What freebs2 said is the best way to describe!
And proud member of the Mega Mario Movement!
It's what Nintendo does best (except for Super Mario Sunshine). Like what everyone else said, the great controls and level design. No other platformer comes close.
I think it's the 2nd and 3rd reasons. People love the innocence because you can't really have that in real life. Also the controls are the best I have seen and people like to be able to accurately control something or they get easily frustrated.
His moustache!
| RolStoppable said: Copying and stealing from something that is eternal. The inspiration of Super Mario Bros. (and that's the foundation of Mario and its offsprings, not any of the previous games he appeared in) was Alice in Wonderland, so Mario contains the spirit of eternity as well. Video games are a very different medium when compared to books and movies, so it was very important that Super Mario Bros. played to the strengths of its own medium and it did just that in an admirable way. The result is that Mario is not just eternal from a lore/game universe point of view, but also from a gameplay point of view. This makes for one powerful combination that is unlikely to be ever replaced by something else which means the life or death of Mario is entirely up to Nintendo's decisions. And since Mario is so important, the life or death of Nintendo itself is closely linked to their treatment of Mario. |
That is completely bullcrap and one of the worst gaming lies ever perpetuated. That's coming from me as a gamer and as a student of Victorian literature.
RolStoppable said:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_45/b3958127.htm (Ctrl+F for "Alice in Wonderland") Looks like Miyamoto had a gameplay idea, but Mario entering a fantasy world through a pipe, a fantasy world that was threatened by an evil king (King Koopa), can be traced back to Alice in Wonderland's Heart Queen I would say (as far as I remember AiW). |
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/nsmb/0/3
Miyamoto: Some time ago I was being interviewed and I spoke about Alice in Wonderland. But it seems there was some misunderstanding and it’s since been stated that I was influenced by Alice in Wonderland. That isn’t the case. It’s just that there has always somehow been a relationship between mushrooms and magical realms. That’s why I decided that Mario would need a mushroom to become Super Mario.
It's about hallucinogenics and the mythical mode of mushrooms as a gateway, not Alice in Wonderland in particular.
And pipes would be from Mario Bros., not Alice; that just had a rabbit hole.
The man is timeless...plus he gives plus sized people hope that you can still be a hero!
"Trick shot? The trick is NOT to get shot." - Lucian
RolStoppable said:
Since you study literature, I would like to hear about other examples of mushrooms and magical realms. Doesn't really need to be restricted to books though. Are mushrooms and magical realms as common as Miyamoto makes it sound like? A pipe or a rabbit hole isn't really the point. It's about an entry passage from our world into a fantasy land. |
As to the pipe and the rabbit hole: magical lands on the other ends of tunnels or under the ground have been prevalent in every single mythological tradition in the world. The fae people living under burial mounds, the tunnel leading into Hades, the long road Gilgamesh walked into Hell - I could almost literally go on forever about that one. Carroll and Miyamoto both were calling on some seriously timeless imagery there. To learn more about that mode of storytelling you might want to pick up The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which may or may not ruin such stories for you, forever. It really goes over how certain storytelling tropes are intrinsically powerful to us, and the proof comes in how they are prevalent in every single culture.
And yes, they are, though not specifically mushrooms most of the time. Hallucinogenic drugs, though, are almost always important for spiritual journeys, and they often do mess with scale and one's own sense of mortality. Those perceptions are made more literal in stories.
Malstrom will insist that it draw on Alice, I'm sure, but he's wrong - Carroll himself was drawing on something far older and longer-lasting.
The joy of a Mario game tends to relate to the number, and length, of surprises in a game.
For eg. The Boomerang Suit in Mario Land 3D, or the use of specific level variations (W4.2 in M3DL).
You have 2 unique elements, and what they have in common is they're only used temporarily. Thats the key imo. Short controlled moments of "nostalgia" or surprise.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
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