gameplay sense but in connection to the Mario phenomenon that built Nintendo, drove the NES install base, helped launch the SNES, and then somehow died out in the middle of the 16-bit generation.
I’m sorry, friend. Yoshi’s Island, being right in the middle to latter part of that 16-bit generation, correlates to the death of the Mario phenomenon at that time.
Mario, who was once extremely popular, became ‘uncool’. Perhaps one of the contributing reasons was putting him as a whiny baby riding a dinosaur in a world that resembled a cartoon for toddlers?
One can argue that a game for the Virtual Boy was good. That is all fine and good. But the bottom line was that the Virtual Boy, and everything about it, was wrong. It was not helpful to Nintendo.
I am not arguing for or against Mario games as games. I am arguing for or against Mario in terms of entertainment phenomena. Once upon a time, Mario was huge and very cool. Then, he dropped off the map. How did this happen? I do not know. I am asking questions as to why.
I agree that Super Mario World as well as Yoshi’s Island were great games. But were they the correct games for continuing the Mario phenomena? Based on history since twenty years ago, I would have to say ‘No’. Something killed the Mario phenomenon. And the blame can’t all be placed at the feet of Sega’s marketing.
But why stop there? Even as late as the N64 Nintendo was putting out 2D Mario games that oozed with quality. Ever heard of a game called Paper Mario? If you’re really a fan of the Mario characters you can’t help but find something to like about Paper Mario. It captures the some of the charm of the early Mario titles but without going overboard and recycling too many old ideas (a la SPP, NSMB, and Yoshi’s Island DS). Yes it’s an RPG. But it’s 2D, it’s Mario, and it fits what I’m guessing are your criteria for a good Mario game.
Yet, it didn’t re-create that Mario phenomenon, did it? As far as the way I am looking at it, those Mario games didn’t do the job as the original Super Mario Brothers, SMB 2, and SMB 3 did. (Of course, Super Mario Brothers wasn’t the first Mario game. It was the original Mario Brothers. Why did Super Mario Brothers create a massive phenomenon while the original Mario Brothers didn’t?)
Why is it that all those Mario games failed to create such an entertainment phenomenon but only one (or two or three) 8-bit games did?
I don’t know the answer. But I think we should ask the question. If one is to create entertainment phenomena in the future or keep current ones going, it makes sense to study previous phenomena of why it lived and died.
When all is said and done, however, mythos isn’t everything.I wish every Mario game could capture me and enrapture me in a wonderful world of weird like SMB3 does, but in the end Nintendo’s number one focus is to make sure these games are fun. Which in my opinion, is exactly how it should be. But what say you? Is mythos really just as important as gameplay, and aren’t the games I mentioned prime examples of fun, mythos-expanding entries in the Super Mario series?
As far as I’m concerned, gameplay has been the most overrated element in games lately. Many of today’s games have excellent gameplay. If there were dozens of games with all unique gameplay, would that make you happy? What if all those games were about World War 2? Most gamers would squawk and say, “No, thanks. I don’t need that many World War 2 games.” This typical response shows us that gameplay is NOT king. Something else is!
In your email, you make my own argument. You say how there have been many Mario games, many various RPG Mario games for example. Mario Kart as another example. RPG Mario games have a very different gameplay than 2d Mario as does Mario Kart. What they do have in common is Mushroom Land. The *content* of the game world is the same. Or, rather, it would be more proper to say the mythos is the same. What is Mario Kart but racing in a fantastical Alice and Wonderland type setting?
Let us use another example: Castlevania. The mythos for Castlevania is obviously the Gothic themes. The gameplay for Castlevania changes from game to game. Castlevania II is very different from Castlevania I. 3d Castlevania is very different from the 2d Castlevania. But in the end, the mythos of the game remains consistent. You are not going to buy Castlevania and expect space ships.
It will be interesting to see how Zelda: Spirit Tracks sells. Many Zelda fans are not happy with the train in the game. “What is next? Laser beams!?” This anger is coming from the sense that the mythos is not being consistent. Starfox fans had a more intense similar experience with the ‘Dinosaur Land’. After all, people buy Starfox expecting to fly around in space ships and shoot things, not run around gathering nuts.
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