Revisiting Super Mario RPG

 The very first RPG I ever played was Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars. Yes, that rather bulky title is usually shrunk down to "Mario RPG," but it was my first entrypoint into a genre that I am quite fond of - and in the last decade, branched out into the original tabletop version of the genre.

Made by Squaresoft at a time when Square was primarily making games for Nintendo (it would shift to Sony with Final Fantasy VII,) Mario RPG feels in a lot of ways like "baby's first Final Fantasy," which is fine because I was only 11 when I played it. Leveling and gaining skills is simple, and there are a lot of ways the game becomes fairly forgiving - like sometimes giving you back "freebies" when you use an item or letting you block attacks and reduce their damage significantly (though this requires careful timing).

The Switch remake for the game is mostly extremely faithful, upgrading the graphics (I believe the original's 3D models were effectively just pre-rendered sprites, while this of course can render things in-game). There are a couple new features - you build up a gauge as you string more and more timed hits (and blocks, etc.) together, which both creates a passive buff to everyone in the party (different characters getting different buffs) and filling up to 100% to allow you to unleash a big triple-attack that changes depending on who's in the party (because Mario always has to be one of your 3 active party members, there are six of these big group-attacks, which have a flashy pre-rendered animation when they go off.

However, what's delightful about this game is the way that, because it's so faithful a remake, you get some of that really weird 1990s video game aesthetic, both with bizarre creature designs that never made it into other Mario games (because this was Squaresoft doing Mario, rather than Nintendo doing Squaresoft) as well as some of the weirdness of the 45-degree isometric perspective - which does make platforming a pain, but hits me right in the nostalgia.

Of course, being 38 (pretty soon 39) and with a lot more RPGs under my belt, the challenge level is near the floor. Indeed, I think very much in that early video game era, there are some aspects that are trivial - like most combat - and then some aspects that are near-impossible (I never got the 30 jumps in a row challenge back in the day).

Nintendo's next foray into Mario-themed RPGs was Paper Mario on the N64, which became its own sub-series. I don't have anything against those games but I'm a little sad that this Nintendo/Square collaboration didn't spawn its own follow-ups.

Given how big a part of my life D&D has become, I have to give credit to this game for introducing me to the RPG genre (even if it would be 18 years between my playing this the first time and getting into D&D). So, yeah, it's been a fun trip down memory lane.

Super Mario Wonder and a Remake of Super Mario RPG

 Super Mario RPG is one of my favorite games of all time. It was formative for me, and actually the first RPG I ever played. And this year, it's getting a remake on the Switch!

Unlike, say, Final Fantasy VII Remake, this appears to be an update to the original game that seems to preserve most of the gameplay - you'll still be wandering around an isometric Mushroom Kingdom and going into separate battle areas when you encounter a foe. But seeing Mallow and Geno updated to modern graphics nearly 30 years onward is really exciting!

Mario is also getting a new side-scrolling game called Super Mario Wonder, which is... well, it's a classic side-scrolling Mario game, but the twist on this appears to be that it's the most explicitly psychedelic the series has gotten since the "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" level in Yoshi's Island.

2023 seems to be a banner year for game releases.

Luigi's Mansion 3

In 2000, I remember getting Rogue Squadron II a couple days before the Nintendo Gamecube came out, arriving in the mail a little early. I wouldn't actually go out to the store to pick up my console (that I'd saved several months' worth of allowance to buy) until later. The Gamecube, as it turned out, wound up being an ok but not particularly important Nintendo console. While it gave us Smash Bros. Melee and a few other games that are near and dear to me, it marked a decline that forced Nintendo to go out of its way to be the unconventional video game company after having been the titan of the industry.

Anyway, the point is, there wasn't actually a major Mario launch title for the Gamecube. Mario Sunshine, which was the console's primary 3D platform adventure, came later. Instead, we got this really weird game called Luigi's Mansion, in which you played as Mario's sidekick brother trapped in a mansion filled with ghosts, armed only with a Ghostbusters-inspired flashlight/vacuum cleaner combo.

While the series has, I think, been well-liked, it's odd then that we're now only getting the third game in 19 years. Also, I feel profoundly and tragically old to think that the Gamecube came out almost two decades ago, because I was already a teenager then and now I'm sad.

I also haven't actually played either of the series predecessors - for some reason I never wound up getting the original, and aside from the hybrid home/mobile console that is the Switch, I never got any of Nintendo's portable systems and thus never played the second game in the series.

I'm about an hour and a half into the game. Mario and company are on a vacation and go to stay at a big fancy hotel out in the country. The hotel is a big skyscraper tower, and the huge reception everyone receives and the weird lack of any other guests should probably key you into the notion that this place is actually quite sinister.

Eventually, obviously, it turns out that it's a bunch of ghosts who have lured you there, and everyone but Luigi gets trapped in magic paintings (there's a brief intro chase early on with what I assume to be a nonstandard game over where Luigi gets trapped as well - it's the only time yet I've "died" and it was at the very first moment that was possible. So that's fun.)

The game has you exploring the haunted floors of the hotel, looking for gadgets to help you fight more ghosts and hoovering up the ghosts you encounter. Freeing Professor E. Gadds (introduced in the original game, and also seen in Mario Sunshine) gets the ball rolling, where you establish a safe home base in the parking garage under the building that you can return to for the Professor to send you off on further missions.

The environment is full of details and hidden treasures and secret doors, and it's pretty hilarious how much damage Luigi can do to the rooms with his vacuum pack. It's clearly built on a sort of Metroidvania model where you get new tools that allow access to new areas over time, and if you return to previous areas, you might be able to get treasures that were previously inaccessible.

One of the showcase new features of the game is "Gooigi," which is a sort of gelatinous homunculus you can create and pilot that can, T-1000-style, squeeze through bars and stuff like that.

The game, like a lot of 1st party Nintendo stuff, just drips with charm (and goo) and I'm very excited to see more. So far, difficulty is not super high, but I'm still in the early stages. Also, it's a very kid-friendly game, so I'm not exactly expecting Dark Souls here.

Super Mario Maker 2

Not realizing it was out yet, I did something I very rarely do, which is that I impulse-purchased Super Mario Maker 2.

So far I've only worked on one course, but like the previous iteration, this game feels like a "staple" one simply has to have if one has a Switch.

Probably the biggest addition is that there's now a "story mode" that encourages you to play through courses to earn coins to rebuild Peach's castle. I don't know how deep this will get, but my sense is that it's primarily to introduce possibilities and concepts for your own levels.

Naturally a lot of people will be building the most absurdly difficult levels possible, but I've always striven to create levels that are beatable but have something clever going on - not that I know whether I succeed at that.

I actually don't know off the top of my head if the Switch can use a stylus - on the Wii U, that was the main way you interfaced with Mario Maker when building courses. My brief experience controlling it via joystick has been not quite as refined, but perhaps that just requires getting used to it.

Like the previous game, you can make courses in original SMB style, SMB3, SMW, and New Super Mario Bros, but they've also added a Super Mario 3D world variant - which is kind of a kludge, as it's still 2D, but uses a lot of new assets that didn't exist in the other games, like glass pipes and trees that you can climb in cat form.

Additionally, there are more world-themes, so you can have deserts, forests, underwater levels, and snow levels.

I'm eager to make some fun new courses!

Nintendo Announcements at E3 2019

As you might be aware, there's a big gaming convention going on. I'm not going to go exhaustively into every announcement - I recommend checking out whatever your preferred gaming news site is, but I figured I'd mention some things that caught my eye from Nintendo.

Zelda:

First off, there was a tease for a sequel to Breath of the Wild. While I don't know if it will be the same mechanically, it does appear to be a new Zelda game with the same graphical style.

BotW is a game I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I appreciate the sense of play and exploration, and the sweeping majesty of its game world. But I also think that its game world fell into a bit of a "samey-ness" trap that open-world games often suffer from. It's all well and good to go from deserts to forests to snowy mountains, but when every dungeon and shrine looks the same once you go underground, it kind of takes the fun out of it. Also, I think if every sword, bow, and shield had about ten times the durability, it might have felt less annoying to see them break.

I'll be very curious to see if they keep the survival/resource feel of the previous game or give us a more traditional Zelda experience.

Also, the remake of Link's Awakening will have a custom dungeon editor.

Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighters:

As someone who very eagerly got the Smash Pass, I'm pretty happy to see two new fighters announced as DLC.

First, and to me, more exciting, is Banjo-Kazooie. This Bear with a Bird in his backpack debuted originally in Diddy Kong Racing, a game that took Donkey Kong's sidekick and then gave us a bunch of potential new IPs for Rareware back when Rare was one of the greatest video game studios. Among the roster, only Banjo and, hilariously, Conker (whose initial kid-friendly game was scrapped in favor of an irreverent one that was more Fritz than Felix) wound up getting their own 3D platformers.

Additionally, they'll be getting "The Hero," which represents the various protagonists of the prolific Dragon Quest series (which I think has been around as long as Final Fantasy but for some reason I've never talked with anyone who has ever played them.)

Mana Collection:

Secret of Mana holds a very special place in my heart - my oldest friend and I used to play in endlessly when we were in middle school, the only Squaresoft RPG that you could play co-op. Three of the games in the Mana series, including Secret of Mana, will be getting released as a collection, including one previously never released in America. Additionally, that unreleased game, now given an english title of Trials of Mana, is also getting a 3D remake coming next year.

Luigi's Mansion:

I've actually never played any of the Luigi's Mansion games, but there's a new one coming to the Switch. Cool! It apparently lets you turn into, at points, "Gooigi," which is a Luigi made of goo that can slime its way along walls and such.

Anyway, there's way more news even from Nintendo, but those are the highlights I'm most interested in.

Super Mario Odyssey

After experimenting with a return to more linear "get to the end of the level" design in Mario 3D Land for the Wii U, Mario Odyssey goes back to the established 3D Mario design of having you track down items held by bosses or hidden in puzzles.

Odyssey is a very fun game, and one that is filled with charm. Attempting to stop a wedding that Bowser has planned for himself and Peach (of course against her will - there's kidnapping involved, as always,) Mario finds himself stranded in the Hat Kingdom and befriends a hat-spirit-creature named Cappy who becomes the main mechanical conceit of the game - you can toss your hat at various creatures in order to inhabit them and use their abilities - something that recalls, of all things, the now-obscure Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64.

With a hat-shaped ship provided by the Hat Kingdom, you travel the world to various different Kingdoms that each have their own inhabitants, ranging from friendly Mexican skeleton people to tree-growing robots to realistically-proportioned humans who all wear suits and hats.

Along the way you collect Power Moons to allow your ship access to the next Kingdom. Each of these Kingdoms has a "main story" that you can play through first to get a good number of moons (often getting three-moon clusters that also look weirdly like bunches of bananas) but along these paths and after finishing these stories you'll have plenty of stuff to find.

Coins, oddly enough for a Mario game, actually function as a currency. You'll be taxed a very modest 10 coins if you die (I think you'd have to actively avoid coins to run out of them, as it's pretty easy to get into the thousands) but otherwise you can spend them in the shops in each kingdom for various costumes and stuff you can decorate your ship with.

Each Kingdom (with one or two exceptions) also has its own currency that is finite and can be used to purchase a limited number of local items including costumes, travel stickers (like the ones you'd find on an old-timey suitcase, only these go on your hat-airship) and other cosmetic rewards.

It's a great entry in the series and feels inventive and charming in a way we haven't seen since the first Mario Galaxy game.

I also want to take a moment to talk about my favorite area in the game: the Metro Kingdom. Here, in its capital of New Donk City, Mario gets to return to the place he bested Donkey Kong and rescued Pauline, who is now mayor of the city. And she is also a singer in a band! Granted, when I was a kid Mario was from Brooklyn and Donkey Kong was set in New York, but... New Donk City is a very Nintendo-ized New York City. Every car on the street is a yellow taxi that looks like it's from the mid 80s, and everyone there dresses like it's the 1940s. One would think its inhabitants, being realistically-proportioned humans speaking some strange nonsense (the exception being Pauline, who is cartoonish like Peach and who actually speaks, and most notably sings in English,) would be off-putting, but the place is actually very charming (the music, exuberant as any Mario music tends to be, helps.) There is a kind of innocent urban aesthetic the feels like something from my childhood that this seems to embody.

Anyway, this a great core-franchise Mario entry for this console generation and definitely recommended to anyone who likes the classic Nintendo offerings.

The Latest Levels I'm Super Proud of in Super Mario Maker

My Ghost House level  (4491-0000-0033-2201) was quite awesome, but I'm very proud of the kind of duology of levels that have a kind of concept behind them.

The first is an underground level that requires you to blast through several blocks using Bob-Ombs (or simply avoid the flying already-triggered bob-ombs coming out of pipes) to get through. You gradually make your way through a series of challenges before finding a lone Clown Car, which lets you escape at the end of the level. The concept here is that it's an underground Koopa air base, and you're stealing a Clown Car. Why?

The second level is called "Taking Down the Flagship," (code A5B5-0000-0033-5D31) and has you fly that clown car through a couple of little koopa-piloted skiffs (all firing cannons at you, of course) and then breaking into the cargo hold of a massive airship (you do need to, once  again, use bob-ombs to blast your way in.)

I make use of Warp Pipes to have you descend below decks to the Engine Room first, where you have to dodge a couple of sawblades and koopas, (probably should have put in some of those moles that throw wrenches. Oh well.) You emerge in a little gangplank below the ship, hop over a chomp-chomp and then make your way through the arsenal, where several cannons and bob-ombs threaten you. From there, you make it up to the main deck and have to deal with a Hammer Bro. and a giant Goomba with a Bullet Bill Launcher on his back. Going down into a pipe again, you make it to the bridge, where you have to fight (or just bypass) Bowser Jr.

Emerging from that area, you effectively hit the self-destruct button (signified by the detonation of several bob-ombs) and then make your escape on a Clown Car.

But before you can, you have to make it through a massive airforce coming to take revenge, led by a Super-Mushroom-Enlarged Bowser. It's a race to the finish from there.

Damn do I love this game.

Ghost House and Super Mario World in Super Mario Maker = I'm Home!

Super Mario World is my favorite Mario game (it's my original, so it's the one that all other Marios are compared to.) And I love spooky things (Halloween's my favorite holiday. Oddly enough, I'm really squeamish about gore - but then I do like horror that focuses on weirdness and creepiness rather than just violence, like the Shining.)

Anyway, I've been on a feature-unlocking spree today, starting a new level with each theme only for the next to unlock. In the middle of making my (rather awesome, if I do say so myself) Airship level (that involves hopping from airship to airship,) I unlocked the Ghost House and SMW set/theme.

Included, in addition to the obvious things like Boos (and Boo Buddies) and Dry Bones, are Doors, which you can make and then drag the paired door to elsewhere in the level, and Hidden Blocks, the tool of trolls everywhere.

So I've created a little ghost house that I think lives up to the style of the classic ones. It's full of hidden passages and little deathtraps (my favorite not-exactly-trap is a really long fall that ends on a bunch of quickly-collapsing platforms that you need to climb up the whole height of the level.) There's definitely a theme here that using hidden blocks is always the better choice than using regular ones (I think there's one normal question mark block that doesn't spawn something nasty.)

Philosophically, I always give some hint at what the right choice is. For example, I unlocked sound effects sometime when working on the level, and the first pair of visible blocks pops out a set of Boo Buddies in a crowded space, but if you land on them, you'll get some creepy screams, which should be your indication to leave them alone.

Right now I think I'm mostly just playing with ideas that only evolve a little bit. But this is only the third day I've had the game, so I expect that over time I'll come up with some more interesting things.

It's definitely a tricky little balance to get a level that's not impossibly hard or trivially easy. My general rule is be "tough but fair," and I also have to remind myself that a level that feels easy to me likely does because I'm the one who designed it. I'll need to get friends to try out my levels to see how difficult that they really are.

Faster Unlocks for Super Mario Maker

Apparently after an update (man, it's a lot easier to adjust games now than it was in the cartridge days,) Super Mario Maker will now allow you to unlock level elements at a faster pace, though the mechanics of this remain somewhat mysterious.

I experienced this myself earlier today. After unlocking the Underwater set through the normal wait, I created a level that used all the elements from that set, and suddenly unlocked the Castle set. Obviously I immediately went to make a Castle level, and after using all of its elements, I unlocked the Airship set and the Super Mario Bros. 3 theme.

I've used all the Airship elements, though I used them in my Castle level (I was only about halfway done with the Castle level when I unlocked the Airship.) I suspect that if I make an actual Airship level, I might unlock the next set and theme - Ghost House and Super Mario World (which are both basically the ones I was most excited about.)

This is a pretty solid alternative to the original "just wait for new stuff to arrive" system, as it still requires you to take a look at every piece they've given to you before giving you new stuff.

Oh, and I've unlocked (somehow) auto-scroll, adjustable time limits, and a feature that lets you track Mario's path for fine-tuning jumps (something that I kind of wish had come earlier.)

I'm hoping I've correctly analyzed the system here, and that I can start making Super Mario World levels (SMW was my first Mario game, so its aesthetics and feel are the most iconic to me.)

Super Mario Maker First Impressions

Well, I picked up Super Mario Maker, obviously. I've made two courses and played a couple of levels made by others (many of whom seem to have done the "set your Wii U's calendar forward" trick to get more items.)

I'm a longtime Mario veteran, of course (Super Mario World was the first I really played seriously, back when the SNES was the current-gen,) but I'm pretty inexperienced in level design.

So far the two stages I've created are both pretty simple. The first is kind of two parts - one involves making tricky jumps between flying koopas and then kicking a shell through a long line of piranha plants (because it's just so satisfying and cathartic.) It's not a terribly difficult level as long as you know how to jump from koopa to koopa.

The second is practically an auto-play level (you do have to run forward,) which I recognize is a genre that will probably get pretty old. Still, it has you bouncing off of a ton of red flying koopas, which is pretty fun. There are a few superfluous bits there that I should get rid of, but it's not terrible.

At this point, without clock shenangians, the options are pretty limited. You can make solid ground, bob-omb-able blocks (though no bob-ombs,) destructible blocks, and question mark blocks. You can make pipes, put in super mushrooms and coins and those bouncing spring platform things. And then you can put in Goombas, Piranha Plants, and Koopas (the latter two you can shake to get variants, like the fire-ball-spitting piranhas and red "I don't run off platforms" koopas.)

And that's it for now. You can do a fair amount with these items.

In terms of themes, I currently only have the Ground and Underground settings and the Super Mario Bros. and Wii U "looks." (No World or 3.)

After playing for a while, my gamepad was getting low on battery, so I took a break. I'm eager to get the Super Mario World theme and the Ghost House setting (along with Boos!)

Next level I come up with I'm going to try to make a bit challenging (but not absurdly hard, like some people seem to do.)

Mario Maker Looks Amazing

I'll admit that when I first heard about Super Mario Maker, I wasn't incredibly enthusiastic. But I think that's just because I hadn't really thought about it, and the way that Nintendo polishes things.

I've never been terribly good at game customization. I always have these lofty ideas, but execution is a much different story. I've certainly drawn maps and imagined characters and bosses for games in the past, but I've never really had the resolve to actually get games made.

But unlike the level editors that come with a lot of games, Super Mario Maker looks like the game is the level editor. I've watched a ton of videos online showing how it works, and it really seems as if Nintendo has put all their efforts toward making the level designing as intuitive as possible.

I'm really excited about this.

Mario Maker strips things down to the basics, for the most part, but one of the main reasons the series has been such a huge part of video game history (arguably, it sits at the very center of video game history) is that the simple components that make up a Mario level can be composed in so many different ways that wield so many different results that the games are still exciting to play thirty years after the first came out.

The level maker is obviously the star of the show - there's an online system for playing levels others have created, as well as some designer-made ones that are there to demonstrate some of the crazy ideas you can incorporate into your levels.

The maker essentially lays out your level over a big grid - apparently back in the early days, Mario levels were drawn on graph paper, so this is not too far off from the real way it's done. You can stretch out the level to an appropriate length and drop in items and enemies simply by dragging them from a menu, with everything snapping to the grid.

You can choose between the NES Mario Bros. or Mario Bros. 3 styles, as well as the SNES Mario World style and the modern, Wii U Mario Bros. U style. You can change these themes in the middle of editing a level, but to be clear, these changes do actually have some mechanical ramifications. For example, I don't think you can pick up Koopa shells in the original Mario Bros., and also, the "flight" item will be a Raccoon Leaf in 3, a Cape Feather in World, and a Propeller Hat in U (I think it reverts to a Super Mushroom in 1.) That said, some items and enemies that came in later games (e.g. Wigglers, Boos) will get retro-ized, becoming 8-bit style sprites if you put them in an older-style level.

You can also choose between different terrains, like underground, airship, castle, or ghost house (and obviously the standard above ground,) which will change the background and the platforms upon which you can hop.

The Maker apparently unlocks items over time (straight up how many days since you started playing with it.) While some will resent not being able to, say, put in warp pipes on the first day you start playing, I think that it will be a nice way to prevent oneself from getting overwhelmed. By the time everything's unlocked, you'll even be able to put in specific sound queues when Mario runs through particular areas.

While editing, you can quickly press to go to "play mode, which will drop Mario right wherever you have the cursor pointing. You can then play through what you've got, and if you die or just hit the "Make" button, you'll pop right back into editing mode. It also shows the path that Mario took during this section, which should be an invaluable tool for fine-tuning those difficult jumps.

There are also kind of fun little techniques to get more out of the level assets. If you drag a Koopa out of the menu to put on the level, but kind of shake it with the stylus, it'll turn into a red-shelled Koopa (the ones who don't jump off ledges.) You can also drag a Super Mushroom onto an enemy to make them larger.

Anyway, it looks really, really cool. Possibly a must-buy for Wii U owners.