In honor of Super Mario Galaxy recently being released, I figure I’ll do a history of Mario blog thingie right here. But this won’t be any regular history of Mario. Oh no, that’s been done to death already on the Internet. This’ll be MY history with Mario. You know, the games I played, experienced, and personally enjoyed. So as Mario would say: “Let’s-a go!”
 

Arcade
Would you believe that the first time I ever saw a Pac-Man arcade machine, it was also the first time I first saw both Space Invaders and Donkey Kong as well? But I gravitated more towards Pac-Man because I think that going through a maze was easier to wrap my little five year old head around rather than all the tough jumping found in Donkey Kong. Plus, Donkey Kong is a pretty tough game for a little kid to master anyway. So, while I have an appreciation for Donkey Kong now that I’m older, back then, I didn’t think too much of it.

When I first saw Donkey Kong Jr. in an arcade, I first thought it would be a Donkey Kong game for little kids like me. But it wasn’t, it was just as hard as the original. But I did like how Mario was the bad guy in this one. I think Mario is one of the only video game heroes who’s also been a villian in at least one game.

When Mario Bros. came out, my friend and I were older and had gotten good enough at video games that we played this one quite a few times. We played more competitively than co-operatively, though. Man, we were brutal. We learned so many tricks on how to mess the other player up. And don’t forget this was the first game to have Luigi in it!

Would you believe that the first time I saw Super Mario Bros. was in an arcade, not on the NES? I didn’t get a chance to play it, though, as so many people were crowded around it. But I do remember being impressed at the variety of big scrolling levels and such. And this leads me to:

NES
Believe it or not, it wasn’t Super Mario Bros. that made me want a NES (that honor went to the first Zelda). I had fun playing Super Mario Bros. over at my friend’s house and all, but I was perfectly happy playing Pengo and Dig Dug on my old Atari 5200. So I don’t have as many fond memories of the first Super Mario Bros. like so many others do. Since I was playing it over at a friend’s house all the time, I was always forced to be player 2. But that’s OK, Luigi ended up being one of my favorite Mario characters because of that anyway, plus I liked green.

It was actually Super Mario Bros. 2 that got me into Mario games. Yeah I know that it’s not a TRUE Mario game, but I liked it just the same. The graphics were way better: Mario actually looked like Mario for the first time instead of a guy with a crooked nose and a flat head. I liked the music, too. And it was cool how you could play as different characters. I liked how Luigi wiggled his legs while jumping, and Toad could really rake in the coins in the Subspace levels. And I thought the enemies were cooler in Mario 2. Shy Guys rock! Heck, Mario 2 enemies must’ve been cool since they’ve been appearing in other Mario games since. Plus, I just liked Mario 2 because it was so wacky.

Now my next statement will probably shock and anger a lot of you. Super Mario Bros. 3 is not my favorite Mario game. In fact, it’s not even close. There, I said it. Just like the first Super Mario Bros., I first saw Mario 3 in an arcade (through the PlayChoice 10) rather than on the NES. There are a lot of really good things about Mario 3, though. I do like all the many worlds and levels (my favorite is the giant island). I also liked the two player mode with the throwback to the old Mario Bros. And as far as I’m concerned, Mario 3 had the coolest power ups. But I think my favorite thing about Mario 3 is that it introduced the Koopa Kids (bosses at the end of each world). The Koopa Kids were awesome. I wish Nintendo would bring them back. Bowser Jr. kinda sucks.

But there’s a lot of things about Mario 3 that I don’t like. It was really hard and I just plain sucked at it anyway. I think part of the reason for that is I felt the play control was a little looser than in Mario 2. Plus, even though there were a lot of levels in that game, a lot of them were really short. I prefer the longer stages like in Mario 2 or Mario World. But Mario 3 is still a good game. It’s just that there are Mario games that I like a lot better.

Even on the NES, Mario had a lot of cameos and spin-offs (Golf, ref in boxing games, etc.). I think my two favorite NES spin-offs were Wrecking Crew and Dr. Mario. Wrecking Crew was an arcadey action puzzle game where Mario plays a demolition expert and breaks down walls. My friend and I had so much fun with the level editor in that game. I think you can download Wrecking Crew on the Virtual Console now, but I’m not going to download it because I’ve played it to death already. And my mom still plays the Dr. Mario puzzle game to this very day!

Game Boy
There wasn’t much Mario action that interested me on the old black and white Game Boy. In fact, kinda like the NES, it wasn’t until Zelda: Link’s Awakening that I got my own Game Boy (Link’s Awakening ended up being my all time favorite Zelda game). Super Mario Land was just a crappy, scaled back version of Super Mario Bros. And while it was a MUCH better game, Super Mario Land 2 was just a scaled back Mario 3, really. But it’s all good because the Mario Land games gave way to the Wario Land games, which are some of the best platformers on the old Game Boy and Game Boy Color. I also liked the Game & Watch Gallery games that had Mario characters in the updated versions, and I think the Game & Watch Gallery games paved the way for the awesome Wario Ware games. But this is about Mario, not Wario, so we’ll just move on.

SNES
I think the Super Nintendo is where Mario games really kicked off for me. I really liked the Super Nintendo because it had all the fun of the NES, with more refined gameplay. The SNES is probably my favorite console ever. Maybe. Anyway, sometimes it flip flops back and forth between Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island, but right now I’d have to say that Super Mario World is my favorite Mario 2-D platformer. It’s also one of the few Mario gams I’ve completed 100 percent (all 96 exits). Super Mario World also has the tightest play control of any Mario game, in my opinion. And while the power ups (cape and Yoshi) are kind of lame compared to the cool ones found in Mario 3, but I liked how versatile the powers were in Mario World and all the many different things you could do with them. And better yet, the Koopa Kids were back and Bowser had one of the coolest boss fights ever in a Mario game (I love his flying clown car). So, yeah, I like this game much better than Mario 3.

A few years down the road, we got Yoshi’s Island, with the subtitle Super Mario World 2. Some would call it more of a Yoshi game than a Mario game, but baby Mario was in it so who knows. It’s still one of the best platformers ever, and while baby Mario was kind of annoying, he was still cute. I loved the unique crayon style graphics, and Yoshi’s Island was the game that got my good friend and college roommate’s girlfriend/now wife into video games. So Yoshi’s Island is a pretty special game, too.

Lots of Mario spin-off games on the SNES, too. Here’s some of my favorites. While it was basically a console version of the at-the-time popular PC kids paint program Kid Pix, Mario Paint was still pretty fun and versatile and I even did school projects with it! Super Mario RPG was a fine first effort by Square, even though the first Mario RPG felt a little less like Mario and more like Final Fantasy (understandable, given who made it). It was certainly a cheeful and likeable game, though. When Jeff was little, he’d beg for me to play it and say, “Let’s play Mario PG!”

But my favorite Mario game on the SNES was Super Mario Kart. The game that started it all. When I first saw screens of it in Nintendo Power magazine, I knew it would be a hit. And it was, and ended up being probably one of my top five favorite games of all time, right up there with Pac-Man, Final Fantasy 6, Animal Crossing, and the PSOne Namco Museums. Super Mario Kart was also the game that made me change my favorite Mario character from Luigi to Toad. Toad was just such an awesome racer in that game, plus after thinking about it, I did use Toad the most in Mario 2, and I always like the little behind the scenes helper characters in games anyway. One time I actually applied for a job at Nintendo once, and one of the questions on the application was “What Nintendo character are you most like and why?” I wanted to say Kirby, but I decided to say Toad on the application because he’s always cheerfully ready to help in any way he can. And speaking of which, even though it’s not a Mario game, another SNES favorite of mine was Wario’s Woods (starring Toad). It was fun watching my college roommate and his girlfriend/wife play it together. I thought they’d get into a fight, sometimes!

One last thing. Super Mario All-Stars, which had updated versions of Mario 1, 2, 3, and Japan 2, were great. Nintendo produced one of the first classic game collections, kind of pioneering one of my favorite genres: the classic game compilation.

Nintendo 64
You can’t talk about Mario without talking about Super Mario 64! Just like how Super Mario Bros. defined what a good 2-D platformer should be (thought it’s not the first: Pac-Land came out a good year before), Mario 64 pretty much defined how 3-D platformers should be. And I really liked it, too. It’s still one of my favorites. It’s fun just to play around in the worlds, and I liked how they were all designed. And, like Super Mario World, it’s one of the few Mario games I’ve completed 100 percent. Yup, all 120 stars. The thing I liked about the challenge of Mario 64 is that you never felt like you couldn’t get a star. If I worked just hard enough, I could get them. But it never felt too frustrating, like the giant pachinko machine bonus stage in Mario Sunshine.

That was really the only ‘main’ Mario game on the N64. Everything else was just a spin-off. Even though I liked the SNES version better, Mario Kart 64 was still pretty fun. Paper Mario was an excellent, more Mario-ish RPG than Square’s SNES one was, and really showed the localization talents of the NOA translation department. A lot of the Mario sports games hit off on the N64, but I didn’t really get into them until the GameCube. Mario Party games started out on the N64. I got the first one, but didn’t get any of the others. Actually I did buy Mario Party 5 real cheap at a charity auction much later. Really, if you have one Mario Party game, you don’t need any others. It was fun playing Mario Party in college, though. Super Smash Bros. got to a first fun start on the N64, but its GameCube sequel was so vastly improved upon that the original seems rather forgettable. Will the Wii Brawl game end up doing the same thing with Melee?

Game Boy Advance
Most of the Mario games on the GBA were ports of NES and SNES games. Even though Mario 2 is one of my favorites, I actually didn’t like the GBA version as much because I didn’t think the new additions helped the game at all, plus the characters just talked way too much. They didn’t change much with the ports of Super Mario World or Yoshi’s Island, but with those games, you really don’t need to. But I LOVED the additions to the GBA version of Super Mario Bros. 3 in the form of the e-Reader. I loved the e-Reader and I hate it that Nintendo dropped support of it after Mario 3 GBA came out. There was so many cool things you could get by scanning those cards. New levels, power ups, etc. It was so untapped.

Mario Kart Super Circuit is my second favorite Mario Kart game because it kept the feel of the first SNES one. The first Mario & Luigi game was on the GBA, and was a fun RPG romp as well. And Mario Pinball Land gets the distinction of being the worst pinball game I ever played, as well as one of the only really ‘bad’ Mario games.

GameCube
The launch title for the GameCube didn’t star Mario, but instead it was Luigi in Luigi’s Mansion. A lot of people didn’t like Luigi’s Mansion, but I loved it! Luigi is way cooler than Mario. It was a short game, but I think it was meant to be short so you could play it again to get a better score. And the graphics are still impressive to this day.

The big Mario game on the GameCube was Super Mario Sunshine. A lot of people bash this game, me included, but it still wasn’t really THAT bad a game at all. In fact, I still liked it a lot. My favorite part was how they included tropical elements in every aspect of the Mario universe. It really felt like you were on a summer vacation with Mario. Heck, even the ghost house level was a haunted beach resort hotel. So they really got the vacation theme right there. But Sunshine still paled in comparison to Mario 64. I’m not sure WHY that is, it just felt that Sunshine was missing…something. Plus the water squirter was a little too gimmicky and Mario looked silly in short sleeves.

Mario’s side games ran rampant on the GameCube. Mario Kart Double Dash was fun, but it ended up being my least favorite Mario Kart game, plus I thought Kirby’s Air Ride was much better. I really got into the Mario sports games on the GameCube, getting and enjoying Mario Golf, Mario Baseball, and Mario Strikers. I didn’t get Mario Tennis because I don’t like video game tennis as much, but I would’ve gotten it if I ever saw it for cheap. And lets not forget the sequel to Paper Mario, which ended up being one of the GameCubes best RPGs, if not THE best. Finally, Super Smash Bros. Melee ended up being my second favorite GameCube game ever, losing out only to Animal Crossing.

Nintendo DS
There actually wasn’t very many Mario games on the DS that really amazed me. I was impressed they were able to put Super Mario 64 on a handheld, and add things to it, but it was pretty hard to control at times. Mario Kart DS was fun, and I liked playing it online until people started getting too good and exploited cheat, which took about, oh, a week. (I did play Mario Kart GP in the arcade. It was a fun arcade experience, but I don’t know if it would be fun for consoles. Pac-Man’s in it, though). New Super Mario Bros. didn’t impress me at all. I felt that everything was done better in previous Mario games. Plus I thought Super Princess Peach was a better game anyway. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time was a fun sequel to the GBA game, and it brought back the Mario babies. They’re so adorable. Speaking of babies, Yoshi’s Island DS was also pretty fun, and while it wasn’t as good as the SNES original, it was still a spiffy game with lots of adorable Mario characters as babies.

Nintendo Wii
Not a whole lot of Mario action on the Wii’s first year. Super Paper Mario was a fun 2-D romp, but it really should’ve been on the GameCube. Of course, now everyone, including myself, is playing Super Mario Galaxy. I’m really enjoying it. I already like it better than Super Mario Sunshine, but I don’t know just yet if I like it better than Super Mario 64.

My one sentence description of Mario Galaxy is this: It’s a bunch of creative ways for Mario to die. They turned what you think you can do in a 3-D platformer, and turned it on its ear. It’s so cool how you can go upside down and all over the place, though I did get a little dizzy a couple of times. I also like how the action flows through a level. You never really have to stop if you know what you’re doing (unlike most awful Sonic games which are ‘supposed’ to be about speed). This ‘flow’ in the action, coupled with some gameplay elements here and there, really reminded me of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a 2-D platformer on the GameCube that used the bongo attachments to control Donkey Kong. It was better than the music game the bongos were designed for. In fact, I think I read that the same people who made Donkey Kong Jungle Beat also worked on Mario Galaxy. So if you like Galaxy, you should try and track down Jungle Beat, too. I also like how Luigi is in Galaxy, and there are also lots and lots of Toads. So many Toads. They rock!

But I think my favorite thing about Mario Galaxy is how a second person can pick up another remote and play with the other player. They can collect star bits simple by waving the remote around, or pin down enemies, making it easier to defeat them. Plus, if Mario’s about to fall off a cliff, the second player can give him a boost sometimes. It’s great because even a little kid can play with the second controller and help out Mario, or an adult can help a kid who is controlling Mario by making the game easier for them. You can REALLY play together with your kids with a game like Mario Galaxy.

But there are some things that I don’t like about Mario Galaxy. Little, nitpicky things that don’t really matter or hurt the game, but I’ll mention them anyway. While the level layout in Galaxy is VERY creative, it feels like one part of Mario 3 that I don’t like. I didn’t like how some levels in Mario 3 were just real short, uncreative obstacle courses, and that’s how some parts of Galaxy feel. Plus, while they’re more standard, I kind of liked the themes and worlds better in Mario 64 and Sunshine. A ghost house…IN SPACE just doesn’t come off as being quite as creative. Though they still did a good job with it.

But I’m still playing Mario Galaxy currently and am really enjoying it. I don’t know if it’ll end up being my ‘favorite game of 2007’ but it’ll definitely be in the running. I haven’t tried the Mario & Sonic Olympic game yet, but I’d like to sometime.

Mario Media
Mario wasn’t just in my games as a kid, though. Mario’s been everywhere! Donkey Kong cereal was just barrel shaped Cap’n Crunch, and the Nintendo cereal that came later had half a box of Mario and half Zelda cereal, which meant you got less cereal. It’s OK, though, as it was just a really nasty Froot Loops imitator. I also remember Mario mac & cheese and Mario sodas.

Mario’s first cartoon appearance was actually on Saturday Supercade, which had snippets of game related toons like Frogger, Q*bert, and Pitfall. Mario was in the Donkey Kong cartoon and looked really weird. Later they had a Mario cartoon based on Mario 1 and 2, then 3, then World. Parents, you may think today’s cartoons are bad, but the Mario cartoon was even worse. I still watched it as a kid, though. Hey, I didn’t know any better. At least Toad was cool in the cartoon. And the less said about the Super Mario World cartoon, the better. In the first Mario cartoon, they had live action segments with the old wrestler Capt. Lou Albano as Mario. Now, I’ve met the guy who does the voice of the current Mario in games. His name is Charles Matinet and I talked to him at E3 one year. He’s a really talented and nice guy, but I HATE his high pitched voice for Mario. As far as I’m concerned, Capt. Lou is the TRUE voice of Mario.

You can get a lot of Mario toys and things now, but I don’t avidly collect Mario stuff like I do Pac-Man stuff. But I have a couple of favorite Mario items. One is a jar with Mario 2 artwork on it that I’ve had for a LONG time. I kept quarters for laundry in it at college. And I still have, and use, a Mario light switch cover in my room.

Well I’m getting a little tired of Mario, so I think I’ll end this right here. I know I didn’t talk about ALL the Mario games, but there’s just no way. I like most Kirby games better anyway. So what are YOUR favorite Mario games and moments?

Tags: Misc