I’m glad we could clear that up.

Welcome to another tantalizing edition of the THUMBS that judge the games of the future! We are, as you may know, in the midst of a bit of a summer lull, with many of us eagerly awaiting the many promised jewels of the coming holiday season. So while we continue our painful, painful waits, let us venture into these games of the FUTURE and see what they hold for us!

Kard Combat (iOS)

I really thought we were long passed the days when we exchanged C’s for K’s. Haven’t we already moved on to not using Z’s to replace S’s? While this game is setting back naming standards hundreds of years, I just can’t wish ill upon it! A card game designed to be a videogame by Richard Garfield!? The one true deity of my childhood? How could it NOT be amazing!

Of course, not everyone spent their pre-teen, and teen, and after-teen years playing Magic: the Gathering, so PERHAPS not everyone is as pumped as me upon hearing the news… HAH, no no, of course everyone is. It’s gonna be so great, you guys! Now I just have to find an iPhone to confiscate…

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

RUIN (PSV)

Again with the lame names! Isn’t RUIN kind of generic and common? I mean, I’m pretty sure I was following some other game with this name, and just stopped caring about it… I think this one’s different, though. It looks a lot more like…like…DIABLO! My favorite game to compare games to! Well, at least that one month… It’s a pretty fun and easy comparison to make, though. I mean, “Diablo” describes a game far better than most genre labels do. It’s like its own genre!

While I do love me some Diablo games, this particular game seems like it could have a few unfun issues. First, it’s on the PlayStation Vita! A great unknown. Well, I mean, there is tons of info out there about it, but…but still UNKNOWN! I haven’t played one. You haven’t played one. Who knows what it’s like! Perhaps it is powered by the user’s own life-force; we have no idea.

Multiplayer is a big deal in Diablo games, and I just don’t know how the Vita will handle that. It will have multiplayer, though! So that’s a plus…or IS IT?? Because in RUIN, the other players will be your rivals! Whom you can help OR harm! Oh man, that sounds like it could be a pain. Perhaps it’s more like Magika in that regard, but that sure got annoying at times, even though it was also a major part of the fun of that game… Oh man, Catch 22. I just can’t say I have high hopes for this one.

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Down.

Payday: The Heist (PC, PSN)

CO-OP! The THUMBS’ favorite hyphenated grouping of letters!  Of course this is a shooter. That’s not a knock against it. Co-op shooters can be lots of fun! Like Left 4 Dead, which this game likes to compare itself to. A lot. Of course…it’s L4D without the zombies. Not a single zombie here! Strange for a shooter, right?

The zombies will instead be replaced with…stealing stuff? Well that is new-ish, I think! I don’t recall too many games where you are the bad guy. Well, I mean, other than all those enormously popular GTA games and GTA knock-offs. But this is different! You are stealing CASH MONEY and taking hostages! Just like your favorite heist movie! Payday is also a downloadable game, so there’s some potential for it to have more bang for its buck than L4D and its four hours of gameplay.

In all, it seems like a pretty interesting concept. Hopefully the execution will be there! At the very least, it deserves to have a few eyes kept on it.

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

Super Mario 3DS (3DS)

So if you didn’t know already, the 3DS will be getting its own Mario game. SURPRISE! Look SPOILER ALERT, you already know this game’s going to get a Thumbs Up. How could it not. It’s MARIO! Even when a Mario game is sub-par, it takes us decades to finally admit that to ourselves. It’s just in our DNA as videogame fans to love Mario. He’s the ringleader of it all! Our first hit of our favorite digital drug.

Super Mario 3DS is a Mario game that is going to do Mario things, and we are all going to love it. It’s also bringing back some nostalgic love with some of our favorite Mario costumes, like the raccoon suit! Hopefully that frog, too. Oooh and the Hammer Brother suit! The 3DS may not be a hot commodity now, but I can definitely see things heating up with this release.

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (X360, PS3, Wii)

This is one weird game. It took a bit for me to digest it all. At first glance, it seems like a children’s game that I would have died to have as a child! At second glance, is seems like a marketing tool to sell a bunch of toys that are barely toys. Upon even more glances…well I just don’t even know!

This is most definitely not a game for the fans of the original Spyro games, as they’re all too old for this type of thing. And this is coming from someone who loves toys! Perhaps it’s a game for the children of Sypro fans, though I’m not sure how big a demographic that is. Basically, it’s an action-adventure game that comes packaged with three toys. You place the toys on a platform, and the game reads them and then you use those characters in the game. Fun-ness abounds. Of course, there are 32 characters in all and you will have to be buying the rest of them if you want to enjoy them in-game. It just feels like an awful lot of work, and I can’t really see it catching on. Though, I AM sure it will be quite the ultimate awesome game for many children out there.

Sadly, this concludes another edition of the PSYCHIC THUMBS. But never you fear—they will be back next month! Giving you plenty of time to dust off some shelf-space for all of your new Spyro toys. Trinkets! THEIR POWERS ARE TOO STRONG.

Anyways, next month will most definitely be THE BEST THUMBS EVER, after this edition, of course. Next month’s is ALWAYS the best. The Thumbs: they just keep getting better and better!

Just what is a bit? We weren’t really sure, but we knew it would aid in bringing richer graphics…along with Mario’s new companion, Yoshi. We’d seen the commercials and heard the hype. We knew we’d soon be riding our new dinosaur friend, eating all the soft enemies and powering ourselves up based on the color of the Koopa Troopa shells we held in Yoshi’s mouth. Surely a new age in Mario, but would it always be this way?

Spoiler alert: No!

Who didn’t love Super Mario World? The Yoshis were very plentiful and added a huge depth to the side-scroller that started it all. As crown loyalist Matt Jonas would say, it’s a real Baker’s Day. We’re still not clear on who Baker was and what his day included, but we can assure you, it was a good time for Baker. But it wouldn’t always be sunshine (except in this case) and Double Rainbows, as Yoshi reached his peak in his very first outing. Let’s take a closer look at what the crap went wrong with Yoshi after this point.

The Remaining 16 Bits

Before I go totally off the deep end, we have to take a look at Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. (Well, isn’t that name confusing. Wasn’t the first area in Super Mario World called “Yoshi’s Island”? Has the island grown due to massive volcanic activity? Has the land mass increased from all the Yoshi excrement from over-indulging on roasted Goomba?) This is a prequel where you actually play as Yoshi, aiding Baby Mario. While this game did take away the shell powers from SMW1, it also let Yoshi transform into cars, moles, helicopters, and all sorts of things, not to mention the awesome egg arsenal that Yoshi could build. And who could forget the philosophical conundrum/acid-trip level, “Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy?”

Yoshi also made a strong appearance in Super Mario Kart, sporting fast acceleration and unique Yoshi eggs as weapons. Moreover, there was Yoshi’s Safari, which was one of very few games that used the Super Scope. You played as Mario, riding Yoshi through various lands and shooting Bowser’s forces. Not a bad use of the Super Scope, but Yoshi could have easily been replaced by a horse, or a zealous uncle who enjoys giving piggy-back rides to his plump plumber nephews. Yoshi not only lost his abilities and charm in this game, but his appealing moxie as well. Has the very soul of the Yoshi clan been betrayed?

It Was Going to be the Ultra 64…

1997. America was in a period of surplus budget; certainly we could afford to quadruple our bits, and also quadruple the fun, right? Someone’s gotta put an end to blast processing, and this whole “CD” thing…right?

Super Mario 64 was a great 3D (but not 3D by today’s standards) romp, but look what happened to Yoshi! There were rumors on the Internets that, once you got all 120 stars, you would unlock Yoshi. That’s a lot of work, but it had to be worth it. So you jumped into every painting, went down every one of Princess’ secret slides, and nabbed every star. Finally, you’d have your just desserts (and I’m not just talking about the cake Princess promised for Mario). The canon outside the castle was unlocked, and you immediately jumped in to blast onto the castle’s roof to see what awaited you. And there he was, our little green friend.

Yeah, you could unlock Yoshi, all right…but you couldn’t even ride him! He spouts a few lines of dialogue (yes, apparently he can speak English now), and he gives you 100 lives, even though you’ve clearly mastered the game at this point. Really? That’s it? What a letdown. He congratulates you for defeating Bowser, even though you haven’t technically beaten him yet, since beating Bowser ends the game. All those hours, all those stars. Plus, after he’s done talking, Yoshi just jumps off screen…like a super jump. What the crap—I can’t even run around a bit with our old pal?!

Another Yoshi title came out on the N64, called Yoshi’s Story. This game seemed targeted for little kids (which most of Nintendo products do these days), so I never played it. It was a successor to Yoshi’s Island, but apparently it was much easier, shorter, and lacked the vehicle-morphing features. It didn’t appeal to me then, and it doesn’t appeal to me now. Please leave us some comments if you have played this title.

Shine Get!

Finally, a disc-based system from Nintendo. Surely they can make up for a lack of the Yosh-man with the all-new GameCube, right?

Well, first we had Luigi’s Mansion. Is this a sequel to Maniac Mansion, or something? I certainly didn’t have a Baker’s Day or even a Day of the Tentacle here. They took two of my favorite things, Mario games and Ghostbusters, and ruined both of them. Not only is there no Yoshi here, they took away Mario, too. What were they thinking?

Then we had to wait a few more years until Mario Sunshine came out. OK, so surely—SURELY—Mario must be riding Yoshi again, right? Well, not exactly like you’d think. The big gimmick of the game was the FLUDD nozzle, which was a massive pain. Yoshi did make an appearance in a few stages here, but instead of eating enemies or throwing eggs, he’d spit different juices based on what fruit he ate. Yeah, that’s what we’ve been waiting for: spitting juice at Goombas. What the crap were they thinking at the developer meetings? Next system, please!

Wii Need a Good Yoshi Game

Again, we’d have to wait several years to get a legit Mario game in our hands. This time, Mario would be travesing the cosmos in Super Mario Galaxy. Well apparently, Mario’s in a galaxy where Yoshi doesn’t exist; you won’t find him here at all. As usual, videogame developers come out with a sequel in a game series, remove a crucial component of past games, and then reintroduce it in another sequel so they can say “Hey guys, feature X is back! Remember how much you loved feature X and wish it was in [Current Game]? Well, now it’s in [Current Game 2: The Next Generation]!” Those marketing guys are smart. Look at all the things lacking in GTAIV from GTA: San Andreas. They’re going to reintroduce all of those things into GTAV and people will lap it up.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii was released later, and it allowed four people to cooperatively ride four different Yoshis. This will probably be as close as we ever get to New Super Mario World. Yoshi has no real powers here, he doesn’t travel with you to the next levels, and he’s not in many levels to begin with. In addition, Super Mario Galaxy 2 was released with Mario riding Yoshi right on the cover, so I’m guessing that he’s actually in the game this time. I haven’t played this game, so I can’t speak for how cool Yoshi is in it, but I’m guessing that he’s only in three stages, can’t do anything, and talks like a big wussy.

U Get One Last Chance…

So what does the future hold for U and Mii? OK, maybe I’m being a bit pessimistic here, but isn’t that the point of “What the Crap?” At least we can look back at the fonder times of Super Mario World 1 and 2, and even play them on the Virtual Console if we so choose. But, will we have to rebuy them on the Wii U Virtual Console when that comes out? Or will we have to settle for Yoshi’s Cookie 3D, or something? Or will we finally get full-on Yoshi support again?

Probably not the latter. So grab a beer, boot up your SNES (or Wii VC), and join me in the good times, when Yoshis were Yoshis, and women were proud of it.

Welcome to the super-special HYPER-HYPE E3 aftermath extravaganza edition of the THUMBS! With sooo much news, a lot of it is bound to slip through the cracks. With that, we move on to the REAL news about the games you REALLY want to hear about!

Fortune Street (Wii)

A Mario and Dragon Quest crossover? Whaaaaat!? Finally, my first two videogames, together at last! I can’t wait for Mario to jump on slimes and the Dragon Quest hero to ride Yoshi off into the sunset! Oh, how grand it shall be…

But wait, WHAT?! It’s not that sort of game?? Damn. It’s the first North American installment of a long-running Japanese video board-game series? INSANITY. It sounds like it will be a little more Monopoly than Mario Party—which should be a nice fresh change of pace for those party game freaks who can’t get into the same ol’ Mario Party after the same ol’ Mario Party. Regardless of the bizarreness of putting Mario together with Dragon Quest, this game should provide some high comedy!

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

Minecraft (X360)

The smash PC hit is coming to the Xbox!

Look, I could never get into this 3D 8-bit crafting adventure. But a lot of people have! Minecraft is a giant sandbox that lets your imagination run wild! Of course, that imagination usually results in giant penis structures or the recreation of just about every possible pop culture icon…but still! Imagination! The PC version has lead to some pretty amazing and awe-inspiring creations. YouTube is just filled with them! YouTube is also filled with lots of penis structures, though.

Will the Xbox version be able to capture all of the same tools and opportunities as its predecessor? Only time will tell! But it will definitely get its chance to shine.

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

LEGO City Stories (Wii U, 3DS)

After conquering so many super-successful movie franchises, LEGO has set its sights on a new target: a child-friendly Grand Theft Auto. LEGOIZED!

Look, it may sound a little strange…but with a track record like the LEGO series, I think that this will be yet another success. One that causes us all to scratch our heads and wonder why so many people want to walk around a LEGO city…but a success nonetheless!

LEGOs are just that powerful! They take a hold of us! They are just fun, plain and simple, and that is all we ask from our videogames. Hopefully LEGO City Stories will capture those same aspects of fun and I haven’t been rambling like a mad man…but, well, that wouldn’t be anything new!

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

Killer Freaks from Outer Space (Wii U)

So a new Nintendo console is approaching us. Will it be like its predecessor, or will it offer more to the more-than-casual gamer? While it will still have family-friendly games like the above-mentioned Lego City Stories, there are also games coming out like Killer Freaks from Outer Space!

This game really wants to show off the new Wii U controller that you’ve been hearing so much about! …You have been hearing about it, right? RIGHT?! OK, maybe that was last week. Will Killer Freaks from Outer Space just be a run-of-the-mill FPS with the added bonus of silly, gimmicky controls? Or will it launch the Wii U into GREATNESS? Well, I’ll always be skeptical of Nintendo, since there’s been so much disappointment since the N64 days… But maybe they’re making some effort to right some of the wrongs of the past.

At the very least…AWESOME NAME!

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Up!

Kinect Disneyland Adventures (X360)

Hey! Ever wanted to go to Disneyland, but not really go? Don’t you wish you could just play a videogame, and get that same experience?

NO NO NO NO NO! Of course not.

…Well, glad we got that over with.

Captain Eric’s Psychic Thumbs say… Thumbs Down.

Well, well, well! We almost had an HISTORIC five-for-five thumbs up! WHAT IN THE WOOOORLD!?! Thankfully, that did not happen.

Perhaps it was the endorphins of the hypiest hype-season of videogame hypeness, or perhaps games are getting better. But, most likely I just have no idea what I’m talking about! Be sure to come back next month to see what’s on the horizon and whether I’ve been able to get a clue! C’mon! It’ll be EPIC!

When a launch title comes out for a console, one has to argue that the game could deserve a perfect score of ten, for being the best the system had to offer at the time. Let me remind you that this particular logic led to the discovery of all kinds of sexual diseases and false religious beliefs. Just because a game did lots of new things, that doesn’t mean it should deserve praise by the metric ton. Just because it is the first game for a system doesn’t mean it is the best game for the system, and only after so long can we drop our “shades of ill perception” and take a real, unadulterated glance at the game in question.

One game often glanced back at through nostalgia-tinted glasses is the abominable Super Mario Land. This title saw American and Japanese releases before I was even born. It very loosely follows what is considered the main rules of the Mario franchise, but given that this was released eons ago, one could argue the Super Mario “franchise” hadn’t been truly realized by that time.

I had fond memories of this game, but I certainly don’t anymore. As a child, the game punished me with what I remembered to be fun yet extremely difficult levels. When I recently re-procured this game, I was thoroughly disappointed. Have you tried playing this game in the twenty-first century? It punishes you in all new different ways – there are games that grow old gracefully, and then there is Super Mario Land. Hideous, disgusting and simple, it tarnishes the plumber’s name and soils his reputation. Super Mario Land, oh let me count the ways…

.

Nintendo Seal of Quality? Whatever you say.

I thought there was supposed to be a standard if games received the Nintendo Seal of Quality. It is the story of my life that some of the games I hold dear are not particularly good games, and in the case of Super Mario Land it seems like everything is wrong and nothing is right. Just like the international Super Mario Bros. 2, the excuse of a storyline in this game doesn’t bear any semblance or relation to the classic Super Mario Bros. story. Many elements are confusing; Instead of the Mushroom Kingdom, Super Mario Land is set in the dumbly named “Sarasaland,” made up of four equally stupid-sounding kingdoms. Instead of the reptilian scourge King Koopa we have a different villain—the Mysterious Spaceman Tatanga. So mysterious that they “mysteriously” forgot to design him with any interesting features, a back-story or even a purpose besides being the main villain. He might as well just be another minor enemy, because Mario shares no dialogue with him and when Tatanga is defeated, that is all that happens. Tatanga is defeated. Game end.

At least one staple is being re-used, the “save the Princess” plot-line. As you might be pleased to find out, we have a kidnapped princess for Mario to save. One of the oddities of this game though is that her name is Daisy (not Toadstool or Peach). In Super Mario Land, our moustachioed plumber adds another number in his little red book. I hope that kiss from Daisy at the end was worth all the shit you went through—hell, the shit you forced me to go through, you ungrateful fat codger. Don’t think I won’t tell Pauline or Peach about this.

With the Mario series being devoid of decent human characters, Daisy has since made it into pretty much every Mario game that will take her, even though she is a palette-swapped Princess Toadstool. Square have been getting away with this for their Final Fantasy monsters for years, so I really shouldn’t be surprised.

Another obscurity within this game is that Fire Flowers are not “Fire Flowers,” they are “Super Flowers” instead. Rather than throwing fireballs, Mario throws “Super Balls” once he collects one of the Super Flowers. Super balls are bouncy and also help Mario collect coins. In order words, they go completely against the well understood fireball behavior. All of the enemies have strange pseudo-Japanese names, too. Goombas are Chibibos, Piranha Plants are Pakkun Flowers and Koopas are Nokobon.

Even after we point out the discrepancies in the story and character naming, there are then a lot of issues with the controls and physics. I can accept when this game was released and what it actually managed to do, but there are some things we can’t let ourselves forget when we look back to classic games we’re fond of. There is something absolutely wrong with the way Mario moves around, his movement is complicated and controls are at times completely unintuitive. It takes a long amount of time to get used to the way he feels, and you will experience a many number of deaths until you finally familiarize yourself with the glaring mistakes within his leaps and bounds (of which the game makes none). He controls very differently to how he had done in games prior. He is much faster which leads to deaths through misunderstanding of his speed and jump distance.

TO HELL WITH THIS GAME

Oh! Daisy!

Some of the level design is absolutely boring and unimaginative, and can be absolutely punishing. There is nothing worse than a game that is extremely difficult and a chore to play your way through. There are cruelly placed enemies and obstacles that you can’t react in time to avoid unless you memorize where they are. The levels themselves are incredibly repetitive and blatantly copy-paste elements you have already seen earlier in the level. It is as though the game environment was created out of LEGO pieces; there are only a certain number of possible varieties. They are so short yet they seem to drag on and on.

When you finally get to the boss battle of the current world, you realize just how unnecessary they actually are. The ability to completely skip bosses (like in Super Mario Bros.) makes the bosses seem like a waste of time, and in all fact, only two out of the five bosses in the whole game are mandatory. The rest of the boss encounters can be ignored if you’re feeling particularly lazy. I guess that is how the developers must have felt; particularly lazy. Some enemies are previous enemies with slightly different sprites but exactly the same behavior. Even obstacles from one world will end up getting recycled in another, and some enemies frequent every world. Although the game boasts a variety of twenty-six different enemies, there are about six of those that appear every three seconds in every level.

There are four kingdoms in the game, although you wouldn’t even notice they’re different worlds if there wasn’t an intermission between them. That’s a smartypants way of saying that the worlds don’t really show any differentiation, which you think they would if they’re four completely different kingdoms. Apart from a few visual cues in the background, any one of the levels could have their graphics replaced and they’d just be another level of indeterminable origin. I understand that this game was released in 1989, but by that time we’d already had Super Mario Bros. 2! Didn’t the desert stages feel like desert stages, even to the point where switching the graphics wouldn’t have made a difference to the variety of the stage design and layout?

Blaster Master was released in 1988, and didn’t each level feel different to the last one? A year later we get Super Mario Land, and every level feels the damn same and it’s a damn shame. Matter of fact this game recycles elements of itself over and over and doesn’t apologize for it, even when doing so is an act of blatant fucking padding!

The Little Things

The soundtrack in Super Mario Land is amazing. It doesn’t recycle any music from the Super Mario games prior. It is funky, fresh and hip even in our ears at this time. Cheerful bouncy tunes that calm our nerves and makes our third Game Over more bearable than it should ever be. This is music that proves the Game Boy as a welcome platform for amazing chip-music early in its life cycle. Apart from a decent soundtrack, there is one other thing. The auto-scrolling stages in the Sky-Pop and Marine-Pop are absolutely astounding and really show off the Game Boy tech. If these stages had been tightened up and given more of a presence, the game would have been even better. I love how Mario can collect the Super Mushroom in these stages and it results in both him and his Airplane or Submarine growing in size. I love the music on these stages and the interesting enemy patterns. These stages don’t save the game, but they try their hardest to.

If it wasn’t for the argument that this game was released before I was born for hardware that was completely brand new, I would not be generous towards this game. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, even if only for an excuse to rant about this dreadful game and get it forever off my shoulders so I don’t have to associate myself with it anymore. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this game to younger players or those new to Super Mario, because you will absolutely hate this game. It is confusing, disgusting and it convulses over your hands whilst you play. Sure, dust this cartridge off and give it another go for old time’s sake, but you will sully your proud and fond memories of this game for the remainder of your life. If you’ve never had the chance to play the major launch title for one of my most beloved hand-held consoles, you’re lucky.

TO HELL WITH THIS GAME

If that isn’t confusing enough, consider the massive contradiction our culture lives in as it reveres its classics of literature, film, and…umm…I guess “interactive entertainment” (since there’s no smarmy academic word for “videogames.”) We live in an age where we claim to be huge fans of long-running series, only to show our appreciation by bitching about every NEW incarnation that comes out on GameSpot and OC ReMix in grossly thick prose that makes you wonder why this Burger King fry cook could not get a job as a senior professor with all the detail he can articulate and the big words he can use on the Internet.

Still not confused? How about this sentence: “I’m a HUGE fan of the Sonic series, just not the last 17 games they’ve made.” Does that make any sense?

It used to be that series fans hated still sold very well, somehow. (If that sentence doesn’t hurt your head, you need to call 911 immediately. You might have only minutes left to live). This is no longer the case. Now, companies scramble to revive series in the vein of the old-world videogames, which I’m personaly thrilled about, only to still find mixed success as fans find out what I’ve been telling them for years—FANS DON’T FUCKING KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.

Nintendo even jumped on the “neo-retro” bandwagon with the flagship character of not only their company, but the videogame industry itself since history began. Mario is back in 2D, and the results, in all honesty, are confusing—because I’m going to spend several paragraphs bitching about it before I arrive at the score of 8/10.

Mario can do anything, ANYTHING (except pinball, surprisingly), and he has done everything in his immortal career. He’s done more in 25 years as a fake character than 100 real people do in 100 years. He has absolutely nothing to prove, yet Nintendo, listening to cries of the whiners who bank their payroll (like me), decided Mario needs to prove he can still do 2D. Now we have, not Super Mario Bros. 4, but NEW Super Mario Bros.

If we have learned nothing else throughout history (and if you’ll take a look around, we sure as shit haven’t), it’s that the addition of “new” to anything established in our lifetimes will go under a specialized scrutiny of credibility (see list at the bottom of this review). No one wants NEW; they want OLD! But they already bought OLD! But they want NEW! But they know they’ll hate it! But they look forward to it anyway!

It’s a confusing business doing videogames, but nothing’s more confusing than trying to figure out why Nintendo modeled New Super Mario Bros. (in both its DS and Wii incarnations) after the first Super Mario Bros game. As “hip” as it is to revere Mario in his tiny blocky 8-bit incarnation, the truth is that no one goes to Super Mario Bros. 1 when they want classic Mario—they go to Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, or, to some extent, even Super Mario Bros. 2 before they lark around on the first one. Granted, Super Mario Bros. 1 deserves its crown, but Mario has expanded so much further out; it’s kinda hard to appreciate him as he was in those short, left-to-right, one-dimensional cut-and-paste levels where he started.

Thankfully, NSMBW is based more on Super Mario 3 than the first NSMB was, but it still feels like a considerable minimaliization of content, and as epic as Mario has become, this is a problem. Trust me, I love to see Mario back on simple run-and-jump mechanics, but it still feels far more closed off than it was 20 years ago. Mario has always done its best work when it mixes the Mushroom Kingdom with far-out, spacey, surreal shit (Super Mario Paper is probably the best more recent example of this in a 2D form), when the designers just let loose, but it’s not until over half the game is over before you really feel like anything is let loose in this title.

NSMBW is just too easy for most of the game to reach the highs it used to. Nintendo has been hand-holding players more and more for years now, and because they want to induct new young members into the Nintendo fold, I can see why, but c’mon…is a HARD difficulty setting too much to ask for? (Although, be careful what you wish for, since you might get something as hard as Yoshi’s Island DS—yikes!). In this game, you can have up to four players simultaneously, and you can unlock videos that show you how to do stuff—even how to beat a level. On a HARD setting, this would be nice, but I could’ve beaten this game when I was eight.

On the plus side, this game DOES get better as it goes on. Each level is better than the one before, and the game just builds and builds until you get a really classic-feeling showdown with Bowser himself. The Koopalings are back, too, and they’re still so easy you have to really question Mario’s motives for fighting children; but they’re in their most creative forms since Super Mario World. The boss fights with Bowser Jr. also get pretty good, but sadly you almost never have to do more than hit him three times to beat him.

The dungeons are also a bit disappointing, hitting mostly on old stuff the series has done before, instead of really showing what the game’s got like 3 and World did. The best levels in this game all revolve around HUGE stuff and shapes. There’s some cool quasi-gravitational stuff in the game, too, lots of hidden passages and some really well-disguised alternate paths, a bunch of level-exclusive ideas (desert hurricanes, lantern fish, etc.), and a much-improved overworld system that references (rips off) Super Mario 3 pretty well—so the Nintendo gang behind this one really put some effort in. But it still feels like it only would’ve been really new and awesome in 1989.

Also, I was totally not digging the waggley controls.

Nevertheless, I’m still giving this game an 8/10. Why? Because, contrary to…shit, I don’t know what my point is either, but the fact remains that this game is still worth playing despite all its flaws. 2D Mario on a modern console? You CAN’T lose with that, even if it’s inferior to the originals.

Still confused? Maybe just play the fucking game yourself, and you’ll feel it better than I’m able to explain it to you. It has flaws, it’s too easy, and it’s kinda lazy, but I still had a blast.

Go play it.

1. New Coke
2. New England
3. New York Yankees
4. New Year’s Eve
5. New Wave Music
6. New Adventures of Old Christine
7. New Super Mario Bros.
8. New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh
9. New Testament
10. New Deal (1933-1936. Where are you when we need you, FDR?)

It’s amazing how much people are vying these days for local multiplayer cooperative games. Donkey Kong is returning with co-op, New Super Mario Brothers Wii gets you up to four at once…though two of them are just generic Toads. With so many Mario characters available, they really choose two dolts with a simple pallete swap? Ragggge!!! But I digress….

OK, well, if you’re looking for some simple cooperative action without a wuss bubble that lets you skip ahead to the front of the level, then why not jump back in the fight against Red Falcon with the Contra brothers? “Hey Mark, these two guys look exactly the same, only one has blue pants, and the other has red!” Well, that may be, but take a keen look at the cover art and title screen. That’s right, you get to pick up your infinite ammo rifle as Stallone and Schwarzenegger! Well, not really, but as with most NES games, you have to use your imagination.  At least you don’t have to be a kindergarten cop, “get to da choppah,” or beat up a hulking Soviet.

There’s so many bad side-scrolling shooter games out there, most of which came after Contra. There are two types of weapons in Contra: the Spreader Rifle, and “Other.” The Spreader Rifle, or simply, The Spreader, gives you 45 degrees of win. It works even better in cooperative when your buddy takes point, and the guy with the spreader rifle hangs back and lets it spread out over the area ahead. Contra lets you shoot in all eight directions, even while jumping, and you’re going to need it because there’s stuff all over the damn place. No one knows what planet Red Falcon (my guess is, “Red Falcon”) came from, but they sure did a good job at hiring every human and every piece of tech to kill you.

So do you want to have blue pants, or red pants? Here’s a little trivia, if you combine (overlap) red pants and blue pants, you get flashing purple pants, the very pants that your character wears when he has the Red Falcon Invincibility power up. It’s just the magic you would expect when you cross Schwarzenegger and Stallone, and if you haven’t seen The Expendables yet, I highly recommend it. This game is also available on XBLA, but it’s not the NES version we’ve come to love; rather, it’s the original arcade version.

More than half a year after its unintelligible debut, I checked in on Transcribe Audio to see if it had ditched its moneygrubbing liberal agenda. While the quantity of correctly interpreted pronouns had certainly increased, recognition of the parts that actually mattered still left something to be desired. That is, if you wanted a precise word-for-word translation. The video run of Super Mario Bros. 2 that Editor-in-Chief Paul Franzen, former staff writer Michael Gray, and yours truly collaborated on revealed that Transcribe Audio’s primary purpose was to introduce new phrases into our lexicon that would replace overused words, like “awesome”:

Transcribe Audio also replaced my insufferable commentary with little-known facts about myself:

I swear, I was saying “Mega Man” there.

Transcribe Audio was also very good at stating the obvious, for the benefit of visually impaired viewers:

Sometimes, I thought the translation was trying to be clever:

It wasn’t until the very end of the game that I realized the translation had become sentient. I don’t know what kind of sinister educational agenda it had for me, but I’m fairly certain we were between sentences and not saying anything when this popped up:

Also, we’re horrible people. Especially Michael Gray.

GameCola is a brutal, terrible place. Paul writes about it all the time in his diary:

Disconcerting, considering what a fine upbringing he had. Unless Transcribe Audio totally botched the words “Mario 3 is da bomb”:

Actually, that must have been a mistranslation, because I don’t think any of us know how to use the word “meritorious.” We do, however, know how to craft sentences that sound like rejected Beatles lyrics:

Truly, our talents know no bounds. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our understanding of grocery stores:

And honestly, you’d think Michael would’ve known something like that, considering the kind of educational television he grew up with:

Yeah, I think we all deserve a fireball to the head for saying these kinds of things. Fortunately—and this is where I’ll leave you—Paul’s misinterpreted attempt to mention Dragon Warrior yielded an insightful factoid:

Special thanks to Transcribe Audio for making the world a better place.

Mario—yes, that Mario—has a legacy that some might deem epic. Yet, for all his fame and influence, Mario has rarely been celebrated in a way that is as epic as his legacy. That is why I have scoured the world (via my web browser) to bring you a collection of Flash games and animations that give Mario the epic treatment he needs because it gives this column a unified theme.

5 = EPIC WIN

4 = EPIC GOOD JOB

3 = EPIC HONORABLE MENTION

2 = EPIC INDIFFERENCE

1 = EPIC FAIL

0 = teh awsommest mario battel evar!!1! lolz.

Creator: Runouw

Interface: Keyboard, point-and-click (menu)

Description: A 2-D adaptation of Super Mario 64 featuring actual plot, no stupid camera angles, and the FLUDD jetpack from Super Mario Sunshine to save you from horrible deaths caused by a total lack of skill stupid camera angles.

Review: Effectively combining the creative charm of Super Mario 64 with the smart gameplay mechanics of Super Mario Sunshine, this game is a shoo-in for Flash Game That You’ll Love at First But Stop Playing Because Flying for Red Coins Still Stinks. The areas are fun to explore, and it’s nice to see a fresh take on the likes of Bob-omb Battlefield and Tick-Tock I Hate You Clock, but the levels become less inspired and the challenges become more frustrating as you progress toward that fabled status of 100% completion. Of course, I can’t completely verify this, because I accidentally cleared my browser cache halfway through the game and lost all my save data, and now I haz an epic sad.

Verdict: 3/5: This ambitious, epic-length game has a lot of great things going for it…but, like Legacy of the Wizard and a dead horse, it gets less fun the more seriously one tries to beat it.

Creator: Jay Pavlina

Interface: Keyboard

Description: The original Super Mario Bros. as it was meant to be played—as Mega Man. Oh, and I guess there’s that dude from Contra.

Review: I never much liked the original Super Mario Bros.—the repetitive gameplay is a little repetitive and the controls are looser than a Vulcan during pon farr. However, when you’re given the epic option of playing through each stage as Simon Belmont from Castlevania, Link from The Legend of Zelda, Samus from Metroid, blue man Bill from Contra, and even good ol’ Mario, you’ll remember how clunky and inelegant early NES heroes were and stick with Mega Man. No, really. It’s fun to dabble around with Simon “Jumps-Like-a-Thwimp” Belmont and Link “My Sword’s as Short as My Life Expectancy” Linkerson, but at the end of the day, it’s Mega Man who’s gonna rescue your princess. Of course, just after I wrote this, they released an updated version with the awesome-looking Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden, but I suspect that he was already in the game and you couldn’t see him because he’s a ninja.

Verdict: 4/5: The character balance could use a tiny bit of fine-tuning (especially where powerups are involved), but that’s almost completely overshadowed by the fact that this is the most fun version of Super Mega Man I’ve ever played.

Creator: Randy-Solemn

Length: Epic (15+ minutes).

Description: The epic saga of the Mushroom Kingdom’s rise to power. There’s war, gore, and Goombas galore.

Review: The Internet paints a vastly different picture of the Mushroom Kingdom than Nintendo would have you believe. For years, Nintendo has been concealing the facts and avoiding the issues. It’s time you learned the real truth: You’re adopted. No, wait; I mean—at least according to the Internet, which is never wrong—the Mushroom Kingdom is not a happy land of whimsy and butterflies, but a land of Strong Language, Graphic Violence, Adult Content, and Contrived Character Death—and nowhere is this more evident than in the most epic of Mario videos. Rise spins a compelling yarn that completely justifies the shattering of my illusion that Koopa Troopas just fall asleep when you stomp on them and kick them off of cliffs.

Verdict: 4/5: If you’ve seen one epic Mario video, you’ve more or less seen them all, but Rise stands tall against its brethren because of its well-told story, fantastic action sequences, and the fact that I never bothered to finish watching anything else that might count as competition.

Creator: Celarent

Length: Short (1-2 minutes).

Description: A glimpse of Mario as viewed through rose-colored glasses…and if roses are red, then Mario’s a communist.

Review: This video gives a remarkably lifelike portrayal of what Mario would be like if he were A Real Communist Hero (CCP.I. Joe!), and if torso-sized mushrooms could bite your shoulder off.  Though not epic in length, there’s a palpable sensation of epicness about it. It’s tangible. Go ahead—just reach out and touch it. OK, stop it, you’re going to break the screen.

Verdict: Sorry, no rating this time. That would suggest inequality between videos. I’m just going to leave the number 4 here, and everyone can share it and make of it what they will.

Creator: Phendrana

Controls: Keyboard, point-and-click (menu)

Description: Tired of sitting on the sidelines as all the other 8-bit kids get selected to play through Super Mario Bros. Crossover, Mario does a little cross-dressing cross-overing of his own and arbitrarily picks fights with bosses he is woefully unprepared to battle from Kirby’s Adventure, Mega Man, Castlevania, Sonic the Hedgehog, and other games you’d much rather be playing.

Review: In theory, this game sounds epically magnificent: Humble ol’ Mario gets into something like three dozen scuffles with bosses from other video games. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that there are about three dozen bosses to fight—although that is true—rather, I mean you’ll have to fight each boss about three dozen times before you win anything. Mario might look like the precision-made jumping machine from Super Mario World, but he handles more like he did in the original Super Mario Bros., which is about as ideal for boss fights as swimming the English Channel on a bicycle. To add insult to constant fatal injury, various design flaws and oversights such as bosses with infinite invisible health bars guarantee that you will mistake the “Game Over” screen for actual gameplay.

Verdict: 2/5: The game has epic potential, but it’s just no fun to— it’s just— it’s just no— it’s just no fun to start over— jeez, would you let me— it’s just no fun to start over every three— OK, I hate you— it’s just no fun to start over every three seconds.

Well, it—hey, what are you doing here, disembodied voice from “Gamera Obscura“?

YOU’VE BEEN SITTING THERE FOR TWENTY MINUTES TRYING TO THINK OF A WAY TO END THIS COLUMN.

Ah. Clever.

DANG SKIPPY.

::ahem:: Hopefully that’s all epic enough to make up for the “Flash Flood” void that’s been with you since February. Think you’ve got a passable idea for the next column? Write a comment, e-mail me, leave your idea in a time capsule and have your futuristic descendants send it back to me via time machine; whatever.

I just can’t help but think that there should have been more emphasis put on the fact that Mario and Peach are now a couple.  After all, this is sort of a BIG DEAL.  The world’s best-known videogame character has been given an official girlfriend?  That news should rock the videogame world, or at least make some sort of impact somewhere.

But…Super Mario Galaxy 2 just sort of ignores this information.  Instead of being a major plot point, it just puts forth “Mario and Peach are a couple” as part of the backstory, like it’s no big deal, like it’s something everybody already knows.  Compare this to 2007’s Super Paper Mario, which had a “Peach marries Bowser” plotline.  That game had about three pages of material on Peach’s romantic life; Super Mario Galaxy 2, in which she actually has a boyfriend, gives us three sentences at most, all of which comes from Lubba (the purple guy in the picture) because Mario can’t talk.

So I guess my question is, “Am I wrong?  Is this not a big deal?  Does the game not have to go into any detail about the fact that Mario and Peach or dating?  Or am I totally reading things into this game, and Mario and Peach are just friends, like they’ve always been?”