My Brother is an Italian Plumber?
by Samuel
Hypothetical scenario time, children. A large, monstrous, mutant vegetable with fangs as long as Bowie knives comes towards you leering menacingly, as you happen to innocently be waddling along the pavement towards the shops in search of… I don’t know; chocolate or something. Do you a) scream and run away, b) put it down to whatever you were smoking before you left the house and ignore it for a hallucination, c) put it down to mental illness and ignore it for a hallucination, d) grab a weapon and attack it, e) try to make friends with it, or f) jump on its head and hope that either coins or a flashing star of temporary invincibility falls out of its arse?
Now, if the Mario games didn’t exist, I’m almost positive that nobody would even consider f) unless they were a bit mental. For that matter, if the Mario games were conceived today, I’m also certain that they would look more like a cross between Soldier of Fortune and Assassin’s Creed II, with a burly Italian with a moustache armed to the teeth with hidden knives and big guns, blowing mother fuckers’ faces off for giving him shit like how the princess was in the other castle the entire time. He’d be cursing in guttural Italian and spouting cheesy one-liners, blood and limbs flying everywhere in his wake.
The thing is I don’t recall what little of the 80s that I can remember being that infested with flying tortoises or killer mushrooms. And if I jumped on someone’s head, rather than stars or money coming out of every orifice, they’d get quite peeved for some inscrutable reason.
There are so many great things about the 80s but, unfortunately, the ratio of "teh awesomeness" to "I'd rather die than ever admit that I ever liked that or dressed that way" is massively skewed. Dynasty. The Birdie Song. Black Lace. Nuff said.
The reason I’m rambling on about this just at the moment is that I am considering the way in that most long-time gamers (i.e. old farts like us, and not those squeaky 10 year olds on Live who so annoy Richie) tend to go about praising Mario for having been such an inspirational and medium saving chap who paved for the way for gaming to make it as far as we have today, rather than vanishing into the void as a failed experiment in entertainment. The problem being primarily that once you get past the SNES/Megadrive generation, and if you ignore Nintendo’s output to focus on the wider gaming industry in general, I don’t actually see much of an influence from the tubby plumber with the world’s most unlikely girlfriend on other games. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, everyone and his mum was copying Mario or trying to capitalise on his success, and without Mario we probably wouldn’t have Sonic the Hedgehog or Jazz Jackrabbit (anyone else remember him? The bastard offspring of Bucky O’Hare and Mario). At a push you could point to Sony’s half-hearted and ultimately futile attempts at making Crash Bandicoot a similar kind of mascot on the original Playstation. But frankly, apart from the first couple of games he’s best forgotten.
Wolfenstein 3D. Ahead of its time and sporting baddies with cleft palettes for some reason
As hardware has advanced and more has been made capable in terms of realistic physics and graphics, games have shifted away from traditional platformers generally, and cartoony acid trip experiences, in order to focus on blowing things up, or shooting things in the head with a high-powered rifle. Apart of course from Nintendo, who still retain an almost absurd attitude to “mature” content in their products, and have been making the same five games over and over each console generation. I love Nintendo, don’t get me wrong, but once you get past Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem and Starfox, and those franchises’ associated spin-offs, there isn’t much left.
I can look at most games today and mention a genre-defining title from the past that ultimately inspired it. Any real-time strategy game owes something to Dune II and the original Command & Conquer. First person shooters have a lot to thank Wolfenstein 3D for. RPGs tend to have at least one thing in them that comes from Final Fantasy. Space exploration and trading games are all evolutions of what started in Elite. But where are the games where you can look at them and immediately think “that’s Mario”?
It’s a pretty heretical thing for a gamer to suggest when gaming culture has codified Mario’s status as an untouchable hero of the medium, but I’m not actually convinced that Nintendo’s koopa-squashing mascot was too vital in helping games get to where they now are. I’m certain that people will shout at me for saying so, and come out with all kinds of counter argument, going to the most basic one of “without Mario and the NES, games wouldn’t exist at all”. I don’t buy that though. Even without games, computer technology and the internet would have continued to advance, perhaps not quite along the same lines, and eventually some bored nerd would have decided that he could make a game on his PC to amuse himself, put it online to show off to his mates, and the thing would have snowballed from there. It might have taken longer, but games would still have made a comeback and progressed to their current status as an almost mainstream, accepted hobby.
We have so much to thank Nintendo for, but we should prioritise.
The only company in gaming who really owes the Mario games a massive debt of gratitude is Nintendo, but that’s just because they have been remaking those same handful of games, until now we find ourselves with their latest console, the Wii, which has a bigger library of games than any other console this generation, and yet only about a dozen of them are worth actually playing. I’m not sure that’s progress. In fact, I’d argue that Mario has been holding them back, and the true legacy of the Italian plumber is a stagnating and slowly rotting shell where once stood one of the greatest and most innovative games companies of all time, but that found itself unable to move on from success it achieved two decades ago.
Last five articles by Samuel
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Very enjoyable read.
In the 8-bit era pretty much all enemies had ‘poisonous skin’ and you were fucked if any part of you touched them so yeah the Mario mechanic is an odd one. Braid used it but that was a homage anyway.
In answer to the original question though, if it was a blue turtle scuttling across the room at me (and somehow looked threatening) I’d boot it. Possibly. If it was a spider, I’d move house.
Nice to know it isn’t just me with a house-moving level of dislike for spiders. You’re exactly right, Rich, touching an enemy in pretty much any other game from the time meant you either died, or lost a lot of health, so Mario was definitely out there in having you go out of your way to leap on them. On the other hand, if you fucked up the timing of the jump and they touched you before you’d left the ground fully or if you just fell short right in front of them, then the poison skin feature suddenly came back into full effect and killed the tubby little git instantly without his having been fortified by a mushroom.
…am I the only person reading that last bit back and thinking how insane it sounds? Mario has to be the result of a week-long drink and drugs bender, that or Miyamoto has somehow eluded being sectioned for decades.
there’s something to be said for it though. switching up the gameplay like that I mean.
it’s like Space Giraffe. everyone thinks it’s a Tempest clone but where Tempest is about stopping the aliens getting to your rim (ooer), Space Giraffe encourages it.
well, ‘encourages’ is maybe a strong word for a game that continuously rapes your eyes with a lava lamp.
I never played a Mario game, not even taking a shot of someone elses game… it’s not something I did on purpose though, it’s just the way things worked out. Same with Sonic, I remember playing it on mum’s Mega Drive once and thinking it was pants, so I never bothered playing it again. Those are the types of game that most people will try and cite as being the forerunners to gaming today… I say bollocks. I’ve been playing since I first set foot in an arcade and neither Mario nor Sonic were so much as a pixel in their creators’ eyes. As far as franchising goes though, I think Pac-Man was probably the first to really go for it… the lunchboxes, sticker sets, scratch cards (I loved them!!), bubble gum, bubble bath, duvet covers, and a piss poor comic strip from either the Whizzer & Chips or something around that time.
It’s actually quite sad that, given the number of years I’ve been gaming, I can only really list maybe twenty games that I’ve played. Maybe if I really thought about it I could reach thirty, but certainly no more than that.
I can’t agree with your last paragraph at all. Nintendo have had ludicrous success with the Wii and DS handhelds, so they are still achieveing success with their consoles. As for innovation, there’s the wiimote and nunchuk or stylus touch screen, both of which have brought alot of new people into gaming that have never bothered before. So much so, that both Microsoft and Sony are trying to get in on the motion controller side of gaming entertainment.
The article isn’t about Nintendo though, or their consoles… it’s about the fact that Mario itself is often cited as the pivotal game that started the whole huge gaming phenomena. Nowhere does it say that Nintendo aren’t successful or innovative… I think maybe you’ve grasped the wrong end of the stick?
The last paragraph states that Mario is holding them back, them being Nintendo. It also refers to “where once stood one of the greatest and most innovative games companies of all time” – I read that as they are not innovative anymore, which I don’t agree with.
The last sentence I would agree with if the Wii didn’t exist because I don’t believe the Nintendo 64 or Gamecube got anywhere near the success the Super Nintendo did, but the Wii and DS are both huge successes for Nintendo. Or if the last sentence was referring that Mario games not innovating anymore, I would accept, but it says games company.
There were other points I didn’t agree on, and maybe I have read the last paragraph a different way it was intended, but to me it’s referring to Nintendo as a company, not just one character.
Well, Rook is half right about that final comment. The thing is, I don’t see Nintendo as being an innovative maker of GAMES. Not really. They just remake the same games with the same characters, over and over, upgrading them to match their latest hardware. Mario holds them back insofar as they don’t really make new and exciting games anymore.
I could get into an argument about how commercial success doesn’t make something good, but I happen to love the DS (as past debates and arguments on the site here should tell anyone who saw them), and I like the idea of the Wii. I think the execution however leaves a lot to be desired, because when you have hundreds of games on a system but only a tiny fraction of that total is actually any good or worth playing, then it doesn’t matter worth a shit how innovative a console is or how well it sells. Nobody ever looks back and says “that was an awesome piece of kit, I loved it even though all the games were shit.” They remember the games they played on the system instead.
Let’s see now… decent Wii games… well, Twilight Princess doesn’t count because it was also on Gamecube. Okami doesn’t count because it was on PS2. So genuinely special Wii exclusive titles, purely in my own personal opinion;
Metroid Prime 3
Nights Into Dreams (Not made by Nintendo)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Fire Emblem X: Radiant Dawn
Super Mario Galaxy
Little King’s Story (not made by Nintendo)
My Life as a King (not made by Nintendo)
So remove the non-exclusive titles from the good games and all I can think of are 7 really good games for the system, 3 of which aren’t made by Nintendo, and the remaining games all either belonging to one of those five or six (I forgot Kirby when I wrote my article) core franchises or being a derivative from them like Brawl.
So I stand by my argument that Mario is holding Nintendo back. Pikmin is the last time I can recall the big N doing something genuinely new, and I hated that first Pikmin game, so… yeah, I think the company has stagnated in terms of their software output.
The article was mostly about Mario as a character and a franchise, and its influence on gaming. However, Mario is also the public face of Nintendo, and their main poster boy, so Mario reflects very much so on Nintendo as a company that makes games. My final paragraph reflected this, because regardless of how many Wiis they’ve sold, to a long-time advocate of their systems like myself it is a bitter disappointment in how few really good or original games are available to play, whilst Nintendo just keep churning out shitty remakes or spin-offs of old games and expecting that to be good enough. It started with the N64 and the Gamecube, though those systems still managed to have a lot more games than the Wii has in the same kind of time frame, and what games they released were of an impeccable standard. The Wind Waker is a personal favourite, because it actually showed a little fucking thought having been put into refreshing the Zelda franchise. When everyone screamed out against it because of the graphics, that only hurt any chances of Nintendo trying to be innovative with their software, and I hated that so much… you can see clear evidence of regression in response to that feedback from the moron fanboys by how traditional and frankly uninspired Twilight Princess is in comparison. They ruined Paper Mario too when they made the latest one, moving away from what made Paper Mario work and stand out as a unique game on the N64 and Gamecube, by regressing and making it feel more like a half-baked revamp of the 2D platformers of yore.
I have 40 Gamecube games on my shelf, and 30 N64 games. I have 12 Wii games, 2 of which are only there because other people with no clue about games bought them for me as presents, and Nintendo have recently hinted at the console being replaced soon. That’s not progress, and it’s not good enough, and Mario has to take some of the blame because he’s such an easy option, Nintendo know they can churn out any old shit with Mario on the cover and people will buy it in droves. Just look at Mario Party for proof of that. Fucking awful games, always go Platinum.
I enjoyed the Mario games back on the SNES and NES but never really played the subsequent gens’ offerings. I suppose I grew weary of the character and lost interest. Once in a while Nintendo will come up with a new franchise which is innovative and Pikmin was an example which leapt into my head as I was reading this, which you then mentioned in your previous comment. I loved the first game and haven’t yet really tackled the sequel. I was waiting for it to get another incarnation on the Wii…only for it to typically be a port with a bit of re-jiggery for the motion control. Fuckers. Exactly the same thing happened to Animal Crossing which to me, was another pretty impressive title with great franchise (and merchandise) opportunities. Again though, just like the DS version, there were a few little extras tacked on and the rest was just as re-hash rather than a true sequel.
Nintendo seem to squander the new opportunities that they create which is wholly disappointing…whereas other franchises are milked to stagnation :/
Was Pokemon genre defining? Not being an expert, maybe, maybe not, but someone will probably be able to tell me it had previously been done to great success, though arguably Monster Hunter or whatever else hasn’t had the all consuming massive exposure and worldwide culture embedding that Pokemon has. It has become part of pop culture, news, in-jokes, patois, spoofs, almost part of life…that is pretty admirable…whether it has had a similar impact on actual games…I can’t say but it would be a healthy wager.
Pokemon is kind of like Mario in that it inspired a thousand clones, but all made by the same company that made the original, and all with increasingly silly titles, and all which sell millions despite changing very little. I don’t really know… technically Pokemon’s genre is given as RPG, and in that respect, no, I don’t suspect that Pokemon has had much of a wider impact on the genre. Monster Hunter could arguably be similar, but it was first on the PS2, much later. Monster Rancher is often cited as a similar title too, even though you only raise one monster at a time, and it’s more of a breeding simulation with shallow combat tacked on, and with a very flimsy RPG lost somewhere in the background. I can’t think of anything that’s really like Pokemon, because Pokemon is such a phenomenon, and because what’s the point anyway when it keeps coming out with an almost identical game every couple of years anyway.
I never even thought of Pokemon though. Don’t typically think of it as a Nintendo franchise, even though its massive and all the games are on Nintendo systems or PC. Kudos for thinking of it… will have to think about that one some more.
Nintendo still get a lot of love in the G household, although weirdly it never translates into much activity. My 360 has been busted over a month now and I STILL have yet to pick up my Wii. Haven’t even used the DS in god knows how long.
I dunno, I love the IDEA of Ninty, and I do like some of the games, but I think the 360 has just shown the world how online console gaming should be done, and once you’ve experienced that, its difficult to go back to the little white box in the corner that has so few online games and practically none where you can speak to people etc.
Oh and BTW – this article gets a massive thumbs up from me for the accompanying picture of a fine girls arse in Ninty pants.
Mario 64 was hugely influential, so Mario’s importance at the very least extends into that generation. 3D platformers aren’t really at the forefront at the moment, but something like Ratchet and Clank must owe at least some debt to Nintendo’s work with Mario in three dimensions, right up to the critically acclaimed Mario Galaxy.
I spent hours on Blur last night, and that’s an upcoming release that borrows heavily from the Mario Kart series. So, for me, Mario games are still in the minds of some designers and developers. Whether that will be the case in ten years, I don’t know.
Nice Read Preach, getting to the party a bit late on this one.
Theres alot of games that many will hold up ino the light and say ‘This is the holy one and it shall not blasphemed’ and Mario is one of these staple characters that fell in with it. His counterpart can’t really have the same said for him I feel though. I was a SEGA kid and I preferred Sonic Three to Super Mario World 3 but with SEGA going down the drain like they did, I wouldn’t be able to say the same for Sonic that many say for Mario.
Poor Sonic had such a run of bad titles after Sonic CD (Best one in the franchise In my honest opinion) with the 2 ‘Adventure’ titles being so poorly recieved and the Xbox follow ups not doing a whole load better. Mario on the other hand has kept himself healthy though with only people really looking at Sunshine and maybe turning up their noses. Still, he’s been whored out worse than poor Sonic has been with him cropping up in some shocking 1st party titles like Mario Football and Baseball.
He escapes the blasphemy from me though as he’s kept Nintendo appealing to millions of others and through that, brought so many more into gaming. I don’t deny that Nintendo are guilty of bringing out the same dead horse and making it dance with a car battery for the entertainment of the brain dead and nor do I deny that were the Mario GAMES not to exist, we’d have found ourselves unable to construct a successful platformer.
As has been pointed out already by MarkuZ, Arcade games were doing it long before Mario and were arguably doing it better. But without Mario, there would never have been that appealing angle to market the Home Entertainment system with and the take off of home gaming would have been SLOWER than it was. We’d still have gotten to where we are and probably done it in the same time frame too, but Nintendo reeled it all in 20 years ago.
On that note, if Nintendo had actual innovation (in terms of gameplay), we’d probably have a lot more than we do now in both gamers and new ways to approach gaming. But criticise as we may, they still have the highest NPD console sales month on month and they’re still raking in so much more money on their 1st party games than Sony and Microsoft are, depite their frequently low Metacritic ratings.
Unrelated (and Uncited) note. I was told once that Pokemon kept Nintendo alive during the transition from N64 right up to the Wii. The sales generated on both the games, the hardware, the merchandise and any other gubbins the big N have sold through it gave them more profit than any other franchise or GameCube hardware sales ever did. Considering that the game has only had some basic and minor UI and graphical updates over it’s history, it’s amazing that the new DS pairing sold 1.8 million in its first month (NPD -I can cite that). I’ve been playing since Red/Blue and its never changed, I still play it though
The ‘getting late to the party on this one’ part at the top is me by the way and how I’ve been slow getting around to reading this by the way! Don’t want another Forum incident <3
Heh, I figured that you were referring to yourself with that, don’t worry so much Adam. Star Trek and X-COM you might face my ire, but I actively encourage critical comments and feedback on anything I write. Late or not, I appreciate the comments.
Same goes to everyone else as well, of course.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Pokemon played a big part in keeping Nintendo as affluent as it managed to stay despite the hammering Sony’s first two Playstations gave them. As much as I find it personally annoying, considering the Gamecube was a much better console than the PS2, I’ve been forced to come to terms with the fact that I’m in the minority by having been a strong supporter of the Gamecube over Sony and Microsoft’s efforts in the previous generation. I still think Wind Waker and Rogue Squadron are vastly better games than Halo or the PS2 Final Fantasys or Metal Gears, and that GTA was better on a PC. But the ‘cube never did manage to get past how it looked (a purple plastic cube was a little too toy-like for most people) or the impression that its titles weren’t somehow mature enough for older gamers just because they were predominantly cell-shaded and contained very little blood. Stupid shit like that seems to matter to people more than how fun a game is to play, or how technically solid the innards of a console are in comparison. But that’s a rant for another time perhaps, considering how long and hard I could go on and on about it.
Cuddles, I don’t see what all the fuss is with Mario 64. It wasn’t the first 3D platformer, or even the first 3D Mario title. It did give us dynamic 3D camera views for the first time, rather than simply having a fixed perspective imposed on players, but it was awkward as buggery at times, and so have been the majority of other games with that feature. Okay, it offers a much greater degree of freedom in how you explore a game, and opens up a gameworld, but when the camera decides to let things get between the player character and it, so you can’t see anything, that’s not terribly useful. They still hadn’t fixed the damned camera in Mario Sunshine, which was just as bad for it. Done well, it’s a very nice feature, but developers always seem to struggle with making it work properly. Ocarina of Time is a better example of 3D platforming mechanics on the same system, though it too occasionally had camera issues, and looking back at both games today, Mario 64 seems to have aged much less gracefully out of the two as well. I suspect Mario 64 only got the level of raves it did because it was a launch title for the N64, and because it had Mario in it. Not to mention people kept playing it far longer than the content justified, either trying to unlock Luigi because of that daft rumour that he was hidden in the game somewhere, or because AAA titles were thin on the ground for the N64. I didn’t rate Mario 64 too highly at the time, and I guess I still don’t… I always preferred Paper Mario and Mario Kart 64 out of the N64 Mario titles.