theplustwo
04-07-2005, 12:04 PM
There is a moment during the parade in the ending of Paper Mario where day turns to night and all the floats in the parade light up. At the same time, the colored circles on the various Toads’ heads start pulsating glowing light. When I was watching that sequence for the first time, it struck me how phenomenally weird the Mario series is. Sure, other games have “crazy” enemy designs or intentionally silly goals, but the Mario series strikes me as the weirdest game that isn’t trying to be weird.
Let’s start at the beginning. The first true game in the series is Super Mario Brothers. Even this game is spectacularly strange, the goals involve eating mushrooms and flowers so that you can grow larger and shoot fireballs at a giant turtle. Being the first game in the series, it provides quite a starting point of weirdness for the other games to build upon.
Super Mario Brothers 2 is also quite weird, but the entire game is a dream sequence, so that is somewhat understandable. However, it’s not as weird as some of the others. Most of the elements make sense. You get a heart, it adds to your life. You get a star, it makes you invincible (which was previously established in an earlier game in the series so it’s no longer nonsensical). But the game is pretty much considered non-canon so it doesn’t really count.
Super Mario Brothers 3 is the height of the series’ bizarre tendencies as far as I am concerned. Things are weird in the other games, but a lot of the elements in Mario 3 pretty much suffer from total logical disconnect. In Super Mario World, for example, you can get a feather as a power up. Feathers are associated with birds, which can fly. The feather gives you a cape, which is associated with flying as well. Guess what the cape does? It allows you to fly.
So there is at any rate a sort of prevailing logic. Not so in Mario 3. You get a leaf, which gives you a raccoon tail and ears, which allows you to fly. I suppose the leaf could be associated with the brief flying it bestows by the fact that leaves are often blown through the air by the wind, however, it was probably used because the designers of the game wanted a different method for the power up to come out of the “?” block. The mushroom rises up and then glides horizontally, the flower just stays on top of the block, and the star bounces. The leaf pops up out of the block, but I assume they wanted a way to make it easier for the player to get than if it just fell back down again, so they used a leaf so it could float slowly downward. However, the connection between raccoons and flying is beyond me. Perhaps the people at Nintendo were thinking of flying squirrels but got a little confused?
Then there’s the tanooki suit. Something strange about the tanooki suit is that while the leaf actually gives Mario ears and a tail, wearing a suit that includes the same elements has the same effect. However, the strangest thing about the tanooki suit is the statue ability. Apparently raccoons can turn into statues while we’re not looking. The weird thing too is that when in statue mode, Mario is no longer wearing the suit and suddenly has a cane of somaria like staff.
Some research shows that the name “tanooki” is actually derived from the Japanese creature tanuki. However, these animals do not have ringed tails, they can’t fly, and as far as I can tell they can’t turn into statues.
Most of the elements in the games that follow Mario 3 make more sense. Long established standards like mushrooms making you bigger and flowers giving you fire power are still present, but the new power ups usually make some sense. A hat with wings lets you fly, turning into metal makes you heavier, turning invisible allows you to walk through walls, and so on.
I think the thing is that if something comes close to making sense, but doesn’t, your brain kind of pukes while trying to “fix” it. If you were to make a game about a lava surfing robot penguin on mars, your brain would just accept it as being silly and that would be that. But when you have a normal looking dude running around you kind of accept it as being possible, so that when strange things start happening the weirdness tends to jump out at you.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be playing Super Mario Advance 4.
Let’s start at the beginning. The first true game in the series is Super Mario Brothers. Even this game is spectacularly strange, the goals involve eating mushrooms and flowers so that you can grow larger and shoot fireballs at a giant turtle. Being the first game in the series, it provides quite a starting point of weirdness for the other games to build upon.
Super Mario Brothers 2 is also quite weird, but the entire game is a dream sequence, so that is somewhat understandable. However, it’s not as weird as some of the others. Most of the elements make sense. You get a heart, it adds to your life. You get a star, it makes you invincible (which was previously established in an earlier game in the series so it’s no longer nonsensical). But the game is pretty much considered non-canon so it doesn’t really count.
Super Mario Brothers 3 is the height of the series’ bizarre tendencies as far as I am concerned. Things are weird in the other games, but a lot of the elements in Mario 3 pretty much suffer from total logical disconnect. In Super Mario World, for example, you can get a feather as a power up. Feathers are associated with birds, which can fly. The feather gives you a cape, which is associated with flying as well. Guess what the cape does? It allows you to fly.
So there is at any rate a sort of prevailing logic. Not so in Mario 3. You get a leaf, which gives you a raccoon tail and ears, which allows you to fly. I suppose the leaf could be associated with the brief flying it bestows by the fact that leaves are often blown through the air by the wind, however, it was probably used because the designers of the game wanted a different method for the power up to come out of the “?” block. The mushroom rises up and then glides horizontally, the flower just stays on top of the block, and the star bounces. The leaf pops up out of the block, but I assume they wanted a way to make it easier for the player to get than if it just fell back down again, so they used a leaf so it could float slowly downward. However, the connection between raccoons and flying is beyond me. Perhaps the people at Nintendo were thinking of flying squirrels but got a little confused?
Then there’s the tanooki suit. Something strange about the tanooki suit is that while the leaf actually gives Mario ears and a tail, wearing a suit that includes the same elements has the same effect. However, the strangest thing about the tanooki suit is the statue ability. Apparently raccoons can turn into statues while we’re not looking. The weird thing too is that when in statue mode, Mario is no longer wearing the suit and suddenly has a cane of somaria like staff.
Some research shows that the name “tanooki” is actually derived from the Japanese creature tanuki. However, these animals do not have ringed tails, they can’t fly, and as far as I can tell they can’t turn into statues.
Most of the elements in the games that follow Mario 3 make more sense. Long established standards like mushrooms making you bigger and flowers giving you fire power are still present, but the new power ups usually make some sense. A hat with wings lets you fly, turning into metal makes you heavier, turning invisible allows you to walk through walls, and so on.
I think the thing is that if something comes close to making sense, but doesn’t, your brain kind of pukes while trying to “fix” it. If you were to make a game about a lava surfing robot penguin on mars, your brain would just accept it as being silly and that would be that. But when you have a normal looking dude running around you kind of accept it as being possible, so that when strange things start happening the weirdness tends to jump out at you.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be playing Super Mario Advance 4.