The joy of video games is to have control over larger-than-life abilities. So maybe it’s cool to watch such things in movies or read about them in books, but video games boast something that movies and books just don’t have: user control. And this, my friend, is why video games are crazier, zanier, and even stranger than what you’ll encounter in any movie or book.
Take Super Mario, for instance. I mean, the guy’s a plumber! And a fat one! Yet his jump is inhumanly high. Do we tend to take that for granted? Of course we do! Who thinks about that anyway? It’s too much fun to control him to worry about anything else.
Believe it or not, that’s only the beginning. Where do most of Mario’s adventures take place? Why, the Mushroom Kingdom! I’m a Nintendo gamer. Mushroom Kingdom sounds perfectly logical to me. Then I get thinking about it…so this slightly chubby plumber traverses a world of fungus in order to save the princess. Yeah, maybe it seems a little strange to me now. Don’t even get me started on the whole plumber/princess romance. It gets even odder when Mario’s brother is thrown into the mix.
Goombas. Koopas. Cheep-cheeps. Toad. Piranha Plants. You thought I had run out of weird things to list, didn’t you? Meet the denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom! A goomba is a little mushroom creature with a perpetual scowl—it will harm our intrepid plumber if given the chance. A koopa is a turtle-like being whose sturdy shell can be used by Mario after he jumps on its head. Cheep-cheeps are colorful fish that can both swim and fly. Toad is the little guy you meet at the end of the castle: he’s got stubby little feet and a large round head. Piranha plants are enemies with large mouths and many sharp teeth that reside within…warp pipes?
I suppose the concept of warp pipes makes sense, as Mario is a plumber, after all. Mario games milk that concept for all it’s worth. They lead to secret areas. They house hidden dangers. Sometimes they move. Mario makes plumbing seem cool and even clean.
How did all of these oddments develop into the most well-known video game series in history? It’s because all of these oddments lend themselves to clever ways to control the action on the screen. “Well, we need our character to jump higher than any human possibly could, so why not make him a plumber?” “It would make sense if he could defeat enemies by jumping on them.” “If he jumps on this turtle’s head, it would retreat into its shell, after which he can use the shell as a weapon.” Video games are about interaction, so to choose an imaginative setting allows great gameplay ideas to develop.
Nintendo just decided that video games can and even should be as over-the-top as the imagination permits. That is the creative core of video games.
Take Super Mario, for instance. I mean, the guy’s a plumber! And a fat one! Yet his jump is inhumanly high. Do we tend to take that for granted? Of course we do! Who thinks about that anyway? It’s too much fun to control him to worry about anything else.
Believe it or not, that’s only the beginning. Where do most of Mario’s adventures take place? Why, the Mushroom Kingdom! I’m a Nintendo gamer. Mushroom Kingdom sounds perfectly logical to me. Then I get thinking about it…so this slightly chubby plumber traverses a world of fungus in order to save the princess. Yeah, maybe it seems a little strange to me now. Don’t even get me started on the whole plumber/princess romance. It gets even odder when Mario’s brother is thrown into the mix.
Goombas. Koopas. Cheep-cheeps. Toad. Piranha Plants. You thought I had run out of weird things to list, didn’t you? Meet the denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom! A goomba is a little mushroom creature with a perpetual scowl—it will harm our intrepid plumber if given the chance. A koopa is a turtle-like being whose sturdy shell can be used by Mario after he jumps on its head. Cheep-cheeps are colorful fish that can both swim and fly. Toad is the little guy you meet at the end of the castle: he’s got stubby little feet and a large round head. Piranha plants are enemies with large mouths and many sharp teeth that reside within…warp pipes?
I suppose the concept of warp pipes makes sense, as Mario is a plumber, after all. Mario games milk that concept for all it’s worth. They lead to secret areas. They house hidden dangers. Sometimes they move. Mario makes plumbing seem cool and even clean.
How did all of these oddments develop into the most well-known video game series in history? It’s because all of these oddments lend themselves to clever ways to control the action on the screen. “Well, we need our character to jump higher than any human possibly could, so why not make him a plumber?” “It would make sense if he could defeat enemies by jumping on them.” “If he jumps on this turtle’s head, it would retreat into its shell, after which he can use the shell as a weapon.” Video games are about interaction, so to choose an imaginative setting allows great gameplay ideas to develop.
Nintendo just decided that video games can and even should be as over-the-top as the imagination permits. That is the creative core of video games.
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