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Johnw1104 on 26 October 2017
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Azuren said:
Volterra_90 said:

That's not at problem at all if you find other gaming experiences which you love. It's a shame that you can't enjoy Mario games though, I've always had so much fun with them .

I enjoyed Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic), Mario 3, Super Mario World, and Mario 64. Then I got tired of it and started looking at other games critically. 2D Mario games have only continued to show me that side-scrolling Mario works for a bit before getting boring. 3D Mario games have shown me that Nintendo considers one new twist in each game is sufficient. The water cannon in Sunshine, silly gravity in both Galaxy games, and now a hat that can hijack NPCs. While Odyssey has the best new mechanic with the most variations of usage, it just doesn't do anything for me.

 

It might be because I look at Mario and see him as a racist relic from the past. While he's not as racist as black face or something, I still can't help but feel people would be upset if I made a protagonist out of a short and stout Mexican in work clothes named Pablo Pablo and game him the ability to jump really high and swim really fast as he eats mushrooms and flowers...

"Then I got tired of it and started looking at other games critically".

I believe you've mistaken "critically" with "cynically". Don't worry, everyone goes through that phase in their teenage years lol

You should stop talking yourself out of it and give it a go; I largely lost interest in Mario in my later highschool/early college years (became obsessed with various MMO's and console shooters like CoD2/4), but I got back into them with the Wii U and remembered how much I love them. They're some of the finest crafted games you'll ever play.

Otherwise, racism requires an agenda of sorts; you have to be mocking said race in some way or suggesting others are inferior. Mario and Luigi are consistently the heros everyone needs, they're adorable by just about all standards, and they're cartoonish in design with the intent of being cute and approachable (ask any animator what makes a character cute and they'll mention the "rounded" trick, it's ingrained deep within our psyches to find rounded things cute).

Instead, this game makes it even more clear that they aren't your typical humans and are meant to be looked at more like cartoon characters. There is absolutely nothing racist about those two and, if anything, suggesting there is does a diservice to the word "racism" and how terrible actual racism is.