The One Where My Mind Wanders

Shortly after I ended my last entry, I recalled another interactive experience in a Mario game. It probably took a little longer to remember because it wasn’t meant to be played that way.

About a month after Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga came out for the GBA, a friend of mine told me he was having trouble with the final boss. We gave it a couple tries on the Cube’s Game Boy Player, so we could both see the action. Then an idea struck us: one of us could control Mario while the other focused on Luigi using a second controller! With each of us intent on keeping just one Bro. alive, the battle became much easier.

We decided that it went over so well, we’d try a playthrough of the game like this. It was really an intriguing experiment, and was fitting for a game that emphasizes teamwork. There was someone to laugh at the witty writing with, we had to coordinate our jumps in the overworld and Bros. Attacks in battle, and it generally gave the game a whole new value. But really, what I wanted to address was another Mario-related E3 announcement.

At E3, the third entry in the series has finally been granted a release…range of the third quarter of this year. It was also granted an English subtitle: Bowser’s Inside Story. If I hadn’t seen any game footage months ago, I would’ve pictured an interactive investigative reporting adventure. Bowser’s newest plot is to send out his troops not to cause physical destruction or kidnapping, but instead practice some muckraking journalism, attempting to oust Peach from office and make outcasts of the Mario Bros. by digging up dirt. Ask tough questions through the DS Mic! Take notes with the stylus, but make sure they’re legible enough for editors to read, or you could lose credibility! Send your fellow hard-beaked Troopas (pro) tips via Wi-Fi! Equip your Lakitu legions with cameras to find incriminating evidence! As Goombas or Dry Bones, “play possum” and eavesdrop in tight places! Send your Boos to listen for juicy gossip behind citizens’ backs, but be careful not to ask for a face-to-face interview!

…Yeah, actually, the Mario Bros. get sucked inside Bowser. (The first M&L game has the final boss fight inside a digestive system. The second has the majority of a chapter. And now, apparently, the majority of the game). The “teamwork” nature of the series has expanded to an unwitting symbiosis between the Bros. and Bowser: they can screw with his nerves and muscles to help him proceed, and he can devour certain foes for them to deal with. Bowser is also contending with (or working with; it’s hard to tell between the language barriers and the limited footage I’ve allowed myself to glimpse) an old acquaintance (I have spoilers!).

From what I’ve seen, I approve. My only real complaint about the previous M&L games is their unflattering treatment of the Bros.’ archenemy, and, while he hardly appears menacing here, he does seem strong and competent (if it’s anything like Super Paper Mario’s “give me Carrie to ride and I’ll eat this game for breakfast. Oh, and I have all the best lines, too,” portrayal of Bowser, then I’m happy).

Well, there’s my incredibly focused, insightful two cents on the new M&L. It really is a great time to be a Mario fan. If we can just hold out till fall, we can play this until new New SMB comes out, then play that until Super Mario Galaxy 2’s release. But that’s a topic for next time.

~Waluigious: The Game Boy Player's Co-op "feature" does not work quite as well for Mario Bros.

The One About Partners In...Platforming

First off: Yes, I’ve been gone for a really long time. I had college graduation, and the papers/finals leading up to that, and now a (thus far) fruitless search for a job. I can’t say it’ll get any better, because I shouldn’t be spending that much time posting on Mario blogs when searching for full-time writing-related employment, and should I find a job, I can’t imagine my free time is going to increase. But I do plan to drop in when I can, so hopefully there’s still people who occasionally check this place, because I’ve prepared a lengthier piece, and I don’t wanna rant to myself.

I sometimes brainstorm what the perfect entry of a given game series would be. Not as much as I used to, especially during the early 64 era, when flawless shining beacons called Yoshi’s Island 64 and Donkey Kong Country 4 danced through my mind’s eye with beauty the PS3 couldn’t replicate. No, I came to realize some of my expectations were unreasonable, and that developers have limitations. Still, I occasionally let my mind drift to what a future title should have. And on rare occasions, it actually happens.

Case in point: New Super Mario Bros. Wii. This little gem came completely out of left field during Nintendo’s E3 conference. Despite the (ridiculous) title, this is an entirely new game (New Super Mario Bros. 2? Newer Super Mario Bros.?). Anyway, the game’s intended selling point is its co-op feature: four-player co-op. Those who followed the DS title’s development probably remember the point where two-player co-op was a touted feature. Well, it looks like it’s been resurrected. Players 3 and 4 are blue and yellow Toads (I’m going to assume the blue one is “The” Toad going back to his SMB2 coloring, because my hatred of replacing established characters with generic mooks runs too deep), combining with Mario and Luigi to form a rather familiar color scheme. But more on the World of similarity Newer SMB seems to bear to one of its ancestors later.

If you don’t understand the significance of co-op available in a Mario sidescroller, you’ve obviously never gotten together with a couple buddies and tried to romp through SMB or SMW. You all more or less know the game back to front, but the sheer euphoric mood and attempts at backseat driving means none of you are all that focused. And if one of you is, he quickly realizes he needs to lighten up…until you miss the same jump twice apiece and get serious for a minute or two.

It’s a blissful, irreverent experience that only good friends and the wonderfully tight, forgiving, but not insulting design of a Mario-caliber platformer can create. And how much sweeter will it be when you can be playing with your friends simultaneously?

SMB3, the game that got so much right, came closest to this. You weren’t “racing” like in SMB; a stage cleared by Mario is out of Luigi’s way too. But the map kept track of the individual players’ cleared stages, and they could “battle” each other for cards, showcasing simultaneous play in the format of the Mario Bros. arcade game, a nice nostalgic nod. But while SMB3 included that “cooperative AND competitive” atmosphere, you still couldn’t interact in the main game, nor could you in any Mario platformer (Galaxy’s pointer doesn’t count) until now.

Admittedly, unless Nintendo makes an uncharacteristically difficult game, Newer SMB will flatten like a Goomba before four Mario veterans moving like a coordinated strike team (if strike teams jumped on things). But for kicking back with your buddies--all of whom are platforming veterans and KNOW how to play efficiently, they’d just much PREFER to chuck you into a Hammer Bro. every once in a while--the typical Mario format is just perfect.

Now, I suspect I’m preaching to the choir here, but I have to call out folks claiming this is a pale imitation of LittleBigPlanet. To its credit, LBP is one of the better things to happen to platforming. It has a “cute but not nauseating” charm that Mario fans should be accustomed to, and its level editor is beyond anything of the kind Nintendo has produced or seemingly will any time soon. But there’s more to “Mario Magic” than consumer brand recognition. Any platform aficionado can recognize Mario physics, as well as their accessibility and smoothness. And the aesthetics of the Mushroom Kingdom are just unbeatable. Kid-friendly, but something all but the most self-conscious college kids wouldn’t hesitate to revisit. If the level design is as good as any other Mario hop-n-bop (that isn’t Super Mario Land), it’ll be head and shoulders above LBP. And there’s no way LBP can compete with the locales, items, and enemies of Mario. Hey, what a segue!

Now, before my past hiatus, I revisited (Old) New Super Mario Bros. I won’t rehash that, but the point I want to dig back up is how it drew just as much from SMB3 and SMW as it did from SMB1, yet its developers went out of their way to exclude some of those games’ key elements. Well, with World’s notorious “red-green-blue-yellow” motif returns the late ‘80s/early ‘90s…with a vengeance!

Newer SMB is no longer shy about its inspiration. First off, while Old NSMB paid its tribute to SMB3’s suits with the Blue Shell, the sequel gives us at least two more. First is the Propeller Suit. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a tribute to Fly Guys, but regardless, flight has returned to Mario sidescrolling! I don’t really have much else to say about this power-up…it doesn’t look quite as thrilling as the Tanooki Suit or the Cape, but we’ll see. And did you notice no two Mario games have the same flight power-ups? Weird…

Next is the Penguin Suit, which fits in nicely. Penguins have enjoyed their niche in the series ever since Bumpties slid into Yoshi’s Island (subsequently bumping Yoshi into a fatal batch of thorns), and as cool as the Tanooki and Frog Suits were, I like ones based off series regulars. Word is this suit blends aspects of Old NSMB’s Blue Shell and Galaxy’s Ice Flower, which were my favorite items in those respective games, so I approve.

As you may recall, the developers felt Yoshi was way too new-age for a retro romp like New SMB. But Newer SMB is a different story, and the dino with the bottomless belly is back! He seems to handle much like his SMW debut, with the addition of his flutter kick. I couldn’t be much happier.

Finally…the Koopalings have returned! I’ll be modest and pretend it wasn’t because a Nintendo spy read my scathing criticism of Bowser Jr.’s existence from a few months back (thank you, thank you, thank you). Of course, that post details why the Koopalings fit this type of game much better than Bowser Jr., so I’m not going to reiterate that.

Newer SMB is reportedly coming our way Holiday 2009, barring a patented First-Party Nintendo Title Delay ™. But wait! There was MORE Mario news at E3? Read my opinion on two more Mario games soon!*

*May not be “soon” by any stretch of the definition, but here’s hoping!

~Waluigious: I'm not sure if I can trust that newcomer yellow Toad. He seems like the type to toss the others into a lava pit, filling the castle halls with shrill cries of "I'm the best!!"

In Which Wario's Woods And Wouldn'ts

Puzzle games, in general, do not feel the need to justify their story - they expect players to not pay any attention to it anyway, since this genre's forte is the mechanics. An RPG can get away with a glitched battle system and tacked-on minigames if it distracts from them with a shiny epic story, and an action-adventure can gloss over ridiculous camera movement with a beautiful scenery and catchy soundtrack... but no one ever plays a puzzle game for the background and presentation. Still, the levels of ridiculousness have to max out somewhere, but Wario's Woods, the famously difficult NES/SNES critter-bombing trip, takes it too far.

Wario and his horde of mind-boggingly un-Mario-like minions are overrunning the Mushroom Kingdom! Chaos reigns, havoc is wreaked, and one unexpected character rises to defeat them all... Toad. Not a hero, but an incredible simulation! This brave mushroom warrior (read: cowardly kidnappee) is assisted by his long-time friends Wanda the fairy of Mario & Wario fame, and Birdo. Wanda seems to be characterized only by two things: she loves helping people defeat Wario, and she can make stuff appear out of thin air. It was blocks in her first game, now she drops bombs. You'd expect Toad to use her powers and bomb the chips out of the fat troublemaker and his cohorts, but no. Absolutely harmless little fuzzy creatures have to be killed in a cruel color-match game to progress, instead. But wait, there's more idiocy!

Birdo's role is to somehow keep Wario from entering the field's control booth and replacing Wanda with... a Pidgit. Some random Pidgit who doesn't even have a carpet. Said Pidgit drops new fuzzy creatures instead, lengthening the time you'll spend in the level - while Wario shakes the arena and makes the ceiling drop down a bit. After a while of the titular wood owner's shenanigans, Birdo returns and the cycle recommences. Only when the last creature is blown up with same-coloured bombs does the round end... and a new one begins immediately afterward. The minions are fought differently in the two versions of this game: the SNES one has them competing with you in killing innocents, and the (strangely later released) NES one wises up a bit and makes Toad actually fight them with the bombs. However, this is not the point. The point is "WHY?!"

Why Toad? If Wario actually posed any danger to the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario and Luigi would confront him at once. They'd even confront him if he stole their newspaper! There's no reason given for them not being present. In fact, no known Mario characters beside the five main ones are there at all; the fuzzy things are completely arbitrary, while the evil monsters range from anime mermaids to hillbilly pumpkinheads to knights and trolls, i.e. stuff that has no business in a Mario game. But, inversely, if Mario and Luigi have actually been taken out by Wario's henchmen, how could a squishy mushroom possibly stand a chance against them?

Another interesting question. Why is Birdo on Toad's side while the Pidgit is on Wario's? There have been Pidgits in Mario & Wario, too, as the easiest enemies, so Wanda possibly has a vendetta against those birds. Didn't Birdo try to kill Toad and vice versa in SMB2?! "He might have thrown my eggs back at me, but if he's against Wario, then I'm his best friend!" Of course, Subcon might all have been a dream, but nontheless, this all seems extremely peculiar. And Wario actually becomes bigger throughout the game in the NES version. Creepy.

While other Mario stories with only a limited number of characters feel natural (SMB, SMW, SM64, SMS, SMG all had about 4-5 characters actually important to the plot), and even the side games make more or less a sort of sense if you squint and tilt your head sideways, Wario's Woods is downright surreal. An unlikely protagonist, a mini-boss from the game he first was playable in, and a Wario-hating fairy on one team, Wario and a minor enemy from the same game as the mini-boss on the other. The game feels like an elaborate prank, but it's not clear whom the joke is on. Most likely the player. Meanwhile, in an alternate dimension...
Yep. Definitely the player.

~Waluigious: The Subspace Emissary is a piece of cake to understand compared to this.

In Which Hypothetical Apocalypse Someday

Now, there's lot of talks about bad economy and Nintendo losing "gamer cred" recently by making their games too innovative for the fat basement fulltime-campaigning "hardcore" crowd. "Nintendo no longer fun", bitter critics hiss. "Wiimote shake a grave mistake, casual game incredibly lame", Dr. Seuss wannabes proclaim. Some doomsday prophets even blabber about Nintendo having to roll up and exit stage right since they can't keep up with the modern technology of the next generation.

Of course, that's all not true. We know that Nintendo is a software and hardware giant with a budget of billions of whatever currency you want, and it'll take more than some tiny global economic slump or insignificant 50% decrease of customers to inflict any damage to their HP. Remember, we're talking about a company that rose from a family-run playing card store to a brand recognized by everyone who hasn't been living under a rock on one of Saturn's moons for the last 25 years. They have won lawsuits against Universal Studios when they were just beginning to expand, and they survived the GameCube era!

Leaving behind all constraints of reality, however, if Nintendo were to be destroyed in the far future, one possibility would be losing the casual gaming market entirely to some sort of new entertainment medium. In 1972, the year Pong came out, people couldn't have imagined what kind of effect video games would have on society several decades later - they started as nothing more than just another kind of toy, something completely harmless and of no concern to adults. Who's there to say this can't happen again? Maybe a new form of fun-filled pastime is already in progress of being invented somewhere, and people will leave video games for it. Only the die-hard fans, whether the aforementioned shoot-fest aficionados or franchise nerds like the people who read Waluigious, will remain faithful to our hobby if it becomes obsolete. In such a case, Nintendo would have REALLY bad cards if it plans to continue with its current strategy - but all it would take is to revert to its old ways to gather fans again. A lot of the people who hate Nintendo now were avid fans back when the games were more difficult - "Nintendo Hard", if you will.

Mario games are kept up, and will be continued, because they have been around for long enough that even people who hardly ever played a video game in their lives recognize the character, and associate the experience with quality - after all, there aren't many people who were scared or depressed of a Mario game. The joy and fun they bring is universal... true, there are some who found them boring, even as little kids. Most of these people had serious issues and grew up to be criminals or heartless corporate henchmen. Tangents aside, no matter how casual Nintendo may get, no matter how needlessly new and abnormal the controls are, no matter how far the graphics slog behind the current industry benchmarks, we'll still get new Mario games just because he's not merely a mascot, but the main pillar that supports the company.

There's also the real-life-related scenarios likely to bring an end to Nintendo, which would be World War III, Japan-sinking earthquakes and basically any catastrophe big enough for people to think of playing video games in the face of such a disaster as nothing but blasphemy. But really, in these cases, we'd have other things to worry about, like shielding ourselves from the deadly radiation.

And finally, one thing we all - as Mario geeks - have to remember is: while the Mario universe is born within the halls of Nintendo, it lives inside the minds of the fans. Mario will die not when the last game is no longer produced, but when no one longer remembers him. I will remember. Will you?

~Waluigious: *anthem version of SMB main theme*

In Which Adage Associations

A lot of Waluigious' recent articles have been agressive or annoyed in their tone, so as a scenery change, how about some good old-fashioned Mario nerdiness without picking on second-party developers (who admittedly deserve all picking they get and then some)? And let's not even talk about third-party ones. The only good third-party game is Mario Party 3, rimshot, thank you, I'll be here all week, try the Whacka Bumps!

Adages, proverbs, sayings. All different words for "stupid stuff people repeat without thinking about it too much". Some of them have a grain of truth in it, while some just get used because they rhyme, and as a basis for witty newspaper headlines and B-movie titles. After stumbling upon a test asking to complete a bunch of them to test one's knowledge, or "street smartz", I thought: what would these look like in the Mario universe? They probably would have much less wisdom and much more references, like these:

-Never judge a book... by how far hidden in the ruins it is.
-A coin saved... is a coin lost when your wallet maxes out at 999.
-If at first you don't succeed... try savestates.
-You can't see the forest... after all, it is the Forest of Illusions.
-You can't teach an old dog... how to not run out of an autoscrolling screen and drop you into lava. "Poochy Ain't Stupid" my eye!
-You can lead a Yoshi to water... but he will still disintegrate upon contact with it.
-Absence makes... Bowser Jr. bearable.
-A rolling stone... looks like a giant black ball.
-Fools rush in... where wise men use Jugem's Cloud.
-The pen is mightier... than "Unarmed". Or... the pen is mightier than the magic castle-crushing typewriter.
-The road to the Underwhere is paved... with unfinished fan fiction.
-Better to be safe... than redoing the Pit of 100 Trials.
-Laugh, and the world laughs with you... except if you just got the Smash Ball. Then, only you laugh.
-Trapped between a rock... and a Thwomp.
-A friend in need... can stay where he is, you're in the lead! What, was that a blue sh-
-Those who live in glass houses... should not invite Clawgrip to a party.
-Don't put the cart...-ridges in wet or moldy places.
-When it rains... you must be on Luigi Circuit (GBA version).
-All work and no play...-testing results in a bad game.
-Birds of a feather... give out types of coins if they're green, red, or blue, and Shine Sprites if they're yellow.
-A journey of a thousand levels... starts by selecting number of players.
-An apple a day... will not keep Dr. Mario away, what with all those remakes on every system.
-If you can't beat them... there's still GameFAQs.

~Waluigious: Where ignorance is bliss... Song cue and good night!

Music of the Week, Vol. 11

It's time for another batch of music for another batch of days! This week, there's a single theme shared among the songs - they are all from a series of albums offered in Japan as rewards in the Club Nintendo program, called Nintendo Sound Selection. There were 3 albums released, all themed after Mario characters: Vol. 1 - Peach's Healing Music, Vol. 2 - Koopa's (Bowser's for all Wild Westerners) Loud Music, and Vol. 3 - Luigi's B-Side Music. Most of the tracks thereon are from different, quite randomly picked Nintendo games that suited the album's titular direction, but the last couple of songs on each CD are exclusive arrangements. In a surprise fit of surprising fittingness, there are exactly 5 songs in the collection that are non-trivial and Mario-related, which is exactly how much we offer in the Music of the Week section! So let's-a go!

Reminder and instructions: (skip if you already know)
In the right column, under the links, you will find a player with five songs. Choose one of them and click the Play button to listen to that week's wondrous tracks! Beneath the player is a link to the corresponding post containing the download links plus their descriptions.
Please note that the downloads of previous weeks are no longer available - so be sure to check back every week if you are interested.

Aural sensations of the week consist of:

~Rainbow Road (F-Zero X Expansion Kit)
Ah, the 64DD. A wonderful and tragically almost unavailable-outside-of-Japan thing. Exactly how tragic, you'll soon see... this little add-on allowed players to create their own tracks in the fastest racing game since sliced bread. One of the extra musical backgrounds was a remix of Mario Kart 64's Rainbow Road song which most players know by heart since there wasn't much background noise to distract from it while you drove 3 laps without anything exciting happening. Sing along: "It's called the road, the Rainbow Road, where enemies catch up in any mode! Even if youuuu play Toooaaad..."

~Po Pi Pa Pi (Mario Artist Talent Studio)
Why, why did this never get released anywhere but Japan? The three programs: Paint Studio, Talent Studio and Polygon Studio, were the natural progression of Mario Paint, and had they seen success, maybe we would have gotten Mario Game Designer on the Gamecube and Mario's Miraculous Universe of Art on the Wii. But no, we get some half-pounded Wii Ware crêpe instead. This kind of business decisions is what I despise about society. Anyway, here's a song from Talent Studio, the film-making installment. Listen and rage.

~Piranha Plant Lullaby (NSS Vol. 1 - Peach Original)
The first of the exclusive remakes - a soothing piano/strings arrangement of the Piranha Plant Lullaby, which seems to reuse and carry further the same idea from the official Super Mario 64 soundtrack, where it was just the piano. How strange that one of the quietest and most relaxing songs in the Mario series is associated with Piranha Plants, a species that is almost always portrayed as brainless, evil, or brainlessly evil.

~Fortress Boss (NSS Vol. 2 - Koopa Original)
Bowser's "Loud Music" album has all sorts of bossy, battly songs - and what's better than to end that experience with the good old Boom Boom/Koopaling fight theme, turned up to eleven? This remix would fit one of the SSB series games very well... that is, if the composers of the Smash songs actually knew where to stop and didn't cram a 152-instrument orchestra into every track just to show that they're "pros". The best songs in video game history have very few instruments - just ask the SMB main theme.

~Luigi's Mansion (NSS Vol. 3 - Luigi Original)
This is what Luigi's Mansion would sound like if it was actually scary, and if instead of Luigi humming, he sang in an opera voice while searching for his bro. The vocals are slightly off on some notes, but that only adds to the creepiness. It's funny how nothing in the actual game sounds or looks even remotely as scary as Big Boo's Haunt in SM64. There's the dead baby, but that's it. It might be dead, but it's still just a baby. That has nothing on the shock effect of that one Boo door and suspicious chest in Paper Mario... yeah, you know those.

The Picture of the Week is a panel from a Nintendo Comics System one-page short - "The Mario Bros. Guide to Grooming Your Moustache". Those heartwarmingly lame visual puns are what Mario comics are all about. Here's the entire page (click it, don't kick it):
Finally, the Video of the Week is another reason to cry out in agony at never having had a chance to play the 64DD. Mario Artist Polygon Studio is the inspiration behind the first level of Wario Ware, Inc.! It might even be the reason for the entire franchise! I wonder how many people didn't get this reference while playing it. 99.99%? 99.999%? These games were brilliantly creative, and it's an abysmal shame they didn't get the attention they deserved. The music, the graphics, the ideas... all lost to obscurity and undercover absorption by other series.

Tune in next time, same Waluigious-time, same Waluigious-channel! ...This makes no sense on every level, but hey. Sense is overrated.

~Waluigious: Sometimes the right fashion statement is right under your nose!

In Which We Join The Nintendo Fun Club

1987. A simpler time. A time where video games were friendlier, where cheats were exciting, where scores were still important, where the NES was "really rad" and the Game Boy was science fiction. That year, Nintendo brought out the first issue of the Nintendo Fun Club newsletter, which grew larger and larger over its 7 issues and finally became what is today known as Nintendo Power.

This very friendly publication had everything a gaming youth of that time could dream of: tips, tricks, hints, cheats, re- and previews, maps and Nintendo-related reports. Since Super Mario Bros. was the hot game in the two years the newsletter lasted, it was also a popular topic for all kinds of content therein. In fact, the very first page of the initial issue presented Super Mario Bros.:
And yes, Bowser is the deadly Koopa Turtle King. Besides very veiled hints at the existence of a "Warp Zone" in the cheats section, we're also treated to this wonderful constume at the "Super Mario-A-Thon Say No To Drugs Festival":
I sure bet that Mario scared people right out of every drug imaginable. The second issue, published a few months later, was much more direct in the cheat department and offered such techniques as glitching through walls and even getting to the Minus World. But the best thing is this Mario crossword puzzle - of course, not as demanding in its difficulty as Waluigious' in-house series since there's only one game it could ask about thus far - but still fun, even if the clues are a bit of a stretch. With the 1980's in mind, however, you can solve it without a problem:
The third issue gave the readers the possibility to send in their own SMB tips - some very strange and useless, like kicking a Koopa shell into a Podoboo for 500 points. As for the fourth edition - the first to be in full colour and have a dramatically increased number of pages - it only contributed with very bad Mario jokes the likes of "What does Mario get when he eats a Fire Flower? Heart burn. [sic]"

In the antepenultimate issue, we see not only hints at the eventual release of SMB2 and more "Cheep-Cheeps are cheap" jokes, but also these amazing dress-ups:
Wasn't it great to live back in the time you didn't have to be photo-realistic in your costume performance to get nationwide attention? That Fire Mario looks like he initially planned it to be a generic clown, but didn't have the face paint or the funny shoes and, desperate for an idea, wrote "M" on his hat. And the Nintendo salesman - priceless! He nailed the look of their corporate dress and mustache code very well.

Finally, the last newsletter, besides heralding the rise of the new Nintendo Power and its own end, gave the subscribers another, far better, fan-made SMB crossword puzzle:
Now that one truly meets the spirit of Mario geekiness, with questions about the actual game and not just some awkwardly-phrased plots to justify "re" as an answer. Just like the Super Mario World cartoon, the Nintendo Fun Club ended on a high note - and its successor is still with us to this day. Makes one wish all tales of the video game biznus had a happy ending like this.

~Waluigious: Ha, two more crosswords! Soon, there'll be an entire book!

In Which Let's Get Over With Trite "Mysteries"

Waluigious, as you know, is a Mario philosophy blog. It says so right there in the header image, on the about page, and even in a meta content tag that adds a description to a bookmark created of the site. As such, we look into unanswered, unasked and unlikely-to-ever-be-cleared-up questions and try coming up with vague traces of hints of clues that could possibly indicate something mildly relevant. The emphasis lies on "unasked", though. Not stuff that's been beaten to death everywhere by every tangentially Mario-related source ever. But for the sake of completeness, let's once again dive into the all-too-familiar pit of "secrets", "dilemmas" and "problems" that could last be properly identified as such about 10 years ago.

-What is Birdo's gender?
Every time that springs up somewhere, a Mario fan must do everything in his might to withstand the urge to retch. Yes, yes, we DO know about the Super Mario Bros. 2's manual calling her male. Counterpoint: how credible is SMB2, or should I say, Doki Doki Panic USA Extra Hack Edition? The enemies formerly known as Clawglip and Hoopstar would sure tell you lots of things about Ostro's gender. Another one that's often cited is the Super Smash Bros. Brawl trophy using the word "indeterminate". This comes from a series that's about as canon as Hotel Mario and has claimed that coins can't be confirmed as the official currency of the Mushroom Kingdom. How suspiciously strange that the people who use that argument forget that SSBM referred to Birdo as female... anyway, once you see over that boiling sea of hypocrisy, the truth shines clear: BIRDO IS A SHE. Even in Japan (at least on the surface, since those guys really like crossdessing jokes).

-Which Donkey Kong is which?
DK games don't fall squarely under this blog's competence range, but here's what someone who knows a fair bit about Mario thinks of this issue: it doesn't matter, it's a freaking monkey. OK, that was harsh and untrue. Of course that's important, but it's also much too confusing for everyone to ever agree on one thing. The original 1981 Donkey Kong has to be Cranky now, since Cranky always makes references to those times - the biggest one being the title screen of Donkey Kong Country - and the current one is either the grown-up DK Jr. or DK Jr.'s son. My choo-choo train of thought says it's DK Junior, since a) simians age quickly and the time span between Super Mario Kart to Mario Kart 64 might have been just enough for him to grow out of the "Jr." name (just like Tiny Kong grew up suddenly between two games), and b) Cranky Kong calling him "grandson" was just sign of forgetfulness that comes with old age. How could three generations fit into one plumber's middle-aged period, anyway? Mario didn't show any signs of aging since his Jumpman times yet, and assuming that brat DK Jr. could have had a fully-grown son in that time is plain unrealistic. The final verdict: Occam's Razor says "don't make up more generations than needed".

-Who is the Koopalings' mother?
As if that mattered now that the Koopalings are video game history not unlike the times where the industry wasn't sequel-driven and split into warring "hardcore" and "casual" fractions. Bitterness aside, Bowser's taking that secret to his fiery grave. Maybe it actually was Peach, maybe there was no mother and Kamek created them, maybe she just demanded her name to be withheld from publicity and sealed it with a contract. Now that the children got replaced with Bowser Jr. and those Mario Party self-replicating Mini-Bowsers, it's all a mishmashy hodgepodge anyway. Bowser's never been that good a father and doesn't look like he's capable of a relationship with anyone, so here's my simple solution: they are all adopted for nefarious purposes. Alternately, they're the product of asexual reproduction.

-What's the relationship between Peach and Daisy?
There is none. It's hard to believe, but they just look that similar because all human females tend to look like this in Mario games. Just take the throwaway sports series people - look at their faces! Just like little unimportant Daisy clones! Ella, Azalea, Sherry... give them slightly richer clothing and you have more princesses to assign to more plumbers! And Rosalina - now that's proof that every human-looking woman with a crown will look like some other princess' twin sister. In fact, the more important question here is: where are their parents and why are they still princesses and not queens if they have none? Maybe because they're just politically powerless figureheads anyway and no one cares as long as they look pretty. The truth is sometimes very sad... but they get lots of cakes, gardens and dresses! Yay!

-What is the Mario/Wario Bros.' true backstory?
This question has no answer! In fact, the entire series hinges on it never getting an answer. Just like philosophy would collapse if someone found out the meaning of life or physics would collapse if someone invented magic, the Mario series would jump several sharks at once if we finally found out just where Mario and Luigi got those accents and evil doppelgängers from. There's Brooklyn, and Yoshi's Island, and the ridiculously hard-to-justify Yoshi's Island DS, and Pauline, and the edutainment games, and the ongoing merging of canon, fanon, Ganon and Anon in all types of Mario media. While it may make less sense than the Zelda timeline theories, both draw their energy from their inherent mystery - a mystery that would ruin everything if it was ever solved. Let's concentrate on smaller stuff first before even thinking about the big picture - and there are new questions in every object, every character, every string in the fabric of Mario's world.

~Waluigious: Good, now to more burning matters. Shroobs: animals or plants?

In Which I Boil With Topsy-Turvy Rage

Yoshi's Universal Gravitation? More like Universal Abomination!
This looks like fun, doesn't it? Good old-fashioned Yoshi-style platforming, freshened up by a tilt sensor known from hits such as Wario Ware: Twisted!, all in wonderful stationery graphics, right?
I must admit, Artoon, the current Yoshi game developers, sure did a great job in making this game look OK in screenshots, to lure in unknowing victims and naive daydreamers like me who believe the Yoshi series did not fall down a bottomless pit right after Yoshi's Story. For the years I didn't have that game, I assumed it to be slightly better than Yoshi's Island DS in quality - the controls seem innovative, the backgrounds adequate, even the music I was quick to add to my collection isn't half bad. Where I have been mercilessly lied to by all official sources, however, is the gameplay, the core of everything that has the guts to call itself a video game. Many gritty developers on "hardcore" "adult" consoles like the SlayStation and the HaxBox have long forgotten what gameplay means, replacing it with explosions, achievements and a brown palette, but Nintendo ought to know better than let Artoon handle such a franchise.

Briefly, the gameplay can be described as "neverending tutorial". You wait for the actual game to begin... and when you see the credits you finally understand that there will be none. Every level is made up of a number of tiny rooms - in most cases 4 to 6 - and the player is given a mission. "Collect X coins", "eat X apples", "defeat X enemies", "make it to the finish in X seconds", "don't defeat more than 3 enemies", "make it through an autoscrolling level", or any combination thereof. Combined with the fact that once you go to the next room, there's no turning back, and that in more than half of the rooms movement is quite strictly limited to one direction - and you have a game with no freedom and tons of responsibilities.

Let me reiterate: there is NO FREEDOM in this game. You are expected to take a certain route and do things a certain way, that is, tilt your GBA and press buttons at certain times, to get the best result (gold medal) for the level. Taking shortcuts is not only discouraged, it's punished. If Super Mario Bros., the most popular Mario game, was like this, then you would have to kill all Goombas in a level and collect all coins (while you STILL cannot go left, making all mistakes unrectifiable) to make the flagpole appear. And if it was like this, nobody would play it! Yoshi Topsy-Turvy is like that minigame that most RPGs have that is awfully annoying but which you have to beat to proceed, only it's the entire game. As with Yoshi's Island DS, the programmers just have misconceptions about what fun is. As everyone can attest, being able to do something is fun. Artoon people think having to do something is fun. You see the little complication here.

Speaking of abilities outside the player's tilting of the screen, Yoshi has almost none: walking (one speed only!), jumping, flutter-jumping (which is extremely useless and awkward as the height gain is tiny at best), and sticking out his nerfed-length tongue. That's it. Egg shooting, ground pound, sniffing? Bah humbug! Multiple Yoshi colours? Bah double humbug! Any sorts of cute idling animation, at least? I can has humbug? Granted, there are three transformations: a Yoshi balloon that glides directly downwards and is controlled by tilting, a Yoshi boat that sails to the right and is controlled by tilting, and a Yoshi ball that bounces around unpredictably and is "controlled" by tilting. Mucho variety, there. In fact, it seems like the designers just had the motion sensor in mind and literally built the game, or at least this... software... around it.

The visuals deteriorate the further you progress: while they may seem nice at the beginning, almost everything you see in the second half of the game is a recolor. Sprites have very few animation frames, and look stilted... unlike the Shy Guys, who don't have any stilts in this game at all. It's surprising how little different enemies they managed to get in... and don't get me started on the main characters. OK, I got myself started, it's too late now.

So there is that book spirit Hongo who is what tabletop enthusiasts would call "Lawful Neutral" - while trying to lock away a rampaging Bowser in a pop-up book, he accidentally gets Yoshi's Island in as well, and doesn't want to release either. So the other spirits of the book send Yoshi on ungrounded-in-logic missions to get to the last page of the book and defeat Bowser so that the island can be released... presumably, with the defeated Bowser on it... who, of course, just takes a month to recover and attack in the next game. Never has a plot been so doomed to be pointless. The spirits are all horrible clichés, have personalities so obnoxious that you want to punch them in their pre-rendered faces, and have no reason to exist. "I'm the spirit who loves money more than anything! Sparkle, sparkle! You need four or more Happiness Medals to get past me!" Why, the Teletubbies were deeper than that heap!

In the end, after 50 levels of waiting for the game to begin, you fight Bowser. Lean him on his side to make his flames go over you, and make little parachute bombs descend on him. Six hits and a few strong tilts later you are faced with the end. At least the final scrapbook pictures are nice, even though none of the stuff depicted there actually happens in the game:
See those eggs in the last panel? Those are "Egglings". Creatures from Eggland. Really. Shaped like eggs. And Bowser turned them into apples. I repeat: Bowser turned eggs into apples. Must all be part of his master plan:
1. Kidnap Peach
2. Attack Mushroom Kingdom
3. Turn eggs into apples
4. ???
5. Welcome, new galaxy!
The Egglings are absolutely ineffectual and serve only to have something to collect. There are 100, many different types, and all have names so lame that they break laws of physics. There's one with an owl pattern called "Snoozer", and one with a bear design named "Snoozy". I wish I made that up.

All in all, Yoshi Universal Gravitation is not a game for people who like good games. We can only hope that the future will bring some positive development like the Artoon studios getting caught in a blaze of fire so that Nintendo relegates the Yoshi series to EAD again.

~Waluigious: It is a warning to fangame developers what not to do.

Music of the Week, Vol. 10

Wow, it's actually only been a week! Time sure flies like a fireball. For these songs, I did not have to get out the ripping devices, but someone out there has the annoying habit to encode things with variable bitrates, which not only looks ugly when trying to display it in real time, but also is incompatible with Waluigious' web-based player. Don't overcomplicate it, people! 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz ought to be enough for everyone.

Reminder and instructions: (skip if you already know)
In the right column, under the links, you will find a player with five songs. Choose one of them and click the Play button to listen to that week's wondrous tracks! Beneath the player is a link to the corresponding post containing the download links plus their descriptions.
Please note that the downloads of previous weeks are no longer available - so be sure to check back every week if you are interested.

This week's tracks are...

~Sherbet Land (Mario Hoops 3 on 3)
What can be said about a game that pits the huggadorable Mario cast against the whiny emo Final Fantasy crew in a match of almost-basketball? Not much, except that the music is too good for the premise. Why did it get some of the most relaxing and cool songs of all Mario spin-offs when the action mainly consists of dribbling over question spaces? This game has remixes of the SMB2 ending theme AND the SMB3 Toad House theme, and at the same time features a walking cactus as a ball player! All illogic aside, the Sherbet Land performance just plain rocks, no matter how cheap those magic moves of the Square blokes are.

~Wario's Theme (Densetsu no Starfy 3)
In this article, I already reported of Wario's cameo in the definitely-not-a-starfish's game - and here is his speaking theme. Basically, it's a mix of generic seaside, the theme of all Starfy games, and Out Of The Woods, the theme of Wario Land 3. I wish I knew what Wario is saying in that game - I bet it involves lots of "cold, hard cash" and "crrrrushing someone like a grape!" It's kind of strange that this game has the most dialogue for him from any official source ever (save of course the instruction manuals which he often dictates himself), yet it's just a guest appearance.

~Staff Roll (Donkey Kong '94)
You have chased the ape across 9 worlds, each full of dangers, temporary ladders and too many switches to count, and what do you get in the end? A picture of Mario, Pauline, DK and DK Jr. all peaceful while the credits play. Is that really what you died 68 times for in one of those Iceberg levels trying to figure out the right order of puzzle piece placement? I think Mario clubbing Donkey K. into submission and lighting him on fire would constitute a much more satisfying conclusion.

~Versus Plains (New Super Mario Bros.)
If there's something every lonely nerd like me despises, it's content in one of their favourite games that they never get to see because they need a second player to access it. Until human cloning is perfected, though, I am most unlikely to find somebody to play with in the hyperrural out-and-beyond-skirts I live, and so I am left to cracking my knuckles in anger while watching YouTube videos of multiplayer gameplay. This track is just too good to be excluded from the single-player experience - at least they could have done something in the vein of SMBDX's Boo Races.

~Super Mario Bros. Theme (Bitpop?, by Jonas Tunander)
The Bitpop? and its sequel, Bitpop? v2, are outstanding video game remix albums by the Swedish musician Jonas Tunander, reimagining the tunes of some NES/SNES and a few later-era classics. This one is just a sample of his style, the actual collections can be downloaded on his site. It's less pretentious than most other video game musicians, and just plays the melody without great stretches to make it sound "original" that only grate the ears.

The Picture of the Week is something very rarely seen - the Super Hard ending of Wario Land 4. The fact that Wario gets a different vehicle (a semi-truck in plain Hard mode) and two extra scenes are being shown in the background is so unknown that even spriters don't rip it because they're unaware of it. As Waluigious has always said, Wario Land 4 may just be the most neat and polished 2D game ever. Here are the last 2 of Wario's dreams, ripped from the background:
That does look suspiciously like Mona up there, and that's before she gets introduced in Wario Ware, Inc. Interesting... might she be just an evolved extra? (Also, red car. Hm.)

The Video of the Week is a scene from Mario Power Tennis where Shy Guy gets unmasked (of course, without revealing it to the audience) and Luigi gets utterly shocked by seeing his real face. I hope Nintendo will choose to continue not to reveal anything, since it is the hinge-fundament-pivotal point for a fan game I plan on making... and because no matter what it is, most people will be disappointed anyway. It's like giving Link a voice, really.

At this rate, there might be a new update each week! This sounds like something from a fairy tale, I know... but even fairy tales come true... in movies?

~Waluigious: I wish Wario kept that green hovercar for the Mario Kart games.