Mailbag
02/23/2001

This has got to be one of the worst mailbags ever. Usually I ignore the lame questions and only answer the good ones, but this time there were so few good letters I had to respond to a lot of stupid questions just to fill up this week's section. Please, PLEASE send some intelligent Mario-related questions to tmk_mailbag@usa.net for next week. Don't give us Mario fans a bad name.

On a wild guess, how many games do you think Mario has ever been in? I'm talking about games where he is the star, games where he is one of the players, and games where he is seen for a short time or makes a cameo appearance. Not just U.S. games, but also all the other countries in the world. My guess is well over 100,000. Maybe over 1,000,000.
-ShinyKoopa

J.J.: Oh, you homley dolt. You're not even close. I doubt there are even 1,000,000 individual NES titles, let alone Mario games. As far as we at TMK know, Mario has appeared, to some degree, in over 130 games. And that's including his Game and Watch appearances and some of his more questionable cameos.

in SMRPG when you fall down to the springs and the entrance to the volcano you fall through several clouds with item boxes on them, What are in these and how do you get to them? And congrats on being the best website ever!
-Mj

J.J.: I remember I used to wonder aboot this too. All of the item boxes Mario passes can be collected by climbing up those curly vine things in the area that connects Nimbus Land to Bean Valley. Here's the order you should climb (starting from the bottom, from Bean Valley) Green, Yellow, Blue, Yellow, Blue, Yellow, Blue, Red, Yellow, Green. The route is pretty obvious when you're actually there.

I liked the Mario cartoons alot, but I was wondering why there was never an SMB anime like those Super mario adventures comics in Nintendo Power...I think that would be cool
-Jas

J.J.: It is indeed a mystery as to why there was never an animated "anime" cartoon of Mario in Japan. It seems like every other video game series got one... Japan did produce a lot of Anime-style Mario comic books, though.

Hi! Have you found Mario in Majora's Mask? I have! If you go to the mask guy who lives under the clock tower, look at the masks strapped to his back. There's a Mario mask! I wonder if you can get it some how. I deserve a cookie for being the first person to point this out.
-ManaSmack

J.J.: You deserve nothing. This Mario reference has long been noted on this page.

Hey I was wondering if any of you guys saw the the semi-popular Nintendo Fan-Fiction site BOTVGH [link deleted]. If so what do you think of it?
-Sean Kelly

J.J.: I think Fan Fiction sucks. Oh, and nice try trying to get some free hits to your site.

In one of the "Mario Bros. II" pictures, it has a fat guy smoking a cigar in a door with the word "CHEF" over it. I'd hate to have him make my food.
-Kid Marrs

J.J.: As you and I both know, the word was obviously supposed to read "CHIEF", but the Japanese are not exactally world-renowned for their spelling skills.

I was just wondering, on SMRPG, is there any kind of cheat/code to get the 6th star w/out fighting the Axem Rangers?
(I beat them a zillion times, but they're annoying)
-timarca

J.J.: There are two solutions to your "problem" (read: laziness).
1- use Game Genie codes from gamefaqs.com on your ROM to become invincible or something.
2- get a real Game Genie if you are playing the actual cartridge version (which I seriously doubt).

Will Mallow, Geno, and Smithly from Super Mario RPG be in the sequel Paper Mario?
-Daniel J.Borst

J.J.: For the last damn time, NO!