You know, I’m honestly not that big a fan of Super Mario RPG. Nevertheless, this write-up is pretty positive, and I’m actually quite proud of it. Maybe I’m just stoned out of my mind on the coffee I have to keep refilling while I sit all day in a cafe 100 miles from home waiting for my wife to finish a wedding shoot. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a really nice little piece on the game. I guess maybe you should read it and see for yourself, yeah?
I actually passed this game on 4th of July! The ending really matched the moment! Awesome villain parade! And I had five fireworks from moleville!
Hey one last thing. Spoilers I guess, but luigi only showed up in the ending. He was no where to be found in the game (except if you believe that he was that corner out of view guy in mushroom kingdom)
Not an appearance per se, but he has a wish in Star Hill: “I wanna be a great plumber like my brother Mario.”
I was referring to his wish, which isn’t attributed to him but clearly voices his perspective.
Even as Paper Mario is my favorite of all the Mario RPGs, I have a huge soft spot for this game, and am actually in the middle of a replay right now.
Aside from the parts where the isometrics muck up basic platforming (curse you Bean Valley), it holds up really well and has my most favorite interpretations of Mario and company ever. What I wouldn’t give to get Grouchy Pantomime Mario back in lieu of today’s saccharine Mickey Mario.
Mallow and Geno bozos? I can hear the backlash coming. Warm the bottles!
Damn straight! I chose Geno over Bowser to be my endgame heavy.
I remember playing this on an emulator with a language patch for german. Kinda really liked it but never managed to finish it.
You missed a “t” in “Legend of the Seven Sars” in the game description.
For a second there, I couldn’t tell if this came from the SNES issue or the “Second Chances” one.
Besides the qualities you mentioned, this game still features some of the best music and visuals in a Mario game. Yoko Shimomura’s score speaks for itself, and while the low-res, low-poly pre-rendered nature of the graphics do them no favors in hindsight, the whole game still looks beautiful thanks to some brilliant color design. Even the small sample of shots in the article exhibit the bold primary colors and stunning contrast which typify the affair.
Very true. Shimomura’s score is one of the best on the SNES, just a bit behind Chrono Trigger.
I still find the game to be incredibly fun and well-worth replaying, even if it is the easiest and simplest Square RPG on the system.
No, the plot of the game revolved around the spread of the SARS bird flu pandemic through the Mushroom Kingdom. Maybe they forgot to include that in the German patch?
Well, the virus originated in asia, as I recall. Would fit timewise.
Believe it or not, I thought of the same damn pun.
I’m just glad Nintendo took over the series with Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi. So, so much better than this game.
Thanks for the great write-up on one of my favorite games. Say what you will about the super-dated graphical style, but SMRPG single-handedly established the mechanics and tone for what would eventually spin-off into additional successful Nintendo franchises.
It was also the game I played during my family’s last vacation together (in 1996), so there’s a weird bit of parallelism for you.
Oh geez, I hope my taking literary license didn’t give you PTSD or anything.
This is probably the first turn-based RPG I’ve ever really sat down with and played all the way through.
I definitely loved it at the time, and still think it’s pretty cool– I’d love to see a remake with modern graphics, or even just stuff which matches the promo art. But with time, it’s become more apparent that it feels like half-Mario, half Square stuff, somehow.
It’s not that the two don’t mesh, but it does feel like there’s a sort of crossover divide– like when Mario and Sonic get join up. They’re pretty distinct, but they still work well together.
Still, it’s become a bittersweet title to me, as Square Enix clearly own the bulk of it, and Nintendo even has to license stuff like Geno. That stuff seems to really make this game feel like a separate entity from the shared space which the Mario games, including Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, all tend to occupy. Even in something as continuity-light as Mario tends to be, this feels like some sort of outsider project.
As a result, if we can’t really have Geno and Mallow, or Croco and Boshi, or others as a part of the “Mario universe” (such as it is), I find myself more inclined to just pretend they were never really there.
Still, for all of that, it was– and still is– a lot of fun. And without it, one has to wonder if Mario & Luigi or Paper Mario (TTYD is my favorite of all of them) would have been nearly as good as they were without Square showing how a Mario RPG could/would work.
——
As an aside, a note for all the Wario lovers/Waluigi haters: In Japan, Boshi was known as Washi, so there’s actually precedent for Waluigi after Wario.