Why does anyone care about Mario?That kind of question is never easy to answer. As a rule, an aesthetic preference is usually something inexplicable. In Mario’s case the complicating factor is familiarity. He happens to have starred in the ‘seminal games’ we all played in our childhood. It’s this comforting familiarity that generates such fierce loyalty.
For instance, nearly everyone feels a sneaking affection for the cartoons they watched as a child, ‘Cities of Gold’, ‘Ulysses 31’, ‘Thundercats’ and so forth. As an adult, what one enjoys is not so much the cartoons themselves as the memories they call up. And with Mario the same forces of association are at work. A thing that is absorbed so early on in life does not often come up against any critical judgement. And when one thinks of this, one thinks of all that is bad and silly in Mario games – the futile circularity of the ‘plot’ (save the princess, again), the static simplicity of the 2D platforming, the refusal to grow and mature with its fans. And then the thought arises, when I say I like Mario, do I simply mean that I like thinking about my childhood? Is Mario merely an institution?
If so, he is an institution that there is no getting away from. How often one really thinks about any game, even a game one really cares for, is a difficult thing to decide; but I should doubt whether anyone who has actually played a Mario game can't help but remember it in one context or another. It’s not so much a series of games, it is more like a world. Bowser’s Castle! The Mushroom Kingdom! Goomba! Boo! Bullet Bill! Yoshi! Princess Peach! Toad! Rainbow Road! Lakitu! Birdo! Chain Chomp! Shy guy! Thwomp! Wiggler! Whomp! – and so it goes on and on. To a surprising extent all this has entered into the minds of people who do not care about it. A stand up comedian can go on stage and tell a Mario related joke with a fair certainty of being understood, although not one in twenty of that audience would have ever played a Mario game.
But it would be screamingly unfair to base Mario’s popularity on familiarity alone. The outstanding, unmistakable mark of a Mario game is the riot of originality, the fertility of inventiveness that simply cannot be imitated. When one plays any strongly individual game, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the pixels. In this case the face is unmistakably that of Shigeru Miyamoto. And what people always demand of a popular games developer like Shigsy is that he shall make the same game over and over again.
No grown-up person can play a Mario game without feeling its limitations, and yet there remains a native intimacy and a spark of magic, which act as a kind of anchor and keeps the ubiquitous Italian chubster where he belongs. It is probably the central secret of his popularity.
For instance, nearly everyone feels a sneaking affection for the cartoons they watched as a child, ‘Cities of Gold’, ‘Ulysses 31’, ‘Thundercats’ and so forth. As an adult, what one enjoys is not so much the cartoons themselves as the memories they call up. And with Mario the same forces of association are at work. A thing that is absorbed so early on in life does not often come up against any critical judgement. And when one thinks of this, one thinks of all that is bad and silly in Mario games – the futile circularity of the ‘plot’ (save the princess, again), the static simplicity of the 2D platforming, the refusal to grow and mature with its fans. And then the thought arises, when I say I like Mario, do I simply mean that I like thinking about my childhood? Is Mario merely an institution?
If so, he is an institution that there is no getting away from. How often one really thinks about any game, even a game one really cares for, is a difficult thing to decide; but I should doubt whether anyone who has actually played a Mario game can't help but remember it in one context or another. It’s not so much a series of games, it is more like a world. Bowser’s Castle! The Mushroom Kingdom! Goomba! Boo! Bullet Bill! Yoshi! Princess Peach! Toad! Rainbow Road! Lakitu! Birdo! Chain Chomp! Shy guy! Thwomp! Wiggler! Whomp! – and so it goes on and on. To a surprising extent all this has entered into the minds of people who do not care about it. A stand up comedian can go on stage and tell a Mario related joke with a fair certainty of being understood, although not one in twenty of that audience would have ever played a Mario game.
But it would be screamingly unfair to base Mario’s popularity on familiarity alone. The outstanding, unmistakable mark of a Mario game is the riot of originality, the fertility of inventiveness that simply cannot be imitated. When one plays any strongly individual game, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the pixels. In this case the face is unmistakably that of Shigeru Miyamoto. And what people always demand of a popular games developer like Shigsy is that he shall make the same game over and over again.
No grown-up person can play a Mario game without feeling its limitations, and yet there remains a native intimacy and a spark of magic, which act as a kind of anchor and keeps the ubiquitous Italian chubster where he belongs. It is probably the central secret of his popularity.
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