Man, Nintendo should totally bring me onto their staff; I’ve got some pretty awesome ideas for new games that make use of some of their (and Sega’s) older titles. Hopefully no one’s come up with them before, but if they have, oh well! They’re new to the GC universe, and that’s obviously what matters.
First up is Super Mario Bros. 3: Bowser’s Quest. It’s the same game as SMB3, except that you control Bowser, and you progress backwards through all the levels, starting from his castle and ending at 1-1. After battling through Toads and Yoshis (instead of Goombas and Koopa Troopas), all the way to the first (or last, in this case) level, you have to jump on Mario’s head and crush him without crushing yourself through the floor and to an untimely death. It will only be then that Princess Toadstool will be yours for the taking.
My next idea is fairly simple; it’s two trilogies of games, called Super Sonic Bros. and Mario the Hedgehog, featuring Mario as the star of the Sonic Genesis titles, and Sonic as the star of the Mario NES titles. Each character would be juxtaposed exactly to each corresponding title; i.e., Mario the Hedgehog 1 would feature a pixel-perfect plumber from Super Mario Bros. 1, with any/all skills he has in that game. Each trilogy would probably take up one GBA cartridge, though Nintendo, being Nintendo, would probably sell all of the games separately.
Finally, there’s Mario vs. Sonic: a title that features you and a friend (or the CPU) enacting the 8/16 Bit War in a triathlon of games to determine who the true king of the early nineties is. There would be several different events from the various Mario games to choose from, such as go-kart racing, golf, and some Smash Bros. style combat, but only three would be used in each game of Mario vs. Sonic. I’d throw in some Sonic style battles, but he doesn’t have much to pick from. Perhaps a foot race or something. Anyway, you could link up with two more friends to have some excitement-filled battles between Mario and Luigi, and Sonic and Tails.
Needless to say, these games would all be GBA titles, and would feature none of the annoying voices (or updated graphics, for that matter) that plague the Mario Advance series; they’d just be straight up 8/16 bit remixes. If anyone from Nintendo is reading this, feel free to take my ideas and use them; all I ask for in return is one of those amazing Famicom-styled G-BASPs. And maybe a twenty minute loading screen at the beginning of each game that informs the player that GameCola does, in fact, quench your thirst for video entertainment.
Before you move on to the rest of this month’s issue, here’s a few mock-up screenshots for two of the games I’ve described above:
Love,
Paul Franzen
Editor-in-Chief
e-mail: pfranzen@gamecola.net
P.S. A free GameCola t-shirt goes out to anyone (who isn’t Nintendo) who can make any of these games. Or if they can make Super Mario Bros. 3 starring members of the GC staff, that’d be worth a shirt, too.
