Messages

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Mario Chat / Re: What sport should Mario try next?

« on: June 19, 2011, 10:35:23 PM »

I've joked about American Football being a fun sport (I think it would feel like the "blitz" series, but more cartoony), and yes, chargin' chuck is required there.  Heck didn't they have a Super Mario Bros. Super Show episode with that?

Fishing could be great.  Imagine trying to catch one of those big insta-death sumo fish from SMB3.  I think that a big one should actually pull Mario into the water, so on top of trying to fight the fish with the line, you're now flying on rails trying to dodge spikes and other fish.

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Mario Chat / Re: Mario Canon (and Fanon, while we're at it)

« on: April 26, 2011, 04:26:47 PM »

I'm not really taking this all that seriously, but for fun and curiosity I'll ask this.  Does the Mushroom Kingdom have any modern skyrise cities?  That is, some place for Donkey Kong to run around and smash girders on high rises?

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 12, 2011, 09:41:29 PM »

Here's an idea!  Wart shows up in Bowser's dream and they decide to team up to take out Mario.  He can't get any rest whether awake or asleep!  I imagine gameplay mechanics where Mario gets tired and slips into the dream world, where levels are changed and he's got to find "dream stars" which I imagine will look like classic alarm clocks and also wake him up.  The final fight will be shifting between fighting Bowser in the waking world and Wart in the dream world.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 10, 2011, 08:32:01 PM »

That's interesting, though I still like my interpretation.  I also still like the idea of Birdo being a gender confused whatever-it-is.

Mario and Luigi are called brothers instead of twins in that one?  Huh, well can't they be both?  :D  Besides, that game makes it a little hard for them not to be twins considering they're being carried at the same time by the same stork.  I suppose it doesn't matter too much.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.geocities.jp/frnyanko/setsumei/disk/yumekoujoudokidokipanic/yumekoujoudokidokipanic.html

I found a page with a transcript of the Doki Doki Panic manual and ran it through google translate.  So apparently, if I'm interpreting the garbled translation there right, even in that version it's all taking place in dream world too, and the book they are sucked into is just telling them a story about the dream world.  That does make sense, since it's actually "Dream Factory: Doki Doki Panic" and all.  I also noticed the enemy descriptions are very similar to the ones in the SMB2 manual I was reading earlier, with things like the Snifits shooting "nightmare bullets" and all of them being bad dreams created by Wart/Mamu.

This is funny...

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geocities.jp%2Ffrnyanko%2Fsetsumei%2Ffamicom%2Fsupermariousa%2Fsupermariousa.html

Apparently in "Super Mario USA" their manual also calls Birdo "Ostro".  It also seems to call Kinopio Toad, and has a little explanation that that's his USA name.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 10, 2011, 05:26:52 PM »

Uh...the Subconians said that they were cursed, not Mario himself.

So I found the old manual for SMB2 and as it turns out, we're both right!

"Welcome to 'Subcon', the land of dreams.  We have been cursed by Wart and we are completely under his evil spell.  We have been awaiting your arrival.  Please defeat Wart and return Subcon to its natural state.  The curse Wart has put on you in the real world will not have any effect upon you here."

Not really sure what curses they are talking about since the manual doesn't explain what the curses actually are, so I just had to use my imagination there.  Hmm, so maybe the "subconians" are cursed in that many of them were all turned into those flying Beezo enemies?  I always thought they looked pretty similar...  As for Mario, yeah I still think he was cursed with eternal sleep or something.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 06, 2011, 07:22:54 PM »

Huh, I see.  I guess being stuffed in a jar is close enough to a curse.  All the same I still interpret the ending that way.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 05, 2011, 01:43:14 PM »

Ya know after beating it and seeing Mario asleep, there are two things I assumed as a kid.  First I assumed the Princess, Toad, and Luigi all just woke up from their dreams too.  Second, I assumed that it meant that when Mario thought he woke up, he was still dreaming and was in one of those endless "false awakenings".  Reading the manual, I now see there's a weird cryptic remark the Subconians (subconscious?) make when talking to Mario about how he has to beat Wart to break some "curse" on Mario.  They never actually say how Mario is cursed, but I like to think Wart somehow cursed Mario and the rest of his friends into eternal slumber, so Mario and friends have to save Subcon (again, subconscious?) and beat Wart to save Dreamland (not Kirby's) and wake everyone up.  So it both was all a dream and "really happened".  Considering how "wonderlandy" the Mario universe is, it isn't much of a stretch to say that the dream world is "real" in a sense there.

In other words, I interpret his adventure there as mattering just as much as saving the dream world in Nights Into Dreams.

My 1080 block Gamecube memory card failed some time ago (apparently there's some incompatibility with that one and the Wii), so I've been rebuilding save files for my various Gamecube games.  I just recently rebuilt a perfect Super Smash Bros Melee save (nearly so, I don't have the bonus messages for a million vs matches yet).  With what you've said I think I'll give Mario Sunshine a go again soon.  I think you may be right.  I just missed the long jump so much it probably overshadowed everything else.  I do miss being able to punch though.  I actually did use that often enough in Mario 64 when I didn't feel safe jumping, and the squirting baddies with a hose just wasn't quite the same.  Still, I gotta admit the controls were pretty tight in that game.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 05, 2011, 05:32:40 AM »

A sequel to Super Mario USA?  That's cool.  That BS Satellite thing sure had a lot of BS going on...  That didn't come out right....

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Mario Chat / Re: Mario Canon (and Fanon, while we're at it)

« on: April 05, 2011, 05:31:39 AM »

...So basically you posted in here just to say there's no point is discussing the topic at hand. Lovely. -___-

My apologies.  I didn't mean to come across that way.  I just wanted to add my perspective on it.  Are the Mario Bros. from Brooklyn?  In my conception, I think of them as being from there in the first trilogy (since that's the idea I was getting as a kid from all those cartoons and such, and the original Donkey Kong gives a strong impression of that too considering the setting), then being from Mushroom Kingdom at least as of Yoshi's Island, and then it varies.  Mario Galaxy, to me, is it's own story, as well as Mario Lands being self contained, and also the various Mario RPGs are their own iterations.  Paper Mario is it's own little world (of paper) with connection between those games, and Super Mario RPG is again it's own entity.  Super Mario 64 seems to stand alone as well, and this was especially notable considering that if you took it as a timeline, it's odd that Bowser had completely forgotten about teaming up with Mario, and how rather than 7 stars, there's a castle now with over 100 of them.  That's fine though.  I also imagine Mario "taking breaks" from gaming just to get an ear full from Wario about how much better than Mario he is.

Long story short, it's how I explain all those oddities that crop up thanks to Nintendo themselves basically ignoring any sense of continuity.  This is as opposed to Sonic, where they actually do attempt to create a continuity but lately have just had the whole overly complicated thing collapse on itself since the audience has basically been lost since Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

This does kinda hinge on the idea that my recollection of that interview I failed to provide a link for is right, so feel free to dismiss it.

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Mario Chat / Re: Mario Canon (and Fanon, while we're at it)

« on: April 05, 2011, 02:59:21 AM »

I don't get into the Fire Emblem stories as much as some fans, but from what I've put together from the games I have played, it all takes place in the same overall history, though generations apart.  I can say that with Final Fantasy, officially, every game's story takes place in it's own separate universe with no connection except Dissidia and a few dimension hoppers like Gilgamesh (spinoffs of individual games are the exception, like FFX-2).  I would bring up Zelda, but that's inviting trouble and I'm already guilty of derailing the thread a bit.

Back on topic, my thoughts are that general overarching ideas get carried from game to game, but I currently take the view that each game is it's own entity.  The whole "it's like Looney Toons or Disney cartoons" thing puts things like Mario Tennis, Mario Party, Mario Kart, and all those other games into a different perspective.  Those are just their own little worlds, kinda.  While we're at it, one thing about the DKC series is how it breaks the 4th wall all the time.  That sort of got into the Mario games too, with things like Donkey Kong being jealous of Mario's popularity and action figures and wanting to steal them all, or Wario starting his own video game company, and that sort of thing.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 05, 2011, 02:51:09 AM »

The thing I like about Lost Levels is how it more or less forces you to complete every single level if you want to truly beat the game.  As with most fans, I first played it in Super Mario All-Stars, and I found it pretty brutal.  That game took me a few months to complete, and I remember finally doing it and wishing I had a camera so I could take a picture of the screen for a Nintendo Power "reward" for doing it.

When they finally released the Famicom version on Virtual Console I snatched it right up.  Yeah it's incredibly similar to SMB1, but that's part of why I liked it.  I will say that SMB2 (USA) does feel more like a sequel than Lost Levels, which always felt more like an extra "challenge pack" for the first game.

One thing I have noted is that it's thanks to SMB2 (USA) that the Mario series has all the throwing it has.  SMB2 really emphasized it, but all the major Mario games since that one have had it, though usually in the form of tossing shells and so on.  Heck even Yoshi's eating and spitting mechanic can be viewed as a deviation of SMB2 enemy throwing, and who can forget tossing around the Bob-omb King in SM64?

Sunshine...  I remember being a bit disappointed in it, but later on I appreciated it more.  I still love the Galaxy games, but it's true that Sunshine has more exploration.  My biggest disappointment with that game is the limited acrobatics when compared to Mario 64.  I never felt that FLUDD added as much as was taken away in that sense.  I personally still rate Mario 64 as the better of the two, but Sunshine certainly deserves more credit than some give.

Of all the Mario RPG games, my personal favorite is still the one that started it all, Super Mario RPG.  I have always just loved how "alive" the world is with all the details programmed into it.  I loved all the little things the programmers thought of, and all the changed dialog if you decide to keep going back to old towns as the game goes along.  When I got it into my head to try jumping on the head of some NPC running in circles, succeeded, and then after a few laps Mario just jumps off, gets dizzy and collapses, I just kept laughing at the idea that the programmers had actually thought of details like that.  I also liked the original characters created for the game.  Geno is still, to me, the coolest character in the Mario universe.

On other Mario 2 USA details, here's another commonality it already had.  Those Trouters are basically a different kind of flying fish that let you jump on them, often appearing in similar sorts of places.

Funnily enough, as a kid (I didn't have the manual for it at the time) I didn't realize those mushroom blocks were supposed to be mushrooms.  I imagined they were big acorns.  Also, I never saw it as simply "it's all just a dream".  I interpreted it as "Mario isn't just dreaming, he and 3 of his friends are trapped in the world of dreams itself and need to defeat Wart so that all people everywhere can have good dreams again".

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Mario Chat / Re: Mario Canon (and Fanon, while we're at it)

« on: April 05, 2011, 12:16:53 AM »

Heh, though in all "seriousness" it's true that Mario is closer to a cartoon than something where continuity matters like Fire Emblem.

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Mario Chat / Re: Mario Canon (and Fanon, while we're at it)

« on: April 04, 2011, 09:40:39 PM »

I wish I could find a source for this, but I recall reading a Miyamoto interview where Miyamoto basically said that each game, outside of clear sequels, can be considered it's own sort of reality, and are "all true at once".

Basically I took it to mean that as far as continuity we should look at it the same way we look at Looney Toons, or to put it another way reality and everyone's memories are constantly in flux and the only things in common for the most part are the personalities of the characters.  In other words there's probably as much point in figuring out a timeline of the Mario games as there is trying to tie together "Duck A Muck" with "Duck Rabbit, Duck!".

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 04, 2011, 09:33:05 PM »

If I understand you right, I think you're talking about how controlling the characters feels more "slippery" than in other Mario games, and I will agree on that account.  I've accidentally shot myself off a few vines myself.  Overall it didn't interfere with things too much for me though.

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Mario Chat / Re: Most Underrated Mario Game

« on: April 04, 2011, 04:52:41 AM »

Agreed, I mentioned a few other similarities Doki Doki already had to make the same point above.  I forgot to mention the POW block though.

I also agree that the tossing your pal around mechanic reminded me of New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  Apparently the mechanic didn't work too well back then but after 20 or so years they managed to work it out :D.