Of Metaphors and Mario RPGs

[FallenMessiah88]

Very interesting analysis. It would seem that Nintendo is more concerned about their competitors than I thought.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Oh my God! My mind is blowing! Even more than after reading a Cracked article! That's a brilliant metaphor for Nintendo's relationship with their players. it's always funny to think of the warped reasons Bowser kidnaps Peach (or does she LET him do it?!), but there was one game that gave Peach the spotlight, and some unique "powers" to boot, like lighting herself on fire when angry and crying literal rivers. What's that a metaphor for?

 

[romanator0]

So if Mario is supposed to represent us, the player....what is Luigi??

He's the little brother that always wants to play too and not get left out.

 

[MCerberus]

So pretty much Nintendo has lost its spark, drive, and creativity going along the inertia of its own franchises.

Pokemon had only briefly changed its basic arc for... what two games a while back? And it seems like they're drawing from the 'happy birthday, go conquer the world' well they always have.

Metroid: can't discuss... fury of a thousand suns... urge to kill... rising

Mario: sparks of light in an endless grey sea. They shine before dulling into the grey mist

Zelda: has anyone noticed we keep remaking OoT? Remember the emotional weight of seeing the world crumble without you, and knowing that you have to fight a thankless war against fate only to, in the end, lose the only friends you had (except the horse, Epona dying would have scarred me for life)? Or those wonderful GBC/GBA games. Of the franchises this may be the one still trying to explore new places.

Donkey Kong: Had been on ice since they tried to make games controlled by BONGOS. The brief return to the old Rare-style platformers was nice, but they didn't DO anything with it.

Star Fox: Couldn't catch lightning in a bottle a third time. stopped trying. it's dead.

 

[Flatfrog]

That made me smile a lot. And now I'm going to be 'that guy'.

32 feet per second

.... per second.

(Or 9.8 metres per second per second in the units that every other fucker in the world uses.)

 

[Thanatos2k]

So if Mario is supposed to represent us, the player....what is Luigi??

He's the little brother that always wants to play too and not get left out.

So then what does this "Year of Luigi" mean?

 

[Yoshi4102]

Of Metaphors and Mario RPGs

Perhaps Nintendo has been telling us a special story all along.

Read Full Article

Acceleration would be measured in Units/sec^2, Yahtzee, I'm ashamed of you.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Interesting metaphor. Even holds up with the core 3D platforming titles. Mario 64 lands as the path header, showing the world that new things are coming. Sunshine is a "we need to clean up this mess we made" statement that shows how they rely on the players helping them, as the relationship is symbiotic. Galaxy sits at a crossroad of "yeah, we are the best again!", back in peak Wii season where the other consoles were having trouble getting on their feet (small game libraries and hardware issues), while Galaxy 2 has them showing that while Nintendo is still capable, it now has to rely on those that miss the old days when it was still a contender (issues of game libraries and some of the hardware bugs fixed by the competitors, who now have steamrolled right over Nintendo in all by units sold). It might still be able to throw a few punches, but only for those who want to watch the old guy fight. It can't stand up to the new kids, so it's just hanging around before retirement, rehashing the same old stories.

Wow. I'm kind of sad now.

 

[Howling Din]

But let's not mince things. Nintendo is a stagnating, irrational despot who's losing his war against the entire rest of the world, and at the rate it's going it's not going to have anything left worth a crap.
It has two roads ahead of it:

1, Road of Icarus: It keeps its head right where it is, way up its rear buttocks. Then it shows off its alleged mastery by trying to do something grandiose and suicidal, then it will anticlimactically die in the attempt.

2, Road of the Phoenix: Oh, Nintendo, please oh please pull another phoenix, nobody wants to see you go, not even Mr. Yahtzee.

 

[Howling Din]

Yeah this is the kind of over-analyzing propaganda I hate Sean Malstrom for Yahtzee. I honestly think you're looking too far into it. Especially when the first Mario RPG was made by Square and they aren't known for being that self aware. If anything, this whole thing is coincidence.

Keep in mind that what Nintendo/Square actually wanted to do is not actually relevant. A good part of literary analysis is trying to find meaning in areas where the author may not have intended for us to find meaning. Sure Nintendo may not have written the Bowser/Peach story with Yahtzee's allegory in mind, but it's applicable to compare the two.

But that can often be as much of a bad thing as a good thing though.

It's only bad if you factor in the arrogant fools who don't know that when you interpret things, it's about the authors thoughts, not yours. it's amazing the idiotic things you hear asserted in the name of 'deeper interpretation' but you should really just ignore it, and not bring it up in a conversation that hasn't been touched by it.

 

[sXeth]

I always just figured Bowser and Peach were supposed to be Hades and Persephone, myself. Although I never could (or don't have enough of a grasp on the mythos to) put the Brothers down in there.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Oh I got it. I don't think Bowser is just a representation of Nintendo but Miyamoto himself.

Bowser Jr. is Iwata, which is why he's starting showing up in more games lately where he isn't wanted and doesn't belong.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I blame Miyamoto and Iwata... apparently Miyamoto is the reason why Sticker Star had "No Story" because he told the developers that "It didn't need one!"

Ya know... because Miyamoto is fast becoming an irrelevant relic but for some reason people still listen to him. I assume that, since Dream Team feels so tired, that it is suffering from a similar "assertion" from Nintendo's backward thinking management.

 

[Evonisia]

Interesting read, it's more than likely that you put more thought into this symbolism than Nintendo did while making the game, of course they could be trying in secret to send a message out to us, who knows?

 

[FPLOON]

Super Mario RPG came out for the SNES and was, as we have established, the first game in which Bowser was not the straight villain and actually joins your party. Because the SNES era was also the first time since the 80s video game crash that Nintendo had strong competition, meaning Sega. A new outsider villain kidnaps the princess and Bowser will not tolerate a rival for her, for our leisure time. Interestingly the main villains in Mario RPG are anthropomorphic weapons, which may be prophetic of Nintendo's rivals moving more towards violent content while Nintendo has persisted with a kid-friendly image.

You mean like Rainbow Dash vs. Starscream?

That's Death Battle, not Mario RPG.

I think what jsims is trying to connect is that Starscream represents the "antropomorphic weapons" of the situation while Rainbow Dash represents the "kid-friendly image". It's not the first reference-based connection I thought of,[footnote]which, now that I think about it... That should be the first referenced-based connection that should come to mind... But, I digress...[/footnote] but it works...

OT: This could explain why I do love the Mario RPG games more that the Mario Platform games... They break out of their norm and even make fun of those norms in the process... They then can be used as metaphors for how gaming was and/or was turning into, which can be debated if these particular metaphors were intentional or not... (although some instances do seem to point to one of those sides...)

With that said, I need to replay Superstar Saga as soon as possible... I suddenly have the urge to do that now...

 

[ThunderCavalier]

That's... probably just drawing conclusions and connections where they don't exist, Yahtzee.

But it is quite endearing to think that Nintendo might be in the console war for the sheer desire of entertaining people with games. Sony only really hopped into the console market because it had a prototype for Nintendo that Nintendo dropped, and they adapted it into the Playstation, and Microsoft I can only assume saw big profits in the growing industry and wanted to see if they could put their computer expertise into a console. Nintendo's devotion to their franchises as fairly childish, yet interesting fantasy realms is also a nice departure from the grimdark realism that Microsoft and Sony are fond of. While I'm saying that any one game is bad, I do have to say that I'm quite well aware of the controversy of our actions in the Middle East and I don't need a video game to remind me of them.

That being said, I love Nintendo games as much as I love the titles commonly released by Sony and Microsoft, and I find Yahtzee's complaints of Nintendo losing its self-awareness of how persistent and yet consistent their games have been kind of unnerving. Nintendo's always been proud of their formula and often poke fun at it, while other games tend to go through franchises with a straight face, and seeing Nintendo join the latter takes some of the light-heartedness that the games used to have.

 

[AgentNein]

I'd like to point out a factual error here:

Paper Mario on the N64 had Bowser as the villain again, Nintendo being confident in their superiority, but Paper Mario 2: Thousand Year Door has Peach being abducted by sophisticated aliens armed with science fiction technology, and Bowser is almost a figure of mockery, a relic.

The events you're talking about happen in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, and not in Paper Mario 2: The Thousand-Year Door.

No, he's talking about Thousand Year Door. Sir Grodus and the X-nauts were aliens. Very similar stories though.