Gaming off the Beaten Path

  I mean, you had to know this was coming, right? You know how I love to do my comparisons, and this was just too easy. You could see it coming from a mile away. Of course, that's something you definitely can't say about the SMRPG remake itself. It's a few months later and I already finished the game, but it still doesn't feel like a reality that it actually exists. Even with all of the remakes that we see nowadays, I am really surprised that this game got the treatment. A lot of things had to align and, allegedly, a lot of bad blood had to be sorted out for it to happen. But here we are, we have a shiny new Super Mario RPG remake for the Nintendo Switch with updated graphics, music, translation and just about everything under the sun. Before anyone asks, I had originally planned a 10-Round Fight for this, it seemed logical at first. After playing Final Fantasy VII Remake and seeing how different it was from the original, I kind of had in my head that all remakes would ...

  The way things stand, yours is a world where wishes can't come true anymore. It goes without saying, but certain combinations just work. Sometimes, those combinations are obvious while other times, they aren't. It's weird, because Super Mario RPG always kind of fit both categories. On one hand, how could a joint effort from Nintendo and Square (still Squaresoft at the time) go wrong? Both of these companies were riding high, especially in the mid-90's when it felt like neither of these juggernauts could do any wrong. Yet at the same time, the thought of platforming icon Mario starring in a turn-based RPG felt a little...off. How was anyone going to take a plumber who jumps on turtles in linear levels and turn him into a full-fledged  RPG hero? Would this experiment  work out? Or would it crash and burn? I think we all know the answer to that, but I don't think a lot of people really look at why this game was so successful , why it was so revered and why it receive...

  Yeah, I know, two non-game reviews in a row. But I feel like I couldn't pass this one up. In case you haven't heard, there's a new Super Mario Bros. movie out and it seems like a lot of people are going to see it. So many, in fact, that I've heard it broke some sort of record for animated films. Apparently, it made more money in its opening week than something called "Frozen," which must be some sort of indie film because I've never heard of it. In all seriousness, the Super Mario Bros. movie has been a surprisingly big deal. I knew it would be popular, but I had no idea it would be this popular. It's made more than $700 million globally. Almost a billion dollars. Again, I don't think people realized how big this thing was going to be. As to why, I have a couple of ideas. I don't think normies realize how dedicated gamers are. I don't think they understand how popular video games, especially Nintendo games, are in Asia. I don't think ...

Looks Like Bowser is at it again! Nintendo was the unquestioned king of the home console video game world in the 80's, but by the time the 90's rolled around they found their castle was under siege. This siege, led by a super-fast, super hip hedgehog and his edgy compatriots, was going quite well for the Big N's latest rival. Their biggest weapon in all of this was a new, sleek, 16-bit gaming machine that has the aging NES on the ropes. Between the marketing blitz and blast processing and top-of-the-line graphics, Nintendo had their hands full. The NES had some great games, like Super Mario Bros. 3, but it just couldn't compete with the Genesis from a technical standpoint. However, Nintendo wasn't about to hand over the crown just yet. They were ready with some brand-new firepower of their own, kicking off the 90's with the new Super NES. Now they had their own 16-bit machine, a new console to help them defend their figurative crown. But a console alone wasn...

Hey all and welcome to my latest sort-of-series, The Black Sheep. The idea came to me a few weeks ago and I figured I would give it a try, it gives me a chance to explore some more offbeat titles in more popular series. Every series seems to have a black sheep, a title that's just different from all of its brethren. Black sheep can be different in many ways, be it conceptually, thematically, aesthetically or mechanically. Sometimes they come about from developers trying to mix up a long running series, other times they come early in a series' life cycle where there isn't a clearly established formula yet (we are going to see a lot of second and third titles in a series here). And that least us to our first black sheep, one of the more famous series outliers in gaming history, Super Mario Bros. 2. Super Mario Bros. 2 confused a lot of people when it was released stateside in 1988, largely because it played almost nothing like its renowned predecessor. People still liked the ...

I know it's a bit of a stretch for the whole "obscure games" thing, but I've been playing a lot of Mario Kart recently. It wasn't necessarily by choice. You see, my son has recently become absolutely obsessed with this 2003 entry into the much loved franchise, so much so that he asks to play almost every day. He's played games with me before, but this was really the first one he played by himself. He's not going to set any records (he finishes a course in an average of about ten minutes, they're supposed to take, like, two.) he does do a pretty good job for his age. Honestly, I kind of messed up, I had at least three years I could have used the "unplugged controller" trick left, but now there's no way he'll ever go for that again. Still I'm happy he enjoys it and it's nice to have some common ground. Of course, he doesn't understand that there are other versions of Mario Kart out there. This one, for the GameCube, kind of ...

While the series is a little too mainstream for what I originally intended, I realize that I have yet to review a Mario game.  I have tried to stick to the obscure, but at this point I have covered Sonic, Final Fantasy, Madden and any number of popular franchises, so why not. I still wanted to keep it a little out there though.  Most people have heard of the Lost Levels, but its certainly the black sheep of the old school series.  It’s origin story is probably more well known than the game itself.  This was actually Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan.  It was deemed “too difficult” for U.S. audiences by Nintendo of America, as it was assumed they weren’t as skilled or patient as Japanese players.  Instead of releasing it stateside, they re-skinned a game called Doki Doki Panic with Mario characters, called it Super Mario Bros 2 and called it a day (which explains why that game is so different from everything else in the series).  It wasn’...