GameSpite Quarterly 2, #25: Super Mario Bros.

25. Super Mario Bros.
Our good friend Mr. Loki takes a break from his traditional comic-style evaluations of games to offer a prose-based (but hardly prosaic!) look back at the original Super Bros. that made me pause, step back, and take a look at the game with a fresh perspective and realize that, yeah, he’s right. Super Mario is a pretty danged bizarre piece of work.

9 thoughts on “GameSpite Quarterly 2, #25: Super Mario Bros.”

  1. I never thought of Sin as a giant evil whale. Now all I can see FFX as is some kind of “whaling OK! they’re just giant sea cockroaches anyway and also EVIL” propaganda. Thanks Loki >=(

    Also it’s a good article about SMB~

  2. I never thought of Sin as a giant evil whale. Now all I can see FFX as is some kind of “whaling OK! they’re just giant sea cockroaches anyway and also EVIL” propaganda. Thanks Loki >=(

    Also it’s a good article about SMB~

  3. I never thought of Sin as a giant evil whale. Now all I can see FFX as is some kind of “whaling OK! they’re just giant sea cockroaches anyway and also EVIL” propaganda. Thanks Loki >=(

    Also it’s a good article about SMB~

  4. That MGS3 spoiler kind of comes out of nowhere, huh? Good work overall, though, Loki. I’m glad you threw at least one zany illustration in there.

  7. I respect the opinion and I enjoyed reading the article so I don’t want my comments to come across as trolling, but I have to say I think the article is a little hyperbolic. Especially the last paragraph.

    It seems to me that the story and setting of Super Mario Brothers exists first and foremost as a result of the gameplay, combined with designs from the original Mario Brothers (which had a much stronger plumbing theme) and the need for the setting to make atleast SOME sense within the limitations of the hardware (for example, the pipe’s function makes more sense if the object is a pipe rather than a tree or a rock).

    To me that’s the true joy of SMB. It’s a VIDEO GAME, principally concerned with gameplay, and everything else is secondary, flowing as gameplay requires. I don’t think Miyamoto had any psychadelic vision for the game in mind. What he had was a vision for play and when I look at SMB I see a set of graphics that make that play easier to comprehend.

  8. I don’t see how walking chestnuts could make anything easier to comprehend.

    One of the best articles in the current issue.

  9. I read this article weeks ago and still chuckle to myself about “Ow, my life!” on occasion. Thanks.

Comments are closed.