Mario is a totally crazy game

Not going to analyse why Mario is so fun, but part of the reason why Mario is so fun:

The settings of Mario

I'm going to talk about the craziness of Mario, the craziness of Shigeru Miyamoto. How the heck did he think up this game! There were a few weird things that Mario used as part of the game.. this post shall point them out:

1) Mario himself: An Italian plumber? Why Italian, why a plumber (besides, till now, besides his own cartoon, Mario has never did any plumbing in any of his games) It just seems so random.

2) The Super Mushroom: It makes Mario grow. Why mushroom? Why can a mushroom make Mario grow to 2x of his size instantly? Why not a more popular choice like bread. Or why not reference back to his heritage, a pizza? Mushroom is totally out of this game.

The setting also uses Mushrooms. Mushroom kingdom, mushroom platforms, mushroom-like plants. It is also interesting Katamari Damacy also shared the theme of mushrooms openly. Why are all these fun and wacky games using mushrooms?

3) Power Flower: Why does getting a flower enables Mario to spit out fire? What does flower HAVE TO DO with fire or power? Ain't flowers supposed to be peaceful? Craziness at max

4) Pipes: Perhaps the only ONE reference to his plumbing occupation. But other than slipping inside gigantic pipes to go everywhere, pipe seems pretty random, like mushroom. Not the standard ladders. Besides, why are all these pipes all over the place when it is Mushroom Kingdom. Not Sewer Palace or anything like it.

5) Bricks: Why are there all these bricks all over the place? Boxes with question marks are ok, but why all these bricks. Ok that's minimal actually.. next.

6) Coins: He's a plumber, but they should have changed his occupation to a gold miner or something, because why is he collecting all these coins? Why not collect plumbing tools, or mini pipes. Why coins? Besides, there isn't anywhere he get to spend all these coins in the game. Not even a shop that sells powerups. Nevermind it's also quite minor.. the coins could be some random thing like mushroom and power flowers and pipes, and compared to all these, it's not much a surprise actually isn't it?

7) Lives: I nearly missed this one. In fact I published this post up till the flag and forgot about the Lives. Does Mario die in this game? Obviously he does. They didn't use "Health" or "Tries" or whatever things less morbid. Lives. Life. Mario seems to get another life by collecting 100 coins, or eating 1up Mushrooms. Hold on, 1 Up? "1 Up" = + 1 life? totally unrelated. Anyways, this game is actually morbid although none of us realises it. Mario dies that many time in the game. You make a wrong move, you killed Mario, or a Mario. Mario also actually kills enemies by stomping on their heads. Mario stomps these mushroom guys (Known as Goombas) , on their heads, flattening them (without any remorse for them) while Turtles gets forced inside their shells, and you kick them gleefully, sometimes against a wall so that they will rebound back and fourth. Or hopefully against 8 Goombas, so that you get, another life. Wow, Mario is a merciless semi-immortal killer, who kills his foes by stomping on them. He also kills Bowser by dropping him into the lava. Even FPSes kills by shooting a bullet, but I think that way of killing is much more less painful by getting stomped on. Mario even gets points for doing that. He doesn't even show a sign of remorse. I guess that's fair because if Mario touches them on his side, Mario dies, or a Mario dies. So that's how Mario pays back.

8) The flag. After stomping on turtles, mushroom enemy, flying fishes, and going through the weird world of Mushroom Kingdom, a flagpole signals the end of Mario's crazy trial, and the subconscious bombarding of mushrooms within the player's minds. Why is there a flagpole there? I'm guessing that residing near the flagpole, the small fort is one of Bowser's fort. So you earn points trying to reach the top of the flagpole, and the flag comes down, which for some reason, bears the "Peace" sign.



The flag comes down, obviously signalling the capture of Bowser's fort in that stage. Now, Mario enters the fort, raises up a "Red Star" flag in the fort.






Ok why is Mario this crazy, yet none of us notices it, and we love this game so much. My theory is that because everything doesn't relate, it brings a sense of wackiness and fun out of reality. If we replace Mario with a buff guy, that grows from small to big eating Bread (Or lettuce, if it's a popeye game). The enemies are sword wielding enemies. Bricks replaced with.... guess what? Crates (The box of choice for powerups in FPSes). Power Flowers were energy balls. The pipes were ladders. Lives into the infamous Health Bar. Take out all the mushroom reference from this game. It won't be that fun, isn't it? We feel relaxed playing Mario. I guess that MIGHT be the reason. Clever design by Shigeru Miyamoto

Interesting read: A theory that tries to explain why Mario is this crazy, by linking with Communism. I didn't take my inspiration from there. I just remembered it when I was typing abot the flag. Check this out:

http://www.communist-mario.com/index_old2.php

Introduction

I'm a very hard to please gamer. I read more about games than play them, because there is very few games that pleases me. To be frank, I don't play much popular games, especially FPSes. I played Half-Life 2 halfway, and stopped. RPGs, I haven't even touched Dragon Quest or Zelda before. WoW bores me at level 30. So really, I missed the experience of all these games.

I don't really have the time to play these games. My genres are mostly short games, that doesn't take too long to play. One of my favourites include Katamari Damacy. So this post I shall analyse why Katamari Damacy is so fun.

Katamari Damacy

The game first strikes players with it's unique cartoony graphics. It is a style of it's own. Blocky graphic with a colorful palette. It causes everyone to be curious and actually check the game out.

The gameplay is summarised as: Roll over things to stick them onto your ball and become bigger. And bigger. No quest like "Become bigger to kill the monster". It's straightforward. Why are players even doing all these? The excuse is that we are supposed to create a bigger star, but none of us bothers.

So why is this simple concept so addictive? There were a few factors I found satisfying.

First of all, you start the game as a small ball rolling around in the small house. Initially, it was pins that you would roll over, then erasers, pencils, caramels. Who would have thought such things were so interesting? You start out small, everything looks big to you. So you set an aim to become bigger and start to roll.

Slowly you become a book sized ball and pins and erasers are all insignificant to you. The cassette tapes suddenly look very important to you. Books were all no match for you now. You skip past the oranges to go for the watermelons because it's bigger.

So the stage ends. You ended your introductory stage. 3 minutes game. So how does another go sound? Stage 2.

Now, you are not just limited to the house. You are given access to the outside world. You see golf balls, golf poles, dogs, cats, birds, potted plants and various stuff. You start out small again, that pins and erasers and mahjong's tiles looked so big to you. You become bigger, become watermelon sized, and became big enough to overcome the barriers and roll outside. Now you see new stuff. Living things. You stuck the dogs and cats, ignoring whatever cries they made (they are going to die in space by the way) and become even bigger than you were in stage 1.


Finally, you begin to think "How big could I get?". As you moved past the stages, Katamari really caused you to think like that. Initially within a house. Then outside a house. Then, you were shocked then you could actually roll over human beings!! And they are totally helpless to your car sized ball. Then you thought maybe that's the end? You start rolling houses. But still, gigantic buildings like schools and towering buildings seems like the end. No. You become even bigger. You roll over houses, elephants, whales, and become as big as the tower. You roll over the tower. Ok, how much bigger? Surely there must be a limitation to this, this is just a PS2!! The final stage, you start out as small as a golf ball again, rolling over pins. At the end of the 30 minute game, you are sucking up entire islands, clouds, meteors. Even the land that you spawn in, you became so big that you actually rolled over the land. The end of the game usually ends up the stage becoming totally just a sea. No more land to roll over.

Obviously, this is a shock to the player. Who would have expected this? The first time i rolled over a human, I was stunned. Then I rolled over my first house. Shocked again. Then I rolled over the Twin Tower replica. What the. Then I rolled over the Earth.

So you roll over EVERYTHING in the game. Why do you still play after you finish? What's the thrill of this game. It is the fact you conquer over everything. In the beginning, books are gigantic walls. You feel weak. So you rolled over the erasers and pencils and gradually bigger. Now you stomp over the stack of books as if they are an ant. Even humans, cars can only delay your rampage. Buildings become no match either. So basically, Katamari Damacy is a game about conquering over everything. You feel supreme.

Secondly, not everything is dead in the game. As I said, humans and cars knock you over many times in the game while you were still small. In fact, beginning, even mice, cats, dogs, snails are major obstacles. Especially cats, when they will really chase your ball and knock you around so many times. You feel frustrated. That alligator is blocking you! Argh. I want my revenge.

So I become bigger, and roll over the very cat or alligator or car that knock me in the first place. They cry out for help, but you are merciless. Revenge is sweet.

Finally, with such a dark theme in this game, the soundtrack is the final addition. It's a cute soundtrack coupled with cute graphics. You don't really feel the stress within this game, you feel addicted partly because of the cute presentation. It's catchy. And you don't feel the damage over rolling over living things. You feel like a conquerer in this cute world. You don't feel the stress.

That's why I love Katamari Damacy. The concept is very nicely designed. This game idea came out when the creator saw 2 pandas hugging each other and rolling around. That's it. It took the creator several tries to get the game published. Namco wanted to spice up things by introducing a more realistic graphic style. But the creator doesn't want that. He did it right.