The Lack of People Made Me Wonder in Super Mario Games

The Mario games had that even on stages that had no actual backgrounds like the haunted houses in Super Mario World or castles and forts in the OG Super Mario Bros. There was something exciting happening on the screen.

Then you get older and a little critical. You’ve been exposed to better worlds, elaborate game design, and story—so much story that one of the most revolutionary features in gaming is the “Skip Scene” button.

So, the worlds of the Mario games seem super odd. Like sure, it’s a world of fantasy but even worlds of fantasy have some order, right? In SMB, I basically used imagination to figure out where all of the people were. I came to the conclusion that each stage in SMB, SMB3, and SMW are basically battlegrounds to face Bowser and his Koopa Troopas.

There’s no way I, as a villain, would kidnap a princess or the magic scepters of a bunch of kings ruling over barren lands. They would basically be bandit chiefs with ties to the Crown. No, these battles took place away from civilization with Mario and Luigi having to win each time.

I mean, it would at least make it seem like the Mushroom Kingdom and the other kingdoms are fighting back, right? There’s no way any of those castles would be standing in Super Mario Bros. 3 if there was no resisting army. Bowser’s Koopalings all had Flying Fortresses. Those things shots normal-sized and large Bullet Bills. They dropped bombs. If there was no military Mario and Luigi would’ve been running through parking lots.

The Mario RPGs Explained Things Much Better

As always, leave it up to RPGs and the social aspect to breathe life into these worlds. Even in Super Mario 64—a massive step into the late 90s and early 2000s for Nintendo—that world was sparse. It was just Mario, Peach, Bowser, and a bunch of enemies. Toad and someone else might have been there but it wasn’t a populated world.

It would also explain how the warp pipes dropped Mario and Luigi off just where they needed to go. The RPGs games—like the Megaman action RPGs on Game Boy Advance—featured towns and villages with inhabitants, shops, and side quests.

Mario and his party actually seemed like part of the Mushroom Kingdom and not an isekai savior. Because why would you summon a plumber with an unknown background to your world to save you? Mario could’ve had a violent criminal record or been a bloodthirsty maniac. The Mushroom Council or the Stars lucked up and got a kind-hearted, heroic plumber and his brother of questionable courage. Then again, they got a plumber of all people. Two! They got a buy-one-get-one-free on New York plumbers. What rotten RNG.

Of course, there are retellings of how Mario and Luigi were born in that world but even that begs questions. Apparently, there are or were humans wherever they are. What happened to them? All of the kings in SMB3 are human, Peach, Mario, Luigi, Daisy, Wario and so on. What’s up with the humans?

There are plenty of toadstools. We were even introduced to friendly koopas in Paper Mario and peaceful communities of Yoshis in Super Mario World. That question among others I’ve had over the years about one of my favorite franchises calls for an anime and perhaps a manga with continuity.

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

Mega Man in a Nutshell

The storyline of the core Mega Man series is that in the year 200X, Dr. Wily, a robotics engineer, goes rogue after not receiving the same recognition for his work as friend Dr. Light.

Wily begins creating powerful robots to wreak havoc on the world prompting Dr. Light to convert his best robot—Rock—into Mega Man. Affectionately called “The Blue Bomber”, Mega Man is basically like Astro Boy—who was a robot version of Pinocchio.

Throughout the main series, his most iconic power is the ability to take the elemental ability of the Robot Masters (highly advanced robots that serve as bosses in each game).

Once Wily and his Robot Masters were defeated, peace returned to the world only for Wily to show up with another rotten plot in the next game.

The interesting thing here is something I brought up when going into the Sonic games: how much 80s game designers were able to mention story-wise in the instruction manual.

As it was in the 70s, 80s, and into the early 90s, the gameplay rarely explained the plot unless it was an RPG. If you were renting this game from a video store, you weren’t going to know the plot. You were just thrown into things and left to rip through stages.

Of course, that worked since a lot of platformers were similar in execution. Once the Mega Man games hit the Super Nintendo, we started to see more story in the game.

A Beacon of 80s and 90s Gameplay

The gameplay in Mega Man was pretty stock platforming. Remember, the Nintendo Entertainment System had tons of games that were considered “Nintendo hard”.

This was a combination of poor programming in some games and the technology just not allowing for crisp, accurate movements. Timing and landing jumps and shots was something that gamers from that time had to master to compensate for stiff controls—or at least stiff by today’s standards.

MM at its core is a run, jump, and gun franchise. As the franchise matured, a few features were added to modernize the gameplay while tried-and-true features were improved.

This is where Capcom was at its most consistent in experimenting with features. A few gamechangers for platformers that we saw in the original MM series include the running slide, the charged attack, and the wall climb.

Also, when I mentioned Dr. Wily’s Robot Masters all had an elemental ability of some sort? This was an essential combat mechanic. When developing the first game, a “rock, paper, scissors” approach to combat was chosen.

That means certain elements or attacks will be more useful against certain enemies. It’s similar to a fire-type Pokémon being super effective against a grass-type. In this sense, Capcom was way ahead of others.

Growth of the Franchise

By the mid-90s, Capcom began expanding the franchise. In December 1993, the Mega Man X franchise started followed by the Battle Network series in 2001, the Zero series in 2002, and the ZX series in 2006.

Capcom saw that the Mega Man/Rockman character was still marketable and managed to keep the ball rolling. What I love about this is that several of the above-mentioned series—X, Zero, and ZX—were canonical continuations of the original series.

These weren’t just a bunch of reboots of the original story. Capcom actually attempted to build on the lore at a time when other classic, ongoing franchises were basically presenting new, unlinked adventures.

It’s something that always bothered me about franchises from the 80s that are still seeing games. The gameplay is rarely bad in the games I’m alluding to but the lack of strong story links between games? Not a fan.

That aside, the franchise as a whole has always been solid at the minimum. I’m big on the Battle Network games but the Zero and ZX games are very good. These three series are all on the old Gameboy Advance handheld which makes sense as the GBA was beast for platformers and RPGs.

Why the Original Series Should’ve Continued

Capcom started to have this weird relationship with the Mega Man franchise in the late-2000s. The consistency with the main series ended by 1999 with the last proper game in the series being MM 8 in 1996.

That is until MM 9 in 2008 then Mega Man 10 in 2010. After that, we didn’t see MM 11 until 2018. The X series ended in 2005, the Zero/ZX series ended in 2007, and Battle Network was wrapped up in 2009.

In that 2010 to 2018 gap, Capcom could’ve done with both a regular platformer and a series that all audiences could play. Street Fighter always thrived and was usually geared towards teens and older. The same could be said for Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Dragon’s Dogma, and Dead Rising.

MM still had a place in Capcom even went in this direction as it was also the most marketable to multiple demographics without having to adjust it. Just like Sonic and its come from behind revival, MM could’ve been a bigger media franchise in the 2000s and 2010s than it was in the 80s and 90s.

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

How Are We Defining “Spinoff”?

A spinoff is any game within a franchise that isn’t part of the main series of games. Spinoffs can continue a story or present a dedicated side-story that features characters from the main series or takes place in the main series world.

The game might take place between the events of Afro Gamers and Afro Gamers II: Midnight Express, take place in the same setting, yet feature none of the main characters.

Hell, the spinoff might even stray from the main series’ genre. Spinoffs are flexible like that.

A good TV and screen example of this are the Star Wars shows The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Star Wars Rebels or just the Law & Order franchise.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series

All Spike Chunsoft did here was apply the Pokemon license to gameplay from its own franchise: Mystery Dungeon. This is one of the more successful spinoffs in the Pokemon franchise purely because it has been continued since 2005.

Are Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Stadium more popular? No doubt. However, Nintendo wasn’t moved enough by how loved those series were to continuously release games in those series.

On the flip side, we’ve gotten Mystery Dungeon games since the late 1990s and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games regularly for roughly 21 years now.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

We’ve gone into Super Mario RPG from the Super Nintendo in the past but this game is incredible. It’s my hands-down favorite Super Mario game and all Squaresoft did was take the Mario license and apply to a turn-based JRPG system.

Honestly, this is a formula that should’ve been abused by developers in the late 1990s and early 1990s only because it has a high success rate or being an enjoyable game.

I could make the complaint about characters like Marrow and Geno should’ve been used more in Nintendo games but Nintendo has never been huge on concrete canon and story continuity across games.

EA Sports BIG series

Every genre has a stigma to it. For one thing, all games within a genre are pretty much the same at the core but become derivatives of that genre by adding new gameplay mechanics.

Then you get to sports games which have it worse than the first-person shooter genre had it during late 2000s-early 2010s as far as stagnancy goes.

So, how do you freshen up a genre based on sports? The rules don’t change regularly—which is good, you want consistency in sports—and the changes that do occur don’t result in a game that looks refreshed and new for a TV audience.

You freshen sports up by making them extreme, of course! When Midway decided “Eh, let’s do the NBA Playoffs games but make it more like an arcade game” the genre got a ton of breathing room across all sports.

The concept wasn’t even genius: just take sports and exaggerate the action to the point that gamers who aren’t sports fans would enjoy the game.

Into the 2000s, this was always Midway’s lane but the EA Sports BIG studio gave EA that reach into arcade sports games. Basically, a studio that was known for its sports simulation line-up began doing what Midway had been doing since NBA Jam—only better.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

Fighting games tend to have a low success rate when going outside of the genre. Either the game is enjoyed but it doesn’t sell or it sells on the weight of the franchise’s name value and turns out not being half as good as the main series.

Yes, that was Mortal Kombat Mythologies slander.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is a game that falls into category one. People enjoyed the gameplay however it didn’t have the legs to stick the landing on console.

On that note, Puzzle Fighter II didn’t need to be on console then. It should’ve remained an arcade-only game but that Super Street Fighter II wave was really strong into the late 90s.

The Street Fighter name and the art style—this was around the time that the art style in Capcom games got much better—are the main selling points of Puzzle Fighter.

Without those two elements, you’re just playing another match-3/Tetris-clone. The gameplay isn’t groundbreaking but mixing these two polar opposites made for a fun spinoff.

Mario Party series

I wasn’t keen on adding another Mario game to this list but Nintendo has been around—just as a video game company—longer than its two closest competitors combined.

What that means is that in a run spanning over 45 years, the company has spanned a number of major franchises. Mind you, that doesn’t mean every game in these franchises are blockbusters but you’re likely to get a big seller out of that franchise and each franchise has had multiple blockbusters.

The Super Mario franchise has a number of spinoffs such as Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, and yes…Dr. Mario.

However, the spinoff that stood out the most for me—besides Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario—was Mario Party. This game was made for couch-play with your family and friends!

Several games on this list might illicit some nostalgia but Mario Party plucked at a particular part of pre-online multiplayer generation gamers’ nostalgia.

Was couch-play convenient? It depended on if everyone brought their controllers. While Mario Party isn’t the ooze of the party game genre, the series was always fun to play with others.

This is especially true when played in the same room with other players. That way you could get that Spades/pre-Among Us sense of disappointment in a team mate.

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

I played on the car, on breaks at work, when I wanted to disappear in a situation, and of course well into the night when I couldn’t sleep. I pretty sure I would never find a game more relaxing until a few months ago when I was introduced to Gems of War on Xbox1. I had no idea I would love a game, with some of the same premise, as much as I love Bejeweled.

The tutorial for the game was very easy to follow while the graphics and format was very engaging. What I find to be the biggest difference is Gems of War may appear to be like Bejeweled, but it is more about strategy and interaction. Thought I didn’t know if that would appeal to me I found myself thoroughly engrossed the quest story mode for the different kingdoms. If allows a new player to get acclimated to the game without feeling as though they are being thrown to the wolves in the PvP mode. Once a player feels comfortable they can fully engage in Player verse Player mode they will find they are able to earn more of the items they need to advance in the game.

In addition to the fun of the different modes the guilds allow you to become a part of a community within the game. Though something along these lines exist in other games in various ways Gems of War allows for a community to actually assist each other in gaining different items. Everyone pays into the tasks so that everyone can reap the benefits. You can join existing guild communities or level up high enough to create your own guild. This setup allows me to be in a guild with my husband and lots of other friends. In this way Gems of War allows you to be interactive while playing in your guilds and talking to other players worldwide as you play the game.

I admit I wondered if this would be relaxing, but I have come to love this game on the Xbox1 console, and like Bejeweled, I found that I can play the game on my android phone; one can also play on PC. The only drawback I did find is you can not link the game on your console to the one on your phone. The linking of games can only happen, as far as I know, between the phone and PC. I found myself playing two separate game which did allow me to have a different character and be in a guild while creating my own. I could talk for days about how much I love this game, and the fact that it is free makes it even better. Gems of War…try it you might find yourself addicted as well. Although I joke about video game addiction, it is a real thing that affects millions of people. If you want to know if you have an addiction, you can try a video game addiction test, which takes about 5 minutes to complete.

Staff Writer; Christian Starr

May connect with this sister over at Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/christian.pierre.9809 and also Twitter; http://twitter.com/MrzZeta.