The genius of games come from the genius of the customers, not the developers. Rather, the genius developers somehow hold a mirror up where the customer’s imagination is best and fully realized. Shakespeare was so good at this that everyone believes Shakespeare presents his or her view of the world. Every liberal thinks Shakespeare is a liberal, every conservative thinks Shakespeare is a conservative, every religion thinks Shakespeare speaks to them alone, those who love Democracy think Shakespeare was an advocate for it, those who love monarchy think Shakespeare was an advocate for that as well. The customer’s imagination bent in toward itself truly provides the genius.
There is no better example of this phenomenon occurring in games than in Minus World in the original Super Mario Brothers. Take a look:
The world was difficult to get to. If you moved too far to the right after going through the wall, you’d end up in Warp Zone instead of going to Negative World. Negative World, being an endless 2-2 level (though if you died it would restart you in the middle), was quite a wonder back then. Even though the stage looped over and over, no one knew it at the time. People must have swam that level hundreds if not thousands of time expecting it to eventually lead somewhere. We didn’t know it was a glitch when it was first discovered! We thought it led to a hidden world.
And it did. The world of our imagination.
The Japanese version of Negative World was even more wild and strange. Take a look:
What a wonder are these hidden levels! Of course the Princess isn’t in the castle, she is flying through the air (along with Bowser). The castle stage is also very strange with flying bloopers (now that would be an excellent addition to the Mario universe, flying Octopus! Why not? They already have flying cheep-cheeps!).
Super Mario Brothers didn’t have glitches. They were all features that made the game more magical. Our imagination soared.
Super Mario Brothers was a game that made sense yet it didn’t. It made sense to run on the ceiling in the underground level, but it logically makes no sense. How do you run on the ceiling in underground? And what is a “Warp Zone”?
These glitches can provide some cool ideas for the Mario universe. The idea of the villains turning into other villains such as the goomba or spiny turning into a koopa troopa is very odd but cool.
I always imagined in the sequel to Super Mario Brothers to actually play the full Negative World. Alas, this world never appeared.
The way how I imagined it, “Negative World” would be a later level, maybe the second to last world of that 2d Mario game. You’d start off in what seemed to be 1-2 and if you went through the pipe, you started at the beginning of 1-2 and had to do it again and again (make 1-2 loop). The right approach would be to go through the wall (Warp Zone would take you back to 1-2 again as well). Of course, going through the wall would not be as difficult as it was in Super Mario Brothers. It would be as simple as walking through it. And then you go into the first pipe before Warp Zone lettering appeared.
Mario would drop into a massive ocean that went on seemingly forever. Once through the pipe at the end, Mario would be at Negative World where everything in the Mario universe was awry. Goombas would turn into koopa troopas if hit from below, octopuses would fly around, sometimes Mario could swim in the air! Bowser and Peach could even be flying around too. The more weird and twisted the Mario universe became, the more interesting Negative World would become. It is a world where all the rules are upside down.
While I don’t expect something like that in NSMB Wii, it is a great idea to include Minus World in a future 2d Mario. I’ve been dying to explore Minus World. The place would make sense in the Mario lore, and really nail that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ sense of falling through the rabbit hole that Super Mario Brothers is based on.
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