#Depicting: Game & Watch Super Mario Bros.

[gaminghardwareingames]

Game & Watch Gallery 3 Part 1

Screenshots from https://www.spriters-resource.com/game_boy_gbc/gnwgal3/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxr8zgidO70&ab_channel=AllNintendoMusic and https://youtu.be/6Nw8Xpnn8_c?si=dyHlgdzaUG3KE7hB

[gaminghardwareingames]

Nintendo Badge Arcade - part 3

So I spent three hours working on this exact project and when I asked a discord to try and see if anyone knew any of the last ones that would be tedious to find, I got sent this link xD

Wariofan63 - Absolutely amazing work, as someone who knows what it's like! Thank you so much for documenting this stuff! You're incredible :D

Nintendo Games in the Badge Arcade

Now if you know me, you know that I absolutely love Nintendo games and the one thing I love more than that is a Nintendo game about Nintendo games! Today I’m going to talk about Nintendo Badge Arcade, the free-to-play app you can download for your 3DS. The main draw of the game is that you play crane games to win badges that you can use to decorate your 3DS Home Menu with.

A good chuck of these badges are legacy Nintendo platforms and tagging along with them are tiny pixelated game cartridges. It can be hard to make out, but every single one of them is based on legitimate cartridge art (cart art)!

A couple years ago, I spent some time tracking down what each badge is a minituarized verison of and had a lot of fun doing it, so I made a guide of which games you can adorn your 3DS with.

Oh yeah, one thing to note here is that everything in this set of badges is based on the Japanese designs of the cartridges, so most might not look familiar to how you remember them. 

Alright, are you ready? Let’s begin with some easy stuff, the Game & Watch games!

Now you’re playing with power! It’s the Famicom (NES) games! You’ll notice we got some cameos from R.O.B. as well as the controller with the bone-shaped controller.

Now for what was the most difficult part for me, the Famicom Disk System games! Unfortunately all of these are Japan-only, so if you were hoping to decorate your 3DS with Zelda 2, I got some bad news or you.

This is going to get a little long so I’ll put the rest under the cut.

Keep reading

[suppermariobroth]

Top: the 2020 Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. enters sleep mode when it is left idle for three minutes while not being plugged in. Depending on the time of the day, before entering sleep mode, the system briefly shows various artwork, mostly depicting Mario, Luigi and the enemies resting. Between noon and 1 PM, the artwork shown is one of Mario and Luigi having lunch on top of the mushrooms from World 4-3.

Bottom: after the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023, concept artwork for the movie was published, which included the drawing that the sleep screen above was based on. While the Game & Watch predates the movie, the movie has been in production since 2018. This creates a curious case of one product being released using another product's concept art before the product for which the concept art was made in the first place could be released itself.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source

[lore-of-the-mushroom-kingdom]

The Koopalings Are Not Bowser's Children

So I realize I have not made a post addressing the Koopalings and their status, only ever referring to it in passing. So as we know the Koopalings in the manuals were called Bowser's Kids, and that this led to external media such as the Super Mario Adventures comic and Super Mario Bros. 3 show depicting him as his kids.

While this was the original intention this was retconned and the Koopalings went from being Bowser's kids to his commanders. Note: There might have never been a retcon to begin with, however they still aren't his kids. I made another post going into detail on why this is. In a Gameinfomer titled Mario's Creators Answer Burning Questions About The Series interview when asked "In Super Mario Bros. 3, the Koopalings were supposed to be Bowser's children. But there's also Bowser Jr. Are they all his kids, and are they all from different mothers? Is Bowser Jr. a Koopaling?" Miyamoto responded with the following "Our current story is that the seven Koopalings are not Bowser's children. Bowser's only child is Bowser Jr., and we do not know who the mother is."

While many people have come to the conclusion that they are still his kids and they are just adopted, this isn't accurate. First off the intent is that they aren't his kids anymore, and you are still someone's kid if you are adopted.

The next part is the simple fact that they are never called his kids in any newer media. On the official website for NSMBWD they are only referred to as "leaders of Bowser's Troops." In cards they aren't called his children either.

The Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia outside of lifted text from old manuals which the Encyclopedia even notes, the Koopalings are never called his kids.

There is also the fact in game they are never called his kids, nor any implication they are adopted.

There is also the fact that they are too old to be his kids, and could even be as old as Bowser if not close to his age. In Color Splash Roy talks about attending night school or in other words he's in college. "I guess I'll just have to hope Lord Bowser can defeat you…" "Yeah, I know what irony is. BOOM. Knowledge is power, so I started going to night school."

There is the fact that the Koopalings only ever refer to Bowser by titles such as Lord Bowser and never father or stepdad, and they do the same for BJ calling him Lord Junior. They never talk about Jr being their brother, they talk about how he will be their boss one day, and they are even called his friends. "That punk will eventually be our boss!" "All right, Lord Junior.. We'll be facing off against Shy Guys in this next battle." "Well, he is Bowser's kid. There were bound to be some speed bumps." "They say that helicopter parenting doesn't work anyway. Just let 'em run wild!"

When Bowser asks them to watch over Junior they don't watch over him like older siblings, and even refer to it as being a form of parenting. They even directly refer to him as Bowser's Kid. There is also the fact Bowser beat up Iggy after making fun of Junior in front of Bowser. With all that being said, the Koopalings are not Bowser's kids but rather his underlings.

[bulgariansumo]

My brain wants to ramble about Mario movies, so I will do that. There will be bias, and there will be spoilers, but I think I'm going to at least put the section about the 2023 movie under a read more. Let's begin.

Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! (1986)

My love, my light, my heart.

Making a movie based on the Mario origin story(?) of "guys stumble into fantasy world, save princess from monster" is difficult if you don't add something to it, but adding things comes with the risk of deviating from the source material’s vibe, since it’s so simple. It’s the same problem with movies based on Dr. Seuss books.

Something a lot of people don't realize when watching this one is that Super Mario Bros. only came out a year prior. The people tasked with making this movie had very little to work with. Luigi didn't even have a consistent color scheme (though prior to this, he was always depicted with green somewhere.)

This movie’s solution to these problems? Keep it simple. Mario and Luigi spend the movie collecting "the three legendary powerups" with a dog and then go fight Koopa. They have misadventures on the way, and Mario eats Mario-branded ramen. It's fun, it's silly, it's goofy!

This is all accompanied with a charming art style that really takes advantage of the ability to push character expressions. For the cast, we have:

Mario - He’s not the smartest, the strongest, or most fearless, but he’s determined, and sometimes that’s all you need. This movie depicts him as a lovestruck dreamer, so a good chunk of his lines involve him calling out to “Piichi-hime~” Also, he’s a gamer. His character is nothing unique, but it sets the tone of this movie, something that I feel like Mario’s character does in all three.

Luigi - Pickaxe in hand, his number one priority is getting his coins. He and Mario share about three brain cells total, but he lacks the idealism of his brother, trying to keep him grounded in the things that really matter: money, food, and their business as…grocers? He’s there for his brother when it counts, though. Most of the cast has their fair share of goofy moments, but he is the designated comic relief, and Yuu Mizushima’s performance serves that well. He sounds unhinged half the time, it’s great! Fun fact: This is the first time Luigi is depicted as thinner and taller than Mario.

Peach - She spends most of the time wishing that Mario would save her, as one might expect, but even this early on, she has a little bit of agency. Her first introduction is her fighting off the enemies after her, and she manages to pull a clever trick on Koopa midway through, though it doesn’t help her much.

Koopa - Very doting on Peach and willing to accommodate her whatever way he can, except for letting her go. His portrayal by singer Akiko Wada combined with the rounded artstyle makes him more adorable than menacing.

Kibidango - The dog that tags along with Mario and Luigi. He tries to be their voice of reason, but he can’t talk, and they don’t listen. He’s mostly there to help the plot along and provide a twist at the end. 

For the most part, this movie sticks to using material from the game. There’s some deviations, like the dog and a wizard, but they don’t feel too out of place and, if anything, lend to the movie’s fairy tale-like quality.

Mario games generally try to maintain a whimsical, timeless vibe, and this movie captures that best. It’s not perfect, but it's a fun little romp that I highly recommend watching at least once, only an hour long. Please watch it!

Next are my thoughts on Super Mario Bros. (1993).

I also finished my thoughts on Super Mario Bros. (2023) if you're interested.

[eway]

Ok I'm in a Sonic mood right now. So I'm gonna tell ya'll my thoughts on each of the Sonic shows in the order they came out. However, I haven't seen two of them, and will tell you why. Now let's begin!

The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog

This show is hilarious. And honestly, the way it depicts Sonic and Tails' brotherly bond is not only heartwarming, it's held up in the games. And modern, goofy Eggman reminds me a lot of Dr. Robotnik from this show. So honestly, it's characterization of characters holds up pretty well. It's funny, charming, and at times surprisingly heartwarming. 8/10

Sonic The Hedgehog Saturday Morning Cartoon

I'ma be honest, I haven't seen this show, and I never will. Thank Toxic fans. Sonally shippers getting mad at Sonamy shippers like me. People telling you that all the other shows are inferior and you NEED to watch SatAM or your not a real Sonic Fan, etc. The fanbase is keeping me away, and I know I will not be able to enjoy it because of this. Toxic Fandom/10

Sonic Underground

This show... so back in the day, my parents bought DVDs of the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros 3, and Super Mario World. On each of these, there were previews for other DiC cartoons. On all three were ads for Sonic Underground. And me and bro wanted that, so we rented some DVDs. And I LOVED it. First of all, yeah I know people think Tails was replaced by Sonia and Manic, but being honest, Sonic's dynamic with those two, while still a sibling dynamic, is not the same as his dynamic with Tails. And Tails could have been written in with the sibs adopting him as a younger brother. Sonia and Manic are also fun characters and I really like them. And even haters of this show have to admit the theme song is good, or at least the singer is having fun. I also like that, unlike the other 90s shows which were nature vs. Technology type things, Underground had this and some magic and Super natural elements. Honestly, concepts like this show up in the games, with ancient being sealed away like Chaos, Iblis, Dark Gaia etc. And of course the Storybook Series itself has stuff like this I have been working on a Sonic Underground Season 2 which would loosely adapt modern Sonic Stories and bring in characters from those games. I know the show is far from perfect, but this is my thoughts, not an objective review, which is why it's a 9/10 score. This is NOT objective!

Sonic X

I watched the show in Japanese with subs and I gotta say...why do people hate Chris? He's a kid, a fanboy, and I find his interactions with the cast adorable. The music in the show is also amazing, though I hear it's different in the dub. Also there are Sonamy moments which YEEEEESSSS. I also love how the show managed to pretty faithfully adapt the plots of some of the games. The Meterex Saga was something of a departure, but I still enjoyed it. 9/10

Sonic Boom

I was born in the 2000s. So I was in middle school when this show came out. And I was a Sonic fan. I had played Colors and I think I had gotten Secret Rings pretty recently, though I may have only had Colors. When I watched the first episode, I loved it. And then hated the rest of the show. Because the first episode has a pretty different tone from the rest of the show. I got over this as I got older and started rewatching the show, catching jokes that flew over my head. And while some episodes are like "why are you friends again?" Some, and most in season 2, show these guys are pretty good friends. The Shadow episodes are highlights for me. 7/10

Sonic Prime

I haven't seen this show because I don't have Netflix. I want to see it tho. Netflix is expensive/10

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Ouendan (Video)

Watch this video on YouTube

Thumbnail and script below the fold!

February is Smooch Month, a month dedicated to considering media that falls under the heading of smoochy. Things that are about relationships, forming relationships, building or deepening relationships, and things where a romantic relationship is important. This presents challenges because it might not surprise you, but in videogames, despite their breadth of content, haven’t done as much with this element of human interaction as you might think. Oh, there are a lot of games about romance, and a lot of them handle it in a linear or systemic way I dislike a lot. For all sorts of common cultural reasons you might be familiar with, romance in videogames tends to be about an agent pursuing an object and getting it. Super Mario Bros and onwards. Or Donkey Kong if you want.

None of this is to say that ‘all games that try to be about romance are bad,’ but there are a lot of games that are more or less replicating the same basic idea, existing in a binary between a language maze or an entirely unrelated linear story. What’s more, often romances aren’t depicted as if they express a relationship as an interested interaction between two parties who both want something. And this is pretty strange when you consider how much art has been made on this idea and how many forms that art has taken.

Like pop music.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is a game whose name you don’t have to shout but come on, you should want to, you should be shouting in your heart, that is the original progenitor of a game you might have heard of called Elite Beat Agents. It’s a rhythm game on the NDS and 3DS, so the unique interface of the console presented designers with new(ish) opportunities to make a type of rhythm game. You tap the screen in time and place to correspond with the flow and movement of the music, and that’s kind of it.

(In a lot of ways, Ouendan as a game is a thing that benefits immensely from the material realities of what the DS is.)

If you know what a rhythm game is, you probably can work out how to play Ouendan in just a few minutes, even across the language barrier for non-Japanese speakers. In fact, it was that accessibility in part that led to the game being picked up in the west, and enjoyed so much we got a American localised version of the same game, Elite Beat Agents. This was in fact so much of a thing that at the end of the credits for Ouendan 2, there’s a thank you note in English. That approachability is only part of the reason why you can play Ouendan without literacy, though; another element is that the NDS doesn’t have region locking, so you can just buy a Japanese copy, jam it in your Belgian NDS (I assume you have one of those) and it’s going to work, rather than requiring you to pay distributors in your country. This meant that this game, in all the ways it’s very Japanese is available for you to experience without changing anything about what it is, its cultural framework, and its visions of what it wants to say in a story told through its particular framing device.

Because that framing device, to a common western audience member like me, seems at first impression to be bananas. In Ouendan, you are finding people who need help, then helping them. What kind of people? Well, you might help a kid with their university entrance exams. You might inspire a noodle shop cook to get over his problems with a stray cat. You might bring back the dead for one last dance. You might help a kid avoid wetting the bed in his sleep, or fight a virus or help Cleopatra build the pyramids. The first game culminates in the Ouendan saving the world from an asteroid strike through the power of rock and roll.

What’s important about this, though, is that in each of these stories, you aren’t playing the people who the story is about. You’re playing cheerleaders.

And you may be visualising something from your own perspective, and yes, you can unlock those, those are an option, but in Ouendan, you are not playing a western style cheerleader squat. You’re playing an Ouendan troupe: Which is to say, heavily masculine, disciplined cheer leaders who do ferocious poses, stomps, claps, whistles and shouts. This is a proud, established style of cheerleading in Japan. Manly cheerleading. In Ouendan, you play Ouendan who are more specifically, school toughs wearing gakuran and with all the signifiers of delinquents.

These roaming bands of goons find people who need help, burst into the scene in sometimes wildly inappropriate ways, and cheer them on to do their best. You are not competing for the exams; you want the person who is competing for the exams to know they can do their best. You are not capturing the bank robber, you are encouraging the horse to capture the bank robber because you believe in them.

It’s a great game.

It comes to my mind so often when I think about trying to find games for Smooch Month. Games about relationships, about expressing the forming and maintaining of a relationship in some way that doesn’t end when the characters express interest in them? They’re pretty rare. I could find more games about rescuing a dog than I could find about working with a partner!

(Don’t mention It Takes Two to me.)

That’s why I came back to this classic rhythm game, OSU! TATAKAE! OUENDAN!

There are some love stories in Ouendan. There’s a classic one where an Office Lady wants to date the Office Hunk (did you know sometimes those can be boys?) and the culmination of their story is her getting his attention in a literal Cinderella ref, backed by the probably somewhat culturally insensitive Koi no Dansu Saito. There’s also the story in Over the Distance, which is about a ghost coming back from heaven to apologise to his wife for the fight they had just before he died. It’s nice that there’s this bookending between these two types of relationship stages – a beginning and, sadly, an end.

It’s not the one that makes me think of Ouendan! in smooch month though. Melody, one of the early levels, is set in a Matsuri festival, where the person we’re helping wants to Win At Doing The Festival race, because that will get him respect and get the permission of a girl’s crappy dad to marry her. So far so Mario, woman as prize, right?

Now I pulled deep to find this game because I think this successfully breaks a lot of my problems with videogame romances. First, you don’t control the agents in the romance; you’re not the boy or the girl, and your relationship to the other has nothing to do with how well you play the game. These two characters are into each other, and their reactions to how well you play is how well you get them towards a goal they both want (where they want to get married). You want to do well, because you want them to have their chance to get married (and you get a rewarding tish sound). They are dating. They are in love, and they are being obstructed by her dad in this one instance. The girl isn’t the reward and the guy isn’t your character – she’s one of the participants. Your victory is not Him Getting Something, it’s Them getting what they want, because they set up a game event.

It’s a sweet story, it’s about something nice, and in amongst all these games I’ve been digging through to find just a romance that didn’t make me clutch my insides. Like you can read the dad as doing a thing that implies ownership of his daughter’s options for marriage, but even then he gets involved after the boy racer says that he’ll propose when he wins. In that case, it almost looks like the father is in on the game, because he wants the Matsuri competition to be a competition.

What’s more, everyone thinks he’s being a dick — strangers get involved and join in and help our protagonists. He goes from carrying the Matsuri on his own, and then, inspired by that, school kids and old folks and tourists all join in on the race. If you succeed, then the father in law is super happy because he sees it as a good omen for their marriage! It’s not ‘you shall not marry my daughter,’ it’s ‘well, do a proper Matsuri race then.’ At the very end, he’s not grumbling that this man stole his daughter from him; he’s joyfully attending their wedding.

And you know what happens when you fail?

They don’t get married and you failed. That’s it. She doesn’t leave him. The relationship is not contingent on the Matsuri race, just the father blessing them here. They were in a relationship beforehand, and there’s no reason that ends. The story doesn’t need to make this event the contingent requirement for the romance.

And that’s nice!

It can be a big story moment for these two, where you get to show up and encourage them to their best. It’s not told as if this is the make-or-break, it’s not told as if this

Incidentally, I did consider doing this with Elite Beat Agents instead, because, you know, it’s slightly more available and didn’t get a sequel. Thing is, it’s uh, it’s not got a story like this one in it. The closest we get to this song is Queen’s I Was Born To Love You, which shows us Leonardo Da Vinci harrassing Mona Lisa until she agrees to pose for him as a model, which is so much worse as a story.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[thefinalboss387]

Bowser Appreciation Post!!

Right, so, I need to talk about why this big dumb turtle dragon is my #1 absolute favorite character of all time. This gets pretty personal - I feel like any discussion about why a character is your favorite ever needs to be personal - but I felt the need to get it out there. If it brings fellow Bowser superfans my way, even better! I require all the friendships!

I’ve always had a love for villain characters, even as a very small child. I’m 35 now, I was born in 1987, so I’m old and have a lot of nostalgia for older stuff. As a child, I loved Lord Zedd from Power Rangers, Jafar from Aladdin, Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, Frieza and Cell from Dragon Ball Z... my entire life, if it had a villain, you can bet that villain was probably my favorite character.

My mom was pretty young when she had me. She was a gamer, and had an NES when I was a baby. Some of my earliest memories involve playing old NES games with my mom. So, naturally, as I played the early Mario games, Bowser was my favorite. Yet, as a child, I was terrified of boss battles, which is ironic because now they are usually my favorite part of any video game.

Yet, because it was Bowser, I had to fight him myself. Somewhere in some old family photo album, there exists pictures of me at different (young) ages, smiling in front of a TV screen depicting the final Bowser boss battles in Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and Super Mario 64. It became something of a childhood tradition; I got to the final Bowser boss fight, I had a picture taken to memorialize the occasion.

Back then, there wasn’t much characterization in video games - the characters were little sprites without much life or personality to them. Bowser would pop up, you would fight him, you would win, the end. He was this big, scary, final boss threat... and that’s all he really was. Still, he looked cool, he was a villain, and that was enough for me to love him!

He wasn’t my favorite character, by any means. No, for most of my life, that honor went to Jafar from Aladdin. I watched that movie - the animated 1992 one - so many times as a kid that I can literally recite the entire film from memory. And don’t get me wrong, Jafar is still very high on my list of favorite characters of all time. But what made me boost Bowser up to that number one spot?

Well... As I grew up, so too did Bowser. Each game he appeared in was just another chapter in his long, storied history. We got to see him as a baby in the Yoshi games, we saw him in so many different types of battles and situations, he freakin’ goes Go-Karting and plays Tennis with his enemies, the RPG games gave him a more humorous, silly side to his personality that eventually even started carrying over to the main games. He’s the scary final boss, sure, but... he’s also kind of dumb and lovable?

A few years back, I got a job working with kids. I fell into the job almost by accident, but was immediately taken aback at how much I loved the job. In all my previous customer service jobs, I only ever saw the worst of humanity. Customers complaining and cheating to get any price reduction or refund they possibly could. Managers that didn’t give a shit about their staff, milking them dry and draining every ounce of their souls. Coworkers who constantly backstabbed and shit-talked each other. Greed and money were the bottom line for everyone, no matter who got harmed or inconvenienced along the way. Working with kids showed me the best of humanity - compassion, family, togetherness, empathy, unconditional love, celebrating other peoples’ victories and strengths. Even on my bad days, there is some little moment with the kids to cherish and hold onto.

I take my role as a mentor to these kids very seriously. A lot of what I do at work is talk to them, make them comfortable, get them to open up, talk them through their problems and help them become better people, advocate for them, etc. I care about the kids, and take great pride in what I do. I had a pretty rough, traumatic childhood (fights with Bowser not included in the traumatic parts), and there’s no better way to battle your own inner demons than by helping children beat theirs.

One day, I was playing Mario Kart with the kiddos at work (best job ever). I picked Bowser, as I often do. He is the villain, after all. The kids noticed that I liked Bowser, and they all began debating among themselves which child was which Koopaling to my Bowser. They argued over which of them was my favorite, because the favorite clearly NEEDS to be Bowser Jr. The one with the craziest hair HAD to be Ludwig. The funniest one HAD to be Lemmy. etc etc

It was then that it kind of hit me.... Bowser’s a family man. I mean, I always knew that, of course. Even as early as Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990, he had the Koopalings as his mini-bosses. He had that adorable Parental Controls video for the Switch, showing how much he cared for Bowser Jr. Even his Yoshi appearances as a baby had Kamek as his caretaker and father figure, a role that continues on even into Bowser’s adult “life”. He has people that care about him and love him, despite how big and scary and one-dimensional he initially seems.

But it was right then, playing Mario Kart with a bunch of kids that I care about and have mentor relationships with, kids that were arguing which Koopaling they were, that I began to identify with Bowser. This scary, intimidating final boss figure has been in my life for longer than I can even remember, I have the childhood pictures to prove it, and he is a dad. Not only that, but a good one.

I’m not even mad about Bowser Jr. being retconned to “his ONLY son”, because to me it means that the Koopalings flocked to him for some other reason, or he took them in and/or adopted them. Regardless of the nature of their relationship, he has several child lieutenants that, for whatever reason, follow and adore him. Like me, Bowser has children in his life that he cares about, and that are not biologically his own.

Once this flood of realization hit me... that was all it took for me to LOVE the Koopa King.

The love was always there, I think. How could it not be?? When he wants to be intimidating, he is freaking terrifying - look no further than Bowser’s Fury. When he takes a break from being the main villain of a game, he’s a lovable, goofy tsundere with too high an opinion of himself. His lava castle aesthetic is so dramatic and extra. His battle music is always amazing.

I just never quite realized the impact he had on my life, or how much he mattered to me, until a bunch of kids started arguing over which Koopaling they were.

Imagine the surprise and humor on my mom’s face when I, a 35-year-old man, told her that the only thing I want for Christmas is a giant Lego set of Bowser.

[ryukang1995]

My top 10 unpopular opinions.

10. Sevendust is one of the best Metal bands I have listened to I genuinely love Sevendust, but while the band has many fans, some of us can agree that they don't quite get the recognition they deserve, and because of that, several have indeed labeled them as underrated.

They have a great unique sound that is very heavy yet melodic, and they're one of the few bands that haven't really changed their sound all too much, and yet they still come off as great and fresh...that's just me though.

9. Double Dragon (Neo Geo) is one of the most underrated fighting games I have ever played I love the Double Dragon games (most of them, anyways), and this gem for the Neo Geo is no exception.

It's loosely based on the Double Dragon movie (more on that later), and yet it actually does a great job at making the film universe seem very cool, especially as an alternate take on Double Dragon. Beyond that, it's a fun Street Fighter II-esque fighting game, which is ironic because it's published by SNK (Capcom's long-time rival behind The King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown among others).

Definitely a much better Double Dragon fighting game than Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, and it helps that it was developed by Technos Japan aka the company behind the original Double Dragon arcade games.

8. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is overrated I used to like this movie, but upon rewatch and reflection? I realize just how cringe and obnoxious it was.

Every single character is unlikable, especially Scott Pilgrim himself, and I didn't find it all that funny. It does have a great visual style from Edgar Wright as well as some cute easter eggs for video game fans, but that's not enough to salvage it.

7. Pineapple on Pizza is fine While not my favorite topping of Pizza (I prefer Pepperoni and Meat Lovers), Pineapple Pizza is not as bad as some make it out to be, especially when compared to Anchovies.

6. The old Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon and Street Fighter movies are not the worst The first few live-action movies based on video games pre-Mortal Kombat (1995) get quite a horrible reputation among fans, but as a fan of the games they are based on, I can still watch them.

Yes, they are very loose takes on the classic games, which is largely one of the main reasons why fans hate them, and yes, they're not technically great movies either, but they can be very amusing, especially in that guilty pleasure/so bad it's good way.

I can still let them pass for at least trying to make video game adaptations work, especially since they were among the first examples of the concept. We did get better video game movies, especially the animated Mario and Street Fighter II movies, but believe it or not? We also got much worse examples (such as Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and the adaptations directed by Uwe Boll).

5. I never got into the MCU's depiction of Spider-Man I love Spider-Man, especially the first two movies by Sam Raimi, but I never really got into later Spider-Man movies beyond them...well, except for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is honestly the best Spidey flick since Spider-Man 2 (I have yet to see Across the Spider-Verse, but I have heard great things).

Tom Holland's version of Peter Parker did get a lot of praise, but I never really liked him all that much. To me, he was kind of a wuss. I recognize that he does mature by the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, but while it was nice to see him with both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield on screen, I had already lost interest in the MCU by that time.

If you like the MCU Spider-Man movies? That's perfectly fine.

4. Street Fighter III and Mortal Kombat X are some of the most overrated fighting games ever Some will scream blasphemy since I am a massive fan of both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, hence my nickname Ryu Kang, but I never got into these particular installments.

They were both aiming to be focused on the new generations of both franchises, similar to Tekken 3, which I felt did that concept much better. The two games get a lot of love, especially among tournament players, but they're not my cup of tea, and I do prefer other Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) is one of the best incarnations of the TMNT franchise I love the TMNT franchise, whether it'd be the 80s cartoon, the first two live-action movies from the 90s, or some of the video games like the two arcade games by Konami and Shredder's Revenge.

While the 2003 cartoon has a fanbase, it's also one that tends to be pretty underrated, especially in later times. I love how it aims to be darker and mirror the original comic books while still working within the parameters of being a Saturday morning cartoon.

I also have a personal attachment to the cartoon as I used to watch it a lot around 2003-04. Plus, I will gladly take it over later incarnations of TMNT like the Michael Bay movies.

2. Batman Forever and Daredevil (2003) are pretty underrated comic book movies These two movies do get so much hatred, I feel. While neither of them are among the greatest superhero movies ever made, I genuinely feel there was a lot of effort put into them, especially considering that they were victims of heavy studio meddling.

The director's cut of Daredevil (2003) especially salvages that movie, and I would like to see the original cut that Joel Schumacher intended for Batman Forever if they ever plan on releasing it.

1. I prefer Sonya Blade with Liu Kang over her with Johnny Cage Some of you definitely saw this coming, especially if you follow my page, but yeah, I'm not very fond of the CageBlade pairing.

I have already written many times before why I feel this way, but in a nutshell...Johnny annoys Sonya so much, and she only warms up to him whenever she's put in danger and he comes in to save the day. Also, later MK games and movies did a poor job handling their dynamic.

While Liu Kang and Sonya never really hooked up in the canon, the interactions they do have really show that the two get along well, and I do feel the pairing has fan art and fanfic potential beyond what I normally do with them.

With that being said, I don't mind Liu Kang with Kitana either (though recent MK games and movies do a poor job handling them too), and I would be biased and harsh if I said that he deserves only one between Kitana and Sonya.

So yeah, those are my top 10 unpopular opinions. If you don't agree with any of these, it's all good. Let's be civil about it.

[askmerriauthor]

Legend of Zelda Timeline Theory: Skyward Sword is a Stage Play

After finishing ToTK and seeing a of chatter online discussing its place in the timeline, I've been mulling over the whole situation myself a fair bit. I've made some idle notions myself about the nature of things as well but, after going back and watching Skyward Sword's cut scenes, I've come to a different conclusion.

Namely, that the events of Skyward Sword - which are confirmed to be the canonical start of the LoZ timeline - are a stage play, the same way Super Mario Bros. 3 was. Also, that Skyward Sword is the defining point in the multiple timeline concept for the series, not Ocarina of Time, but that's honestly a whole other discussion.

More after the break, both for the sake of twelve year-old Skyward Sword spoilers and not to stretch out anyone's dashboards.

Skyward Sword as a Stage Play

The game begins as openly narrated by Fi, the spirit of the Master Sword, who flat-out tells the Player that what follows is a legend that's been repeated many times over throughout Hyrule's history across the ages. That legend, as she goes on to explain, is of how the Three Golden Goddesses entrusted the world they created and their Triforce to the Goddess Hylia. How, after some time, the Demon King Demise - the source of all evil - rose to lay waste to the world in order to seize the Triforce for himself. How Hylia secluded the survivors of Humanity and the Triforce itself to hide them away on an island in the sky out of reach, while she remained on the surface with the non-Human species to fight Demise. How she ultimately sealed Demise and sacrificed her divinity so that she could be reborn as a mortal, in order to someday make use of the Triforce herself to completely destroy Demise once and for all.

All of this is show to us in the form of ink paintings and swelling music. Fi then explains that the next part of the story is a new legend, and we're set into the events of Skyward Sword's gameplay. It's here we follow Link and Zelda as they go through a series of strange adventures and ultimately save the world from Demise, in which they also reunite the distant world in the sky with the land and usher in a new era of prosperity for the not-yet-established kingdom. I'm going with broad strokes on the plot here only because Skyward Sword covers A LOT of ground in its overall narrative.

I'm not at all saying the events that Skyward Sword discusses didn't happen in the setting's history. My thought, however, is that what we actually see/play through in the game itself is not intended as historical fact but rather as a dramatic retelling of prior events, and potentially events that didn't all happen at the same time.

The entire presentation of Skyward Sword is theatrical beyond reason. It's quite literally presented to the Player as a musical complete with song-and-dance routines, larger-than-life background characters, comedic relief bumbling sidekicks, a childhood friends romance sub-plot, and presents Link and Zelda with the most overt, individual personalities they've ever been depicted with. The story features elements and background characters that exist in other LoZ games, indicating that they might just be popular concepts or reoccurring characters within the setting's mythology. There are parts in the game where set pieces literally rise from the "stage" exclusively to participate in a narrative beat and then are lowered out of view again. Where everyone and everything on-screen pauses for comedic timing. Just... EVERYTHING that is Ghirahim. All throughout while Fi, the overly-talkative, hand-holding, explain-every-small-detail-from-a-detached-perspective, is the story's narrator.

A buddy and I have watched a "series" of plays available on Netflix called "Seven Souls in the Skull Castle". Good stuff, but it requires dedication to get through as each performance is about three hours long. It's a theatrical stage play that originally started in 1990 and is performed every seven years, each time with a slightly different take on things; different themes, different focuses, and different actors. Sometimes the overall narrative changes to present the story in a different manner. Sometimes characters behave or are depicted differently, or the focus is set more on them than on the story itself. Sometimes it has more of a rock or glam theme. Later iterations of the story change the gender of a character, or completely replace the previously main character with a different protagonist entirely. It's really interesting watching all of the plays over time and discussing amongst ourselves which depiction of events and personalities we liked most, and how watching all of them gave a much better understanding of the events (which can be pretty confusing up front) than any one presentation yielded on its own.

I'm kind of looking at the past Legend of Zelda games through that lens now. Skyward Sword comes across as a bombastic stage play telling the heroic semi-historical tale of the Legendary Hero chosen by the Goddess herself, who defeated the ultimate evil and helped secure the world for mankind. When I look at games like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, they honestly feel the same way; like they're stories being told while their depiction, themes, or their shared elements and specifically contradictory elements are simply a matter of different aesthetic presentations of the story teller.

Given the nature of BoTW and ToTK's approach to the timeline - that everything that came prior was just legends from long ago that may or may not have happened as presented - it makes a lot of sense to me to try and recontextualize things. Some fans of the series (myself included, to be honest) have put far too much focus into trying to make sense of the timeline as if the games presented events in a cement manner. Let's be frank: they don't and they never were intended to, nor did the creators ever try. The "official" timeline of LoZ as presented in the Hyrule Historia book doesn't hold water when we all know for a fact that there was never an intentional design scheme in place to unify all the games along a coherent timeline. It, and fan efforts, are just trying to squeeze the games into a semblance of continuity after the fact. I think it's important that we not just accept that but, like the Transformers fandom does with their madcap franchise, really embrace it and lean into it for the fun it can offer.

Besides, Skyward Sword also has a three-way timeline split that canonically takes place ages before Ocarina of Time's split, and the events of the story also involve Link actively screwing with causality to alter past events in a way that directly contradicts the OoT timeline concept's ability to exist. But everyone seems to forget about that for some reason.

[docexe-mx]

Some belated thoughts on the Mario movie because I ended watching it far more late than I wanted. As usual, some spoilers after the cut.

In terms of animation, art and visual design it’s just a treat to the eyes. Indeed, I would argue it’s Illumination prettiest movie to day.

That being said, it doesn’t surprise me that professional movie critics were so harsh with it. The overall storyline and plot are just extremely basic, bordering on shallow, so I’m not surprised critics weren’t impressed, especially considering other recent animated movies have been far better in that respect.

That being said, the story being simple is something that I was expecting from watching the trailers and it ultimately doesn’t bother me. Indeed, I would say a simple story it’s actually fitting for a Super Mario Bros. movie that’s also intended as an origin story of sorts for the characters, given that the mainline Mario games don’t have particularly complex or deep storytelling either.

Nevertheless, I definitely noticed some scripting problems that don’t have to do with the lack of complexity in the plot. Things like, for example, how Bowser just conveniently learns that Peach is traveling with Mario and that they are planning to take a short-cut with the Kong army for no real reason. It was hand-waved by having his lackeys reporting to him “intelligence inform us…” but that came off as lazy writing more than anything else.

Also, a couple of scenes that were intended as emotional moments felt a tad rushed, which diminished their impact. That probably could have been solved if the movie had gotten some additional minutes of run time.

All things considered, I’m again not surprised the critics weren’t impressed, but I wouldn’t say the movie is bad. On the contrary, it’s actually quite good. Not great mind you, even at its best Illumination is still not at the same level as the best of Pixar, Disney or DreamWorks. Even then, it’s still really enjoyable and fun: The characters are extremely charming, the action set-pieces are great and the humor and jokes are on point. I wouldn’t say it’s the best videogame movie adaptation ever, but it’s definitely among the best ones that have been made.

It also has a cavalcade of references to effectively the entire Mario franchise, as well as some other Nintendo properties. If you are videogame nerd, it’s definitely fun to be on the lookout for all the references, especially as they are actually integrated quite naturally in the movie without feeling forced.

I definitely liked that Peach didn’t become a distressed damsel in the end, as I feared. Her personality in the movie is certainly more assertive than how she is usually depicted in the mainline Mario games, but you still see her compassionate and sweet nature at points (at least, whenever she is not battling Bowser). The changes to her backstory are also actually interesting, makes me wonder if they are going to connect her to Rosalina’s origins in an eventual sequel.

By contrast, I was actually surprised that Luigi spent most of the movie as the “distressed dude”. While I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t appear more often, I welcomed how he joined the final battle. The scenes of fraternal love between him and Mario were also quite touching.

Donkey Kong and the Kong clan in general were just delightful. Definitely enjoyed the small arc between DK and Mario going from rivals to fire-forged friends of sorts. There were some rumors that Illumination was also developing a Donkey Kong spin-off and I certainly hope that’s the case.

With so much revenue from the box office, a sequel is inevitable as well as more films based on Nintendo’s games. I’m very skeptical they will pursue a “Nintendo Cinematic Universe” as some people have claimed, but I will definitely welcome more movies based on their IP, provided they have a similar level of quality to this one.

Given I watched the movie in Latin American Spanish, I actually don’t know how the whole voice acting saga that encompassed so much of the discourse pre-release actually ended, although my understanding is that the voice actors apparently did a better job than was expected. The Latin American actors were great in any case, and it was nice to see them featured in the credits.

[gaminghardwareingames]

Super Game Boy - Game Borders Part 2

Game & Watch Gallery 3

Game de Hakken!! Tamagotchi 2

Pocket Kanjiro

Mario's Picross

Screenshots from https://www.vgmuseum.com/features/sgb/

[lrandconkdors]

Assorted Mario Movie thoughts within

um, I think I was the most peppy watching the film's first act, like, before the heroes get isekai'd? After that point, things became a little more predictable, and also it feels like the story goes by faster. You expect a flick like this to have more sense of adventure, but it really isn't as setpiece-fueled as its contemporaries... All of the obligatory journeying is crammed into one breezy montage. Meanwhile, I saw nothing predictable about the beginning of the picture. Mario & Luigi are given the character and background that Nintendo was too scared to. Their world was painted with references wide enough to feel like Wreck-It Ralph lite, and subtle enough for small delights to slip past an audience primed to call out any allusions they spot, allowing me to savor them more. Its comedy and action scenes were on point too. Watching the bros. get attacked by a dog was the most Illumination part of the movie, and comparable to the live-action segs of the SMB Super Show that made me glad I grew up with the sequel cartoons instead, yet here, it's a great thing?

The obvious benefit of day one-ing a work is witnessing something you would never expect, before anyone can allude to it online. TSMBM didn't quite have one of those moments for me? Everything about the plot is pretty straightforward and also outlined in the trailers (even though I passed on the final one). The third act could have been more mind blowing mileage will vary. The epilogue is weirdly noncommitted. And the stinger isn't exactly going to have people wailing like Sonic.

This was the first time in my life I actively chose to see a movie in theaters. But on the ride home, I had to consider that between my brother and my dad, I was the least blown away one. Geez, it sounds like I disliked this

Mario Bros. Movie's most consistent quality is that it devotes itself to depicting the games we love with its brush. It's not very revolutionary a film, like I said, but you can tell that the originality was sacrificed for the noble sake of rendering Biddybug from Mario 3D Land in 4KHD. This is basically the world's biggest budget Mario fananim. I haven't felt this immersed in a world since Odyssey.

[leam1983]

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" - Thoughts

When it first came out, you might remember that the Gamers (TM) had a bit of a moment based around the fact that Anya Taylor-Joy's portrayal of Princess Peach wasn't demure enough for their tastes. They'd grown up to Leslie Swann's high-pitched calls for the defacto beau of the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom and to game after game more or less relegating her as a support character. 1992 more or less served as her first year in the canon spent as something other than a damsel in distress, as she had her own kart and threw shells around with the rest of the gang. In 1988, she joined Mario, got all Freudian and joined him on a quest to free Subcon from the evil Wart, as part of an extensive reskin of an earlier game known as Doki-Doki Panic. From then on, you'd have subtle context cues in several games suggesting that while Peach was typically overpowered by Bowser or the Villain of the Moment, she wasn't in any way powerless.

A lot of the griping probably is rooted in nostagia. Gamers around my age are used to swooping in and saving the day, and, well, Peach and the later stable's lot of princesses aren't exactly the type to need to be saved. If anything, Peach is depicted as quite proactive in her own right in the later games - the catch being that as she's attuned to her own feelings, she's not adverse to the occasional good cry. There's a balancing act in effect here, between the first-hour fans who either got started with Donkey Kong abducting Pauline or with Peach being stuck in yet another goddamn castle, and the fans who might know her better from Super Mario RPG or the New Super Mario Bros. series - where she served as a player-controlled character showing as much drive and agency as the two Brooklyn plumbers.

Of particular note is the criticism that Illumination removed Peach's dress for the final third of the movie, replacing it with what the pundits called a "battle uniform" to put forward the image that she's strong and independent and whatnot. That... got a bit of an eyeroll out of me.

Watch the movie, and you realize that her supposedly heretical wardrobe change references her Mario Kart 8 outfit. There's an extended sequence that sees Cranky Kong loan his army of Kongs to Peach in order to defeat Bowser, and it's used to reference the later game's kart design - and character models. And, well, that's Peach's entirely canonical outfit.

Of course, there's also the question of what Peach does in the movie; which is initiate Mario to the specifics of the Mushroom Kingdom and serve as an ally - as opposed to a love interest. She's not showing concern for Mario because he's her beau and he's putting himself in danger, she's showing concern for him out of base decency.

Again, the first-hour fans expect Peach to just - sit there, squandering her animation budget, maybe fidgeting in abject terror or spending a few frames to cutely gasp in horror or concern. I get that it's a sudden change if you haven't paid attention to other princesses in the canon, like Daisy or Rosalina - but I'll also remind them that in the epilogue for Super Mario Bros. Odyssey, Peach chooses neither Mario or Bowser as her consort. She, at the end of it all, chooses to go at it alone, perhaps rightfully ticked off by the men's posturing.

It's not a relationship that's meant to be consumed. Mario isn't Aragorn, he isn't King Arthur. He's just a helping hand Peach comes to implicitly trust and care for as a friend.

And Bowser? The movie does a lot to humanize him, and it only makes his ploy worse. That leaves you with an ordinary Brooklyn schmuck and his brother, a capable leader forced to request their assistance, and a toxic acquaintance that hasn't caught on to the fact that he doesn't even know who Peach actually is. He has this image of her in mind - see Jack Black's to-be-expected Rock Ballad moments - but it never coalesces; and he's enabled by a version of Kamek voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson pulling something of a Peter Lorre impression. For all of his arcane know-how, Kamek (or Magikoopa, for the oldies like myself) feels like a spineless wimp with his own barrage of fetishes. See the gag that has him serve as a Peach stand-in while Bowser rehearses his confession.

The short of it is Bowser's a big, domineering, dangerous and controlling wet fart. And, well, that's usually how it goes with abusers.

My only real gripe with Peach in the movie has to do with her design, in that I get the sense that only her resting face really aligns with Nintendo's renders. The moment she moves, she starts to look like a recast from a cancelled Despicable Me sequel, with a ton of squash-and-stretch involved. I would've expected a movement range going on the more subtle end of things, personally - like Mario's, ironically enough.

As for the supposedly godawful Chris Pratt take? He ain't actually that bad. Making Mario feel like a Brooklyn native would've obviously meant stripping the Charles Martinet-ness for his first ever full-on speaking role, while referencing it as Mario deliberately channelling the hokey "First-Generation Sicilian American" accent that unfortunately still sells, today - for video ads for his plumbing business. That means very little "It's-a me"'s are on offer, which is honestly kind of refreshing.

I liked it. It was a little short and a little shallow, but it packed plenty of moments worthy of pulling out the "I understood that reference" meme.

[lore-of-the-mushroom-kingdom]

Yoshis Hatch From Eggs

So recently a hypothesis has been going around claiming Yoshies are something they are not, and by extension has led to many people believing Yoshies don't hatch from eggs. So here's several examples of Baby Yoshies hatching from eggs.

The first one is from Super Mario Bros. 4 Super Mario World, in this game you can come across some eggs that hatch into Baby Yoshies. A we see the same thing happen in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe with the Baby Yoshis from that game. This can also been seen in official art depicting this as well.

In Game & Watch Gallery 2's Vermin a Yoshi is protecting 6 Yoshi eggs from the Koopa Troop. These are probably the same eggs that hatch in Yoshi Story. The Green Yoshi is probably the Star Yoshi that hatched at the end of Yoshi's Island DS as well, making the other Yoshies here his friends which he mentioned in SMB4SMW.

In Game & Watch Gallery 2's Chef we see Yoshi lay and egg which hatches into a Baby Yoshi.

There is also the whole Yosu Ko/Yoshi Lake thing.

We see a Baby Yoshi hatch from an egg in Super Mario RPG and live in the nest with other Yoshi eggs.

Finally we see a Mini Yoshi hatch from an egg in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door. This shows Yoshies also make nests.

So yes, Yoshies do indeed hatch from eggs as.

[otnesse]

I personally am neutral towards how Peach was depicted in the movie. I can understand to a degree some of the complaints especially due to the initial marketing implying that she became a girl boss (the actual movie if anything depicted her more like her RPG depictions where she, while definitely capable of fighting bad guys, is far from a girl boss). However, I don't mind her overall depiction in the movie from what I can gather (plus it does match up surprisingly well with the NES/Famicom manual for the first Super Mario Bros. game where it implied that Bowser's motive at the time for kidnapping Peach was more to destroy the defense network for the Mushroom Kingdom to leave it ripe for being conquered by him since she was the only one capable of stopping his magic, meaning that far from a helpless damsel, she was a true threat to Bowser's world domination goals.). Besides, after jerks like Hideo Kojima and to a certain extent Masahiro Sakurai basically treated her abductions as a running joke in a more mean-spirited manner via the Codec/Palutena's Guidance commentaries in the Smash games (at best implying she's useless for anything other than getting kidnapped, even having Snake mention Mario ought to tell Peach to stop getting kidnapped, at worst implying she secretly LIKES being kidnapped), I realize that having her undergoing that change for the movie was ultimately necessary whether I actually agreed with it or not. Basically bashed like the classic Disney Princesses in other words (also Ariel), and Kojima I single out for the lacking in class behavior towards her because he threw similar shade at past Disney Princesses, and not just the classics or Ariel (whom I personally consider part of the classics largely due to her still sharing an actual desire to be with a guy and going things through a traditional, if slightly unorthodox manner) even the "mold-breaking" ones from the 1990s-2000s like Belle and Mulan as "waiting for their princes to come" while promoting that awful Last Jedi movie.

Of course, I'm most likely not going to watch the movie until I'm a very old man, but Peach had nothing to do with that decision, or Chris Pratt for that matter. If anything it's due to Seth Rogen's role in the movie (I'm not watching anything he's in until he's dead).