March 5, 2008
Four things that the Super Mario series gets wrong
While Super Mario may have starred in what are considered some of the greatest games ever made, that doesn’t mean he is without fault. The Mario games have been some of the most innovative over the years, but they’ve still missed some real opportunities to grow beyond the original concept. The following four areas are ones where Nintendo has simply dropped the ball on fully exploiting Mario and his cohorts.
Only sticking with one character
This may sound heretical, but the Mario games need to move beyond just Mario. Super Mario Bros. 2 is considered by many to be the dark horse of the series, and part of that reasoning is because it allows for the other characters to get just as much screen time as the boy in blue overalls. Good, they need it. Outside of Mario 2, however, only the DS version of Super Mario 64 has really made an effort to embrace the others as playable characters.
Yes, there are the occasional spin-off games for Luigi, Wario, and Princess Peach, but that’s not the issue. The proper Mario games need to mix things up a bit. Part of the fun of Mario 2 was that some characters were better for some levels than others. It took strategy to figure out who was best to select and when. The Mario series could use a bit more of this kind of thinking.
Mushroom Kingdom is not a real place
It would be nice for a change if the Mushroom Kingdom felt like a real place. Yes, part of the fun of the series is that it can basically take whatever form is needed, but then why set the last two proper Mario console titles somewhere else? No, the Mushroom Kingdom needs to finally be given a real identity so that players can feel like it is a real place, even if it is fantasy.
This does not necessarily mean going to Grand Theft Auto route, however. The world maps in the past have certainly helped, but it would also help to feel like it was all somehow connected together. It would help for there to be some sort of logic to the castle, warp pipes and other series’ mainstays. Make it feel like a lived in world and you might for the first time give the series a semblance of a plot.
The story is not the thing
Nobody plays Mario for the story, but does that mean there can’t be any? The Paper Mario series actually does implant a story into the Mario franchise, and the series is much better for it. Now, couldn’t the main games pick up this idea and run with it? No one is asking for Shakespeare here, but anything would be an improvement.
Honestly, how many times can someone get kidnapped? Whether it’s the Princess or Luigi or Mario-someone is always missing! You could even directly rip off another franchise and have a mysterious force that is devouring the Mushroom Kingdom. Think of The Never Ending Story meets Super Mario Bros. Any semblance of a real plot would greatly add to the sense of urgency while playing, because at this point players know if they find whoever is missing, someone else will be gone by the time they get back.
Bowser and his anti-competitive monopoly
Nintendo, gamers may simply be too nice to tell you that they’re a little tired of dropping Bowser and his kids into lava. It might be nice to try someone different at the head of the evil boardroom. Wart was an inspired move for Mario 2, but there needs to be more such moves if gamer apathy is to be reversed.
Of course, the easy argument is just to throw Wario in as the main bad guy. He has already appeared in the Mario Game Boy games, so why not as the main villain for the next Mario title? Well, quite frankly, many find Wario kind of a crassly designed character. He lacks that certain elegance that a wholly original bad guy such as Bowser boasts. Wart had that, and it’s perhaps about time he returned as a villain in the Mario universe. They could certainly do worse-Waluigi anyone?
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Written by: Justin Young
Filed Under: Games
Tags: Nintendo, Super Mario Bros.
Trackback URL: http://www.victimofculture.com/2008/03/05/four-things-that-the-super-mario-series-gets-wrong/trackback
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mario
May 30, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Mario 2 was a reskin though… it wasn’t even an actual Mario game
P Wilde
May 31, 2009 at 7:40 am
As soon as they called it Mario 2 it became an actual Mario game- and it was all the more interesting that the other characters were given the same prominence within it.
The Mario Kart series may have invented that genre but none of them are anywhere near as good as Naughty Dog’s Crash Team Racing on the PS1. CTR is a proper adventure with a variety of well designed tracks with multiple routes and interesting characters.
I found Mario 64 far too hardcore and unfriendly – it was bettered by Rare’s N64 platformers such as Banjo Kazooie.
Mario’s problem is that he has a daft mustache and dungarees – it’s not the 1980s anymore- and the fact that some bands have been embracing this mustached 1970s/1980s look only makes me convinced that it is wrong. Give his look an update.
I’ll always prefer Sonic the hedgehog because he symbolised Sega’s willingness in the late 80s to take on Nintendo’s console dominance- Sega were faster and cooler and they belatedly regained this with the Dreamcast.
Benji-Ninja
May 31, 2009 at 7:43 am
Haha yeah. I loved how often you referred to Super Mario Brothers 2 so often. The reason the game play in that was so different was because it wasn’t actually a mario game. It was originally a different game called Doki Doki Panic but it was redone and remade into a Mario game.
But I definitely agree with you for all those things. When i first saw the link to your article I thought it would be ridiculous ideas like “give mario a gun” or “get rid of peach” but your ideas are very balanced.
I’d love to play to play a 3D mario game with more then 1 character. Jumping around as Peach or Bowser would be a lot of fun. Co-op wouldn’t hurt either.
And it’s been my dream for years to see the mushroom kingdom fleshed out and given some form. Because in the very few times you get to play there it keeps changing but of recent we haven’t got to hang out there are all, we’ve been busy bouncing all over other dimensions, outer space, different countries and islands. But we haven’t explored the mushroom kingdom for a long time. Really not since Paper Mario.
And yes I love the mario stories in the RPG series. They’re so good and interesting. But the stories in the platformers are way lame. Galaxy was so stale except for the back story about Rosalina. That was very interesting but yes Mario should be more story driven.
And yeah I don’t mind Mario fighting a new bad guy if Bowser was playable. But Bowser is his arch nemesis and of late he’s only really got to be bad in platformers. In the RPG series he’s been replaced by Cackaletta, Princess Shroob, Grodus and Shadow Peach and Count Bleck. So being the big tuff bad guy in platformers is really the only chance he gets.
Montrealien
May 31, 2009 at 8:10 am
I understand that the common misunderstanding is that Super Mario Brothers 2 is not a nintendo mario game, however that is in some way false. The Famicom title Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic which was the original game before it became Super Mario Bros 2 was in fact developed by Nintendo EAD For Fuji Television and produced by Shigero Myamoto.
/on topic
Making a franchise where people talk about it 25 years after the series started is one thing it did right. The super Mario Franchise is what it is, writing an article with stupid reasons as to what it does wrong after 25 years of success is proof that it just needs to keep on doing what it is doing since for every thing it may be doing wrong, it does 25 other things right.
Tracy
May 31, 2009 at 9:54 am
What America calls Super Mario Bros. 2 was not meant to be a Mario game when it was created. That game was Doki Doki Panic. It’s pretty much exactly the same, but with different main character sprites. As such, “inspired” moves like Wart and the multiple character system really weren’t so inspired. Yeah, Nintendo made the game, but if they had planned it from the beginning as a Mario game, those ideas wouldn’t be in there. It would end up like the (arguably) real Mario Bros 2, which we call The Lost Levels in America. To me that says that–at least at the time–Nintendo didn’t want those elements in Mario games.
Xbot
May 31, 2009 at 6:58 pm
mario is a cool series it’s far from perfect and after you beat the games there is zero reason to come back, no to mention mario games are always so short with boring story line, but it’s cool, decent games to buy with the right price you know.