The 'Shroom:Issue 135/Critic Corner

Director's Notes
Written by:

Welcome to June! We're halfway through the year sorta (that's July 1st but it's within this issue cycle), and to make it special we're celebrating 35 years of Luigi! Here in Critic Corner we have prepared for you a pinch, a light smattering, a smidgen, dare I say a soupçon of Green Thunder here for you. That's all you need because, ooh, he's potent! In the spirit of Luigi, we're also celebrating other characters who are too often pushed into the background, or overshadowed as just a minion or sidekick, so each team has some different backgrounds! We here at Critic Corner have objectively the most cutest one, which comes from no bias on my part at all. Facts are facts.

For last month's Critic Corner Section of the Month, there is a tie between myself and, so thank you for your votes, and keep 'em comin'! This month there is plenty more to vote on aside from the poll at the bottom of the page here; it's time for the Mario Awards, hosted by yours truly and ! Head on over that way, or check out the wiki's main page, to find the polls to vote on the best and worst of Mario! Be sure to also check out the Community Awards polls to vote on recognizing the achievements made by those in our community and The 'Shroom!! And don't forget, you can vote once each week, just like how you can with the SOTMs here, giving you multiple opportunities to either spread your vote around, or dump all your love onto just one (vote Kamek for M12 Favorite Supporting Character!!!) The sooner you do it, the less I will personally bother you about it wherever I can find you :)

Here's some more links for you to peruse:
 * Tournaments for tokens and prizes
 * Art Contest
 * Ltq's Anniversary Announcements over in Pipe Plaza that goes into more details.
 * At some point between now and next issue, this link to Presentation sign-ups will no longer be red!

Enjoy!

Section of the Month

Could Have Been
Written by:

Hello everyone! I am Alex95 and welcome to Could Have Been. In this segment, I talk about features that didn't quite make it into a game's final release and see just how the cut content would've affected the game. It's the Month of Luigi, everyone! Similar to the Year of Luigi, but not as well known. There's a new Luigi's Mansion remake coming up for the Nintendo 3DS, something you can read me talk about in Pipe Plaza, so I thought I'd take a look at what went into making the original. So let's jump right in and take a look at what could have been. Luigi's Mansion was originally planned as a title for the Nintendo 64DD, which you likely know failed almost immediately. It was then designed as a tech demo for the upcoming Nintendo GameCube, showing off the graphic capabilities of the system, and it wasn't long before they decided to turn it into a full game. Before settling on the concept they have now, Luigi's Mansion went through a number of revisions. Originally, there were several types of houses to explore, like an apartment complex, a dollhouse, and a desert; the idea to use multiple mansions was revisited for the game's sequel. It was also planned to make the game 3D compatible, as the GameCube was originally going to have a 3D screen adapter, which was never released. 3D Luigi's Mansion finally came to fruition twelve years later with Dark Moon, and now the original game is getting a remake on the Nintendo 3DS. It may have taken seventeen years, but hey, it finally happened! Back to the tech demo, it showed off several things that were ultimately never put into the final game. Pretty much the entirety of it was only video, there was no actual gameplay shown. Only the first couple of rooms were shown, the Foyer and the Parlor (later called "Entrance" and "Living Room" respectively). The big door in the Foyer that would lead into Area 2 originally had the same design as the big door above it and there was no mirror; this version of the Foyer can still be seen if the player pauses in the final game. Luigi is also shown sliding down a stair railing, an action he can't perform in the final game. The Parlor is furnished different, containing additional chairs and a window, or with its furniture in a different place. Luigi is shown to be very overly animated, having a cartoon-y running animation and overly long open jaw whenever he gets scared, something you would see in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. There are also a group of blue ghosts that aren't seen in the final game, though they slightly resemble Slimer from Ghostbusters. …It's very possible Nintendo took some inspiration here. Fast forward to E3 2001 and actual gameplay was shown off, along with the actual game disk itself. Seeing as the E3 demo was fully playable, there is a ton of content to go over here, so I'm just going to highlight the most notable ones. One of the more obvious differences is the way the Game Boy Horror looks. Instead of showing the inventory, it can either show a timer that marks when the demo ends or show a first-person perspective mode, giving the player two ways to look at the screen at once. Several of the rooms had different furniture layouts and additional ghosts, such as the Master Bedroom (known as "Bed room 1"), which had two beds against the window and had ghosts appear alongside Lydia. Speaking of ghosts, there are some unused ones shown here as well. There is a purple Gold Ghost that appears in the hallways, which scares Luigi out of his wits enough that his heart meter drops down to half and he ends up scooting on the floor. Among all these is perhaps the well-known ending for Luigi: When the demo is up, a seriously depressed Luigi appears at the gates of the mansion. It's not entirely clear what this is supposed to convey, whether it just means the demo is up or Mario is trapped for eternity, but one thing's for certain: It's creepy. Now we've reached the point when the game gets released, but we're not done yet! There's still unused assets to go through that have not been seen before this point and are still in the game's code. The three main generic Ghost enemies all have different colors, with Gold Ghost being white, Purple Puncher being yellow, and Blue Twirler being purple. There are also some… unique unused ghosts, including one called "Elh", which is just this twisted… mess of… stuff. An older version of the Poltergust 3000 is also present, it being larger and on wheels, and instead of Elemental Medals, it would've used specific nozzles, similar to what would become F.L.U.D.D. Regarding the elements, Luigi would've been able to spray water indefinitely, though using fire for too long would cause the Poltergust to backfire. Mario could've also perhaps played a bigger role, as there's a model of him with the straps to the Poltergust 3000, and stretched to Luigi's height. This is likely meant for a scrapped multiplayer mode, which was also brought back for Dark Moon. There also unused dialogue icons for Bowser, Mario, a Gold Ghost, and a Green Toad, as well as name text strings for the rooms in E. Gadd's lab.

What Could Have Been?
Now it is time to wonder just how much these original ideas would've changed the final game. First of all, if the game was actually released for the Nintendo 64DD, it's likely it would not have done as well. Either that or the game would've given the disk drive a boost in popularity, though that depends on how well the game was made at that point. It's also possible the game would've just been left as a tech demo, similar to that Peach's Castle tech demo thing. We don't need to think too hard on how the GameCube's 3D add-on would've made the game look, as, again, both Luigi's Mansion games are on the 3DS, and the multiple houses idea was carried into Dark Moon. I love when things finally work out. There wasn't a lot shown off in the Spaceworld 2001 demo, but the tone of it would've been interesting to see in the final. The demo definitely looks darker than the final game, lots of blues and shadows, and Luigi's reactions would've been hilarious to see. These very likely weren't meant to actually be in a final game, as it was just a pre-rendered video showing what the GameCube could do, so Luigi's reactions were likely just an exaggeration. However, seeing Luigi interact with his environment, like with the stair-rail-sliding, would've been interesting. In the final game, there is plenty of interaction, like with fake doors, buttons, sandbags, ladders, etc., but seeing Luigi pull off some athletic moves like he could in the main series would've opened up some new puzzles. Being able to jump on command probably would've helped solidify it as a Mario game… you know, despite it already having Mario and Luigi. Seeing the rooms furnished in a different way than the final game shows… likely wouldn't have made a change since we wouldn't know any better, heh. Now then, the big reveal in 2001. How would this demo have played out if it were released as a full game? The timer would've certainly been limited, what with only fifteen minutes or so to play. Rumor has it Mario becomes lost in the mansion forever after that time is up, so if that were true, it would've definitely set a very dark tone for the Mario universe. Having the Game Boy Horror show two perspectives at once would've been… let's say challenging to keep track of, and there doesn't seem to be any use for showing the first-person perspective at the same time as the third-person one, so I'm glad that change was made. Normal ghosts are also seen assisting the portrait ghosts, which, as far as I can remember, never happens in the final game, so it would've made the fights more difficult had they been. The purple Gold Ghost that scares Luigi in the halls would've been a different level of strategy, as it makes Luigi unable to use his Poltergust and cuts his health to half. There doesn't appear to be a way to defeat it, as one is never shown as it first appears in a gas form before appearing it the standard one, so maybe it could only be avoided? Or maybe an element could've been used against it? And then there's the ending for Luigi, where he stands outside the mansion. Is this the game over screen when he loses his health? When the timer ends? It's certainly not something 6-year-old me would've liked to see back then, I would've thrown the game out the window! And now for Elh, perhaps the weirdest looking and sounding ghost I've seen so far. It looks like a twisted mesh of goop, occasionally taking a swing at Luigi if he gets near. It's possible it could've been meant to assist Bogmire, due to the two of them appearing to be made from a similar substance. Maybe instead of shadows, Bogmire would call up this…thing? The fight would be even more difficult with a Poltergust on wheels, having to lug that thing throughout the mansion… What was E. Gadd thinking when he built that? Though the idea of different nozzle attachments didn't come about until Super Mario Sunshine less than a year later, they would've worked perfectly here as well. But perhaps they were permanent additions, being able to be switched around at will? Maybe the Elemental Ghosts were used instead to balance the game, if that were the case. And the addition of the element meter ultimately removed the endless water and overheating mechanic, which I think is a great replacement. We don't want Luigi to explode, now do we?

Whoo, this was a long one! But there's still more! There's a lot more images and information I couldn't work into this, so be sure to give a whole look through the cut content of Luigi's Mansion on our list of Luigi's Mansion pre-release and unused content page and the pages on The Cutting Room Floor. Until next time, everyone! See you around!

[[File:AntonHalfBakedLogo.png]]
Written By:

Wow who knew I still did non-food reviews? I did because I’ve got a backlog of a whole ton of them but they’re significantly harder to approach than just going to the store and shoving whatever is less than $10 inside of my face. The results of my review should come to no surprise to anyone who has attended or viewed the logs of our Awards Committee meetings, but I’ve already committed to doing this because it’s a special issue and this is something flashy to do. I’m also going to try to not do this procedurally like my other game reviews and instead do bulk commentary with references to specific instances. Now, with no more rambling I can think of at this moment, we’re onto the review!

Super Mario Odyssey Opening cutscene, Mario is defeated. What a wonderful game! Time to turn it off.

Since I liquidated pretty much my entire physical game library to purchase a Switch and some games I guessssssss I should continue playing. After heavy internal debate on whether I wanted to mix up the positives and negatives, or find an order to put them in, I decided to start with all of the positives first so I can butter up you, the audience, so when I get to the negatives you already have the factual information that I liked this game to hold within you before you chop my head off. Additionally, there is an astounding amount of content that I could give commentary on, and as such there’s a good chance I will miss giving my forced-fed opinion on it, so if you want me to yammer on about something that I didn’t just feel free to ask me and I’ll tell you somewhere.

Positives It’s pretty obvious Odyssey is inspired by, or at least takes notes from, Super Mario 64, or at the very absolute least is banking on consumers to invest in nostalgia easter eggs to make financial decisions. Odyssey feels wildly better, likely due to the 20 year difference, but either way there’s similar mechanics and scenarios that just feel much more intuitive and better executed, such as not instantly dying in the quicksand or the camera suddenly shifting angle and deleting all of your momentum and inertia in a combo jump. It’s like a Super Mario 64 where they actually cared about the execution. By the time I was in just Tostarena I could already feel it, that all of the things that frustrated me in SM64 have been seemingly fixed. This feels more like an exploration game that’s a lot more forgiving when you’re trying to figure puzzles out, whereas SM64 was a collectible grab-em-up that failed to be fair or intuitive. It has little things to catch your interest instead of just world after world of barren landscape and poorly mapped graphics. I quickly got stuck in the trap of whackin’ every shrub and tossing the hat onto every pole just to get one coin. There’s great attention to detail, or at least in maintaining the mirage of a living and breathing world, such as the way the flowers and water move around you, the slapping of bare feet in the boxers-only outfit instead of forgetting to change the shoe thumping sound effect, and its endless cues and references to past games. It feels like everything has personality, like it’s an actual world to explore and can thrive without Mario’s presence, barring you don’t sit and focus on every minute detail and begin noticing paths and patterns, as any player hoping to collect every Power Moon will eventually discover as they mentally flip these worlds into collectible dumping zones. I'm noticing quite a bit of foreshadowing and hint-dropping; just small elements and things that the game puts in your visuals but doesn't make overwhelmingly obvious, namely the continual focus on the moon.

For a grab bag of thoughts that I couldn’t figure out a way to work into a paragraph format in about 10 minutes of maintained focus:
 * Bowser’s Kingdom seems cool and is probably my favorite design for a kingdom. For a location that is revisited each and every game it was the most alien out of them all.  Even though it was a traditional theme, it was turned into something sublime and refreshing.
 * Wooded Kingdom is also pretty tight. All of the vertical climbing and hidden interior bits and the dark forest below made what’s kinda a small stage into something that has an incredible amount of exploration potential.
 * Pokios are good; captures with versatility despite simplicity is good design, which includes the stretchy leg plant dudes, too. Tropical Wigglers are a close third, getting bonus points for being a Wiggler that I actually like.  Goombas were surprisingly fun; being able to stack them looked goofy but it was light-hearted and fun that still served some kind of mechanical goal.  Gushens and Hammer Bros. were also neat enough.
 * Hitting the cans in New Donk City sounds like the opening to We Share Our Mother’s Health
 * Post-game Luncheon Kingdom Peronza Plaza actually fits the kingdom theme with the Cooking Carnival instead of being a nonsense garbage level--spoiler alert for the upcoming section.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, there were also a decent handful of impressive boss battles, both visually and as a challenge. At the top of my list is Mechawiggler, the boss of Metro Kingdom. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate Wigglers for some uncertain reason, but there was something about this dude that got me; probably the fact that it didn’t look like one at all. I’m usually pretty stone-faced about expressing things like awe, exasperation, astonishment, and basic praise, but the intro cinematic took my breath away and I was totally like “WOW holy CRAP AAAAA” during the entire battle. Torkdrift and Knucklotec were also pretty cool designs, and being able to go back to them, as well as other less impressive bosses, with new twists added to them to increase the difficulty was something that was pretty neat. If only they applied this to like...the actual bosses of the game.

Negatives Because I haven’t tempted fate enough with my review of Super Mario 64, here are the negatives. Organizing this is difficult so here are each point in their own paragraph in some kind of order. The T-Rex is difficult to control, not very responsive, and is too large for the landscape it exists in, and also has a pointless time limit that can be subverted by hopping out and then quickly repossessing it before it magically poofs from existence. This was all a big disappointment because being able to become a dinosaur was a pretty hyped feature, but all it turned out to be was just a clunky vehicle to smash up some rocks. The frog is cute but jumps too high to make it comfortably controllable and I always feel like I’m going to miss whatever cliff I’m supposed to be jumping onto until I remember that this camera isn’t as terrible as 64’s. I also didn’t really get to enjoy capturing Bowser because everything was exploding around me and his only purpose was to smash rocks. I didn’t even know he could shoot flames until I accidentally my controller and things flew out. I’d enjoy being able to do a level I could casually stroll through as Bowser. Pretty much every other capture I didn’t mention as a positive or negative was pretty one-note and not really anything to comment on beyond “I guess it helped me acquire a Power Moon once or twice”.

That bird on Mt. Volbono in the Luncheon Kingdom is literally my least favorite thing Nintendo has ever done, after removing Psycho Kamek from the Superstar Saga remake, of course, which was exacerbated by having to do it multiple times in a world that looked like it was unfinished. Why was it all blocky? Luncheon Kingdom took too long for what amounted to pretty much nothing. It looked like garbage, the boss fight(s) were stupid and pretty annoying, plus the bird's design was just disgusting and stupid enough to make specifically me hate it. Most of the platforming had absolutely nothing to do with food, and was instead a fireball magma-traversing level, in which the lava was some strange pink goop for no reason when they absolutely could’ve made it any kind of hot food that were colors other than bright pink. The entire rest of the stage was just unappealing or downright disgusting. Was it supposed to be soup? Because there was already other soup and it wasn’t pink sludge. The stage didn't look refined enough to really make the gross bird seem like a total outsider ruining anything. Was it supposed to be an outsider? Who knows. It was a gross stage with a gross boss. If it was a picturesque Parisian villa with little cafes and all that everywhere, I could appreciate having a clunky gross bird ruining stuff as the level boss. Imagine, a scene ripped straight from a Monet painting, a Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Matisse, something with life and vibrancy, a fresh environment with playful lighting, a tranquil yet vivacious village at the base of a mountain that looked ripe to be featured as the backdrop to all wide shots to give the Eiffel Tower a break. But it's not, it looks like a garbage-themed level that they accidentally called food, with just one tiny and cramped alley with some fork-people all making the same soup, so it's just an all-around stupid level and I hate it.

Luncheon Kingdom was then followed up by a completely opposite problem of a kingdom, with a cool dragon fight that was super easy and quick in a land that was as barren as it could possibly be, leaving me the most disappointed I’ve been in...probably just a few days, let me be real here, I’ve been having issues getting car insurance and registration stuff sorted out. Like really though, why did Ruined Kingdom have to just be absolutely nothing other than a platform to get to the visually impressive yet underwhelmingly simple boss? I get that the theme is ruins, but why did it have to be medieval Jetson’s ruins? Why couldn’t it be a rip-off of the introductory quest in Skyrim? Why couldn’t there be stuff to explore? Ruins are one of the best level themes in all games and they absolutely blew it with this one, so much that it’s making me mentally deduct full letter grades from my overall satisfaction with this game as a whole.

I was met with extreme disappointment with how little I could actually interact with any kingdom inhabitants in Odyssey. I didn't ever have to actually interact with New Donkers or anyone really beyond the "hey welcome to uhhhhhh here". Some of them said stuff, and I guess there were the repeated Power Moon quests that were the same in each kingdom (wear whatever costume to get in a room, find the missing Bonneter, bring a Capture to someone, etc.), but there really wasn’t anything unique about them except for the Steam Gardeners which were kinda cool I guess. The fact that I could only capture a New Donker for some crappy RC car thing after capturing humans was a marketing point honestly instantly made me feel like I wasted all of my money. I was also a bit disappointed by the size of the kingdoms, especially Metro Kingdom. A few of them felt large due to using the Z-axis, as I said earlier, such as Wooded Kingdom and Seaside Kingdom, but a bunch of them just felt pretty constrained like Cascade Kingdom which seemed to limit exploration and had just basically a single path (or two) to get to where you needed to go. Metro Kingdom is the one I expected to be the largest, as it was based on sprawling New York City, but a lot of the space was taken up by skyscrapers you couldn't enter and had just dull rooftops. Now, this isn't to say that what they provided didn't have stuff to explore, but I just realllllly wanted there to be more to them. It's kinda like wishing you got three scoops of ice cream because the one was good.

Broodal designs are all pretty gross, except Hariet who just looks like some goth lolita friends I have. None of them really do anything and every encounter with them is entirely the same barring minor difficulty boosts like other boss rematches. They really have no discernible personality that couldn’t be hydrofracked out of the Koopalings instead. I did find it briefly silly that they were wedding planners and that was their motivation, but they really had no other substance. What was the deal with Madame Broode? Was she supposed to be the big main boss? Why was she like never around? Why wasn’t she ever seen with the rest of the Broodals? Why did she have no interaction with the plot or anything or anyone? Why was she not part of the Dark Side gauntlet?

These "run fast while not falling off a cliff and losing 10 coins" challenges are annoyingly frequent, along with the "traverse a classic platforming section where you return to the beginning if you mess up slightly once at any point along the path". Luckily they’re not really mandatory to do until you want to 100% the game, but even then the only actual prize beyond showboating and personal congratulations is just a big ugly top hat--the worst of all hats--stuck on top of Peach’s beautiful castle. If anyone has a mod to get rid of it and change it into one of those giant golden bowser pediment gargoyle whatevers, those were really cool.

This is a game to beat within 2 hours and then put it away forever before you get sucked into it and eventually disillusioned from its charm so you can pretend it's a good game for the next 20 years--the true Super Mario 64 experience. It feels like a Gen 6 Pokémon game where they advertised all this cool stuff and then it turned out you could do it only once ever in a hyper-controlled setting and never again ever. I wanted to ride Gogoat more!! I'm really testing audience loyalty with my opinions on video games.

Further Crazed Ramblings of Varying Positivity and Negativity Now let’s turn to the audience for some deliciously crowdsourced commentary, that I censored by either rewording or complete omission because over a year ago I took a poll of you readers and you said you didn’t like swearing, that I asked a while back before I got 999 moons for me to say if I agree with or not, or to show that I’m not nuts and people think the thoughts that I thunk, or to remind me of some part I didn’t remember hard enough to include in the regular commentary above. Each respective person is color coded for readability, and like half of them wanted orange or purple so I guess deal with it.

02:25   Anton{Politoed}    hey everyone 02:25   Anton{Politoed}    tell me what your favorite and least favorite parts of Odyssey were 02:25   Uniju    ill vote 02:25   Anton{Politoed}    be as brief or not-brief as you'd like 02:25   Anton{Politoed}    you can also tell me *bleep* you 02:26   Gamefreak75    best part: waluigi costume 02:26   Gamefreak75    steam gardens 02:26   Lord_Bowser    bowser's kingdom 02:26   Lord_Bowser    moon kingdom 02:26   Gamefreak75    worse: lack of playable waluigi 02:26   Lord_Bowser    the new donk city festival 02:27   Uniju    my least favourite were the motion controls and the fact that a large part of the game required you to play as captures that were nowhere near as fun as just being mario 02:27   Uniju    my favourites were the world design and playing dress up and the sick moves you can do with the hat once you get good 02:29   Lord_Bowser    least favorite was the entirety of snow kingdom 02:30   Gamefreak75    oh yeah bounding sucked 02:30   Gamefreak75    as did dark side 02:30   Gamefreak75    like the entirety of dark side 02:30   Lord_Bowser    oh yeah dark side too 02:30   Gamefreak75    minus the picture puzzle hint things 02:30   Anton{Politoed}    i beat the game and didn't do dark side yet 02:30   Anton{Politoed}    wat do to do it   02:30    Anton{Politoed}    do I just go back to the moon 02:30   Gamefreak75    you need a certain amount of moons 02:30   Lord_Bowser    you unlock it after collecting 250 moons 02:30   Anton{Politoed}    ezpz 02:31   Gamefreak75    i think--yeah 02:31   Uniju    i like the late game stuff 02:31   Uniju    people who are both obsessive completionists and not good enough at the game to appreciate more challenging parts need to stop being the way they are and conform to the way i want them to be   02:32    Anton{Politoed}    what late game stuff 02:32   Uniju    dark side 02:32   Anton{Politoed}    basically i'm crowdsourcing commentary to fluff up my shroom section with in 2 months 02:32   Anton{Politoed}    ur gonna be famous 02:33   Uniju    :-D 02:34   Anton{Politoed}    I made sure to unclick that smiley on mibbit so when I copy/paste this it renders appropriately with the - 02:34   Uniju    thanks 02:35   Anton{Politoed}    I'll ask the discord peeps later and see how their answers vary 02:36   Anton{Politoed}    taking bets now on what the responses will be   02:37    Anton{Politoed}    i'm putting my stake in UltraMario being the first to reply with some stupid bastardized twitch emote followed up by an emoji he's sitting in an entire server just to gain access to  ((Spoiler alert:  I didn’t ask them squat, but UltraMario performed according to prophecy regardless)) 02:37   Lord_Bowser    metro kingdom x10 02:38   Anton{Politoed}    I didn't like metro kingdom much 02:38   Anton{Politoed}    I was super hyped for it only for it to end up being like 02:39   Anton{Politoed}    rooftop parkour and pauline getting her limelight 02:39   Anton{Politoed}    I enjoyed the theme of it and the detailing 02:40   Anton{Politoed}    but I was just disappointed with how little I actually had to interact with it   02:41    Anton{Politoed}    I get that maybe it's my job to explore what I want to explore but when doing that has pretty much no purpose unless you're one of those people trapped in the task of throwing the hat on everything that looks knobby to get a single coin and maybe once in a while a power moon 02:41   Anton{Politoed}    it just feels like more of a waste of time looking at the sights when you could instead just beat the level to find out if the next one has any more engagement 02:41   Lord_Bowser    i was mostly disappointed by how relatively small it was 02:42   Lord_Bowser    i wish it was more on the scale of something like luncheon kingdom 02:43   Anton{Politoed}    GIVE 👏 NEW 👏 DONK 👏 CITY 👏 A 👏 USELESS 👏 OCEAN 👏 OF 👏 STUPID 👏 PINK 👏 NONSENSE 👏 👏 👏 🌋 🌋 🍆 💦 02:44   GBAToad    please, 02:44   Anton{Politoed}    unova was also a pretty disappointing NYC-inspired location, as well 02:45   Anton{Politoed}    it had way too many ports when who honestly cares about nyc's ports except stinky fish people 02:45   Anton{Politoed}    and only had like 7 buildings you could enter 02:46   Anton{Politoed}    when actual nyc is just a fiesta of skyscrapers with wildly fast revolving doors that you can just waltz into because there's a CVS inside for some reason 02:47   Anton{Politoed}    i was in downtown orlando the other day and found a publix inside a skyscraper 02:47   Anton{Politoed}    there was also a 7-Eleven in another one, without any gas pumps 02:47   Anton{Politoed}    that seems to be a thing here 02:47   Anton{Politoed}    7-Elevens but no gas 02:48   Anton{Politoed}    if I want a bodega vibe I want some crusty old world grampa running some corner shack 02:48   Anton{Politoed}    not a chain with boiled hot dogs 02:48   Anton{Politoed}    this UPSETS me   02:49    Anton{Politoed}    what's a corner store if I don't feel unwelcome and at risk inside of it   02:49    GBAToad    boiled hot dog stand in pokemon when 02:49   GBAToad    thats just a store anton 02:49   Gamefreak75    the only thing i get at 7 11 nowadays is their coffee 02:49   Gamefreak75    both iced and hot 02:49   Gamefreak75    because 90% of the time the *bleep*ing slurpee machine is busted 02:49   Gamefreak75    or pouring out literally water 02:49   Gamefreak75    instead of an icy mix 02:50   GBAToad    i misread that as you get hot slurpees and was very confused 02:50   Anton{Politoed}    i found out the 7-eleven on the corner near my apartment has a wine aisle 02:50   Anton{Politoed}    the endcaps feature barefoot wine so there's just giant pictures of feet all over 02:51   Yuki    i liked that one stage with jump up superstar in nude onk city 02:52   Anton{Politoed}    yeah that was unexpected and really cool

21:02   Anton{Politoed}    so uh   21:02    Anton{Politoed}    why does the moon have reused crappy luncheon kingdom assets 21:05   __2257    because thats just the area where they dumped some unpolished challenges 21:07   Gamefreak75    uh oh youre in dark side? 21:07   Gamefreak75    rip 21:07   Anton{Politoed}    this dropped the game from a C to a D now 21:08   Nabber    oh good anton agrees with me that odyssey's postgame ruins it   21:08    Nabber    cool 21:09   __2257    im pretty sure his major complaint was luncheon kingdom 21:14   Anton{Politoed}    oh cool 21:14   Anton{Politoed}    multi-boss stage with no health packs or breaks and it sends you back to the beginning if you lose 21:14   Nabber    LOL 21:14   Nabber    have fun anton 21:15   __2257    you can actually just walk back to the ship and heal yourself there 21:15   Anton{Politoed}    i'm not 21:15   Anton{Politoed}    that sounds like way too much work 21:15   Nabber    the ship heals you? 21:15   Anton{Politoed}    I'm just going to quit playing the game 21:15   __2257    yes 21:15   Nabber    wtf 21:15   Anton{Politoed}    odyssey is honestly a stupid *bleep* game and *bleep* 21:15   Anton{Politoed}    don't buy it   21:15    Anton{Politoed}    about 3 total things are good and you can experience them in a youtube video 21:15   Nabber    i remember when i thought playing odyssey would make me feel like i was 10 again 21:15   Anton{Politoed}    *bleep* nintendo 21:16   Nabber    all things considered i really like odyssey up until post game 21:16   Anton{Politoed}    I don't   21:16    Anton{Politoed}    time to leave 21:16       *** Anton{Politoed} is now known as Anton{Awaytoed} 21:16   __2257    dont worry nabber 21:16   __2257    even if you didnt feel like you were 10 again 21:16   __2257    i did 21:16   nico    anton u can use an amiibo 21:17   nico    i did 21:17   nico    its bs still

Further expansion: I would like to have seen each costume provide some new ability, even if it’s really minor, beyond just cosmetic appeal. Super Mario 64 even had all those different hats that did new things, so it could’ve referenced that since there already were a ton of references. Even just a minigame from them would be fine, instead of just restricted access rooms you can only get in if you’re dressed up as a chef or a retiree in Hawaii just to stand still and do an automatic dance for 30 seconds to get a single Moon. Even just different idle animations before conking out would’ve been incredibly nifty. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy being able to have alternate outfits, and would even go so far as saying that they’re my favorite part of the game when combined with taking photos, but there’s really not much loot to be made from collecting Power Moons, regional coins, or regular coins. There’s an enormous amount of Moons to collect for a seemingly endless list of arbitrary and tedious tasks, and there’s no real reward for doing it beyond the feeling of having collected them. The most tactile thing is just some temporary bonus health, and then milking Balloon World to purchase all of the costumes and enough Moons to unlock Dark and Darker Side. Maybe it would’ve been too much more work to program these all in, or would’ve distracted from the whole Capture feature, but it would’ve been something neat that would be extra and add to the charm of the game. Maybe in a sequel?

After hearing everyone complain about how Dark Side sucks I went and bought a ton of Power Moons because I didn’t want to take the time to go and find enough to naturally accomplish it, as well as Darker Side. So, Dark Side starts off pretty abhorrent, with you having to navigate around a bunch of pure grey Luncheon Kingdom veggies, likely to taunt specifically just me. Once you get past that nonsense you shoot up into a giant stone carrot to face the Broodals in a boss battle gauntlet. It was pretty difficult, frustrating, and annoying until told me I could just make a trek back to the Odyssey to regenerate health and then it became super easy. After that a whole bunch of Power Moons became available in the form of the bonus levels in every other kingdom but instead significantly more difficult with tweaks such as going Cappy-less, having a more restrictive timer, a change in the landscape, or more enemies flooding the screen. I already really hated these levels a good half of the time I encountered them, so you can imagine how I felt when I came upon these. Actually, you can see right above in that chunk of logs I quoted! Real-time organic, cage-free, homegrown, GMO-free, gluten-free anger. Darker Side was next. Walking into it there’s a bunch of people from every kingdom cheering for you to do whatever thing it is and get to the top of a copy/pasted skyscraper from Metro Kingdom. Turns out it’s an incredibly frustrating platforming challenge that’s really not that difficult as much as it’s just time consuming and aggravating. Spending time to get the extra heart at the beginning only to lose it immediately thanks to it being a 3D environment that doesn’t recognize directional movement and instead flings you two degrees off course into a pit of lava, or a slight camera shift that suddenly wrecks your view and momentum, or rotating upside down bits that arbitrarily decide whether to keep moving in a single direction and flipping into reverse. It’s easily completed with the application of brute memorization, thanks to it having no checkpoints, meaning if you screw up in one part you gotta redo the entire thing. Eventually it becomes muscle memory so over time a part that’s difficult will become easy-peasy and you’ll wonder why you were so frustrated until you look at the clock and realize you just wasted hours of your day.

Best Costumes:
 * Boxers, the outfit that introduced the rest of the world to Mario’s nipples, despite real connoisseurs, like myself, already having seen them previously.HalfBaked_135_13.jpgHalfBaked_135_14.jpg
 * Swimwear, because it looked both cute and goofy, plus I liked pairing the swim goggles with the boxers.
 * Knight Armor, because armor looks cool and they made it well.
 * Resort Outfit looks good but would be even better if the flip-flops worked how they should instead of being glued to the soles of his feet. I like to imagine this costume as Mario finally being on a vacation, but trouble happens anyways and he doesn’t have a chance to change his outfit, leading to boss battles where the big baddie can hear Mario coming from a mile away because of the flip-flops flipping and flopping loudly through the halls, or is trying to have an evil monologue but keeps getting distracted by Mario slurping on a margarita.
 * The Bridal Gown and Veil are amazing, and I’m glad it’s not poked fun at with “oh ho ho a MAN wearing a DRESS?!?! WEIRD!!” and instead is just about “had to change the measurements”

OK Costumes:
 * Skeleton Suit is ok, I’m glad they at least made a conscious effort to make the skeletal anatomy as accurate as it could be, but Mario’s nose being a bony structure is suspicious.
 * Regardless of me not liking the character otherwise, I appreciate the Diddy Kong costume using Mario’s own bare feet instead of Diddy’s and his gross sideways toe.
 * Waluigi and Wario Suits are an excellent inclusion, but the shoes aren’t pointed.
 * Invisibility Hat seems good for getting photos of stuff without Mario in the way.

Worst Costumes:
 * I get that the Fashionable Outfit is of the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu thing, and that its own caption is aware that the outfit clashes incredibly with itself, but ehhhhh…..
 * I also get that the Scientist outfit is another reference, but I could do without the giant Einstein hair, or at least model it better.
 * Not really anything else for Worst! There were definitely some that weren’t my particular aesthetic or what I’d want to be bouncing around kingdoms in, but they weren’t conceptually bad.

I’m glad that they had so many references and homages to past games and artwork, but where’s the pumpkin head or Santa??? I also demand a sequel or DLC where I can play as Peach and/or Luigi just to get more outfits for them. Peach’s fashion in each kingdom she went to was top notch.

I appreciate the ability to buy Power Moons to unlock things that require a certain number of them because gosh it can take a while until you get on a roll, and sometimes some are just too frustrating that the only healthy thing to do is put down the game and go enjoy a sunset. There’s an incredible amount of Power Moons to collect and I think it was a smart idea to have a whole ton more only unlock after you beat the game as it gives you a reason to go back and explore each level in crime scene investigation level detail without an overarching plot gnawing at your attention to achieve first. There being so many Moons to collect helped it feel more satisfying than Super Mario 64 and its Power Stars because the gratification was more constant with much less time between achieving them to allow a feeling of defeat to set in. One of them giving you a hard time? There’s 20 more within a 360 degree viewing range to get instead.

I was hoping the co-op two player mode would be something similar to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but perhaps I was naive and didn’t think much about how that could’ve worked. Instead one player plays as Mario, the other as Cappy, similar to how multiplayer was in Super Mario Galaxy, at least according to other people as I haven’t played that game, either, due to living in a cave. It’s pretty unremarkable and saps away most of the utility and fun from either player by splitting the mobility and powers up. In this mode, though, with Cappy having a higher level of sentience granted by being a Player 2 he is able to fly around for an incredibly longer length of time with pretty open mobility. While this isn’t really any fun for actual exploration or playing the game beyond just doing goofy stuff, I can foresee it having a technical use in grabbing up Power Moons or easter eggs in locations that may be difficult for a single player to achieve without spending hours trying to master a specific chain of actions.

For someone who isn’t speedrunning/race-minded, such as myself, the Koopa races are incredibly unfun and terribly frustrating when you’re up against the golden boy and you’re on attempt number 15 because you messed up a long jump and instead did a backflip for the 6th time in a row, or can’t instantly do a special jump combo. Some people might enjoy it so I guess good on Nintendo for including features that appeal to a range of players, but I really hate it. It's like Portal; I know what to do, I can see the solution, I just can't press the buttons to accomplish it and spending an hour retrying the same part to no success does nothing but infuriate me exceedingly beyond any bit of pleasure I'd glean from eventually succeeding. I tend to beat them only after fulfilling my curse of not being able to accomplish something until I moan about it, and as predicted, I'm not left feeling like I've accomplished something and am instead grumpy and feel like I've wasted my time getting a trinket that I don't even need because I don’t particularly care about showboating getting 100%. Again, some people do, so :clap: for them.

Beach Volleyball the Jump-Rope Challenge are on our award for F12 Worst Game Objective--which you can vote for right now!--for a good reason. Beach Volleyball’s first Moon was pretty easy, but getting to 100 was incredibly monotonous and aggravating, with constantly getting to around 45 and then losing. At some point I just went onto two player mode, validating my future sight abilities as foretold a couple paragraphs back, to have Cappy just hover around at light speed and a hitbox twice his size and the challenge became incredibly easy. It also helps that the ball can hit the ground and it won’t count as a miss until it bounces back down again. At some point the ball stops speeding up and the rhythm becomes almost hypnotic, very much like a metronome, where I can just completely zone out (with Mario himself taking a nap in the corner since he’s not the one playing) and just follow the beat and the ball going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... Anyways, for the Jump-Rope Challenge, it was really annoying just getting it started, with the ladies just whipping the rope into you before you could even really start and then refuse to start back up again until you left and came back. After weeks of trying it I started looking into exploits, some of which had been patched, but one being a glitch to get one of the giant letters to break out of its confinement looked promising. After failing to get that to work, I could feel mania setting in, and out of pure spite I just did the jump-rope challenge vanilla with pure skill up to like 115. I can see why the dark side of the force is so tempting. Both of these max out with speed boosts at some point, and I guess me having been a music person in a past life (1st part 1st chair alto sax!) helps my with rhythm-based games. Those Stacker arcade games don’t stand a chance against me!

I’m glad there was a Poochy cameo in some portraits, and even appropriately as the being who can survive swimming in the poison sludge, but when there’s a dog you can run and play catch with and it’s not Poochy then honestly what are you doing??

Luigi’s Balloon World

And finally, to satisfy the Luigi theme of this month’s ‘Shroom issue, I’ll blab a bit about Balloon World. My first few rounds trying to pop balloons was a disaster. I didn’t really anticipate so many good hiding spots, the timer being 2 seconds too short for where I needed to go, or for there to be just so many balloons noclipped into the walls. Certain kingdoms that were really awful to play in--such as Snow Kingdom with its limited visibility, death water, and slippery slopes, and also Wooded Kingdom with its deceptive distances, and heights that were too easy to completely ruin a run, and both kingdoms’ shared ability for balloons to be placed in mid-air. Some other kingdoms were marvelous, such as Metro Kingdom and Lake Kingdom which both had distance hints that were easy tells for location and difficulty, making it easy to chain victories. When a special was running in one of those places it made for very quick and easy money, which is what helped fuel me buying every costume and hundreds of Power Moons in just two days. Shoutout to the heroes who placed their balloon just outside the starting circle, and may all though who broke my streaks with glitching their balloons into walls have their systems bricked, food burnt, toes stubbed, freezer door accidentally left open, and favorite show get canceled mid-season with no resolution.

Rating: Collecting several different flavors of Chex Mix and combining them in one large bowl

Explanation: In what was an attempt to combine the positive aspects of so many flavors into one behemoth Mix, effectively the entire thing was diluted to the point of not being able to fully enjoy any of the flavors. It was a massive undertaking and my vaguely negative overall critique isn’t me yelling at them to abandon ship and the concept in general, but rather that it was a good idea in a unique and exciting direction that had many surprises but left more room for improvement. It was an overall enjoyable game and was incredibly refreshing when Mario games were following a trend of being pretty unimaginative and dull; it just had way too many things that were good concepts that were poorly or inadequately executed that teeters on the fence of "wow I wish to see more in a sequel that I will pay for with money!" and "wow I can't believe this cost $60 when it feels like they gave up halfway". I enjoyed that the concept of gathering X amount of Power Moons to proceed to the next level was bolstered by an actual plot to direct me, unlike SM64 which felt more like "here you go, collect X stars to play the same boss level again"; "too ambitious" isn't a thing I want to negatively tack onto the Mario franchise. I may have been mildly annoyed by...basically everything, because I’m kinda whiny about stuff...but I still did play the game to nearly completion, achieved 999 Power Moons, played a heck of a lot of the post-game, and even will be helping to run a Super Mario Odyssey Scavenger Hunt sometime soon for Wiki Anniversary events, so there must’ve been some kind of spark that kept me coming back that other games haven’t had in a while. If there isn’t a sequel or at least this direction not being a one-hit wonder I will be extremely disappointed.

P.S. Despite my vaguely neutral-negative-hopeful rating above, and my hyperbolic crying that the game is actually garbage because Luncheon and Ruined Kingdoms both sucked just that much, you should still buy it because Nintendo will get the idea to make more games like this.

To quote a great poet of our modern times, “People (...) need to stop being the way they are and conform to the way I want them to be.” --Uniju, April 2018

If you hate what I said and want to call me a big loser stinkface poopyhead, or if you agree with me and want to be all “wowzers, someone else who had similar thoughts!”, or both, instead of tweeting it on your private rage account, feel free to send me a message, make a rebuttal, or, even better, do a review of your own! At the end of the day this is just my opinion and take on my experience, and if you had something different it would be wonderful to read!

As a bonus, here’s a gallery of some more images I wanted to put in this section but either ran out of room in the area I wanted to place it in or just didn't have a place for it at all. For one final complaint out of me, I didn't know that the text overlay on the camera screen would be captured in the photos if I didn't wait for it to disappear until I exported them to my computer, so a whooooooooole bunch of the things I took a photo of were ruined and look sillier than I planned for, and when my favorite thing from the entire game are setting up photos, I don't particularly care for negligence in design that compromises it. Regardless, enjoy:

Kellogg’s Super Mario Cereal I was in a Super Target in downtown Orlando and saw this on the rack. Not having seen this anywhere else, combined with how I was currently writing this specific section, I figured that now’s the best time to blow $3 on a pretty narrow box of what looks like rebranded Lucky Charms just to make sure that this month has something to do with food.

The Super Mario Cereal box holds 8.4oz; that’s like half a bag of Chex Mix, or equal to an overpriced gas station bag, all for the same relative price. I estimate there’s only like 4 reasonable size bowls of cereal in here, because honestly who measures out any cereal except Raisin Bran or some Kashi granola nonsense? The amiibo scan thing didn’t….give me anything. It just told me that there’s no more hints in the kingdom, so I went to one where there were some still available and it just didn’t scan it at all. A press release says it gives coins and hearts which is something I guess. Maybe it’s because I have 999 moons and all costumes at this point that it’s just refusing to do anything but bluh, disappointing. Only after I complained about it here did it end up scanning again, with me having done nothing different from any of my prior attempts. It functioned just like a regular amiibo in that it made me wait 5 minutes for a clue to a Power Moon that I could’ve otherwise just spent 50 coins on. This gimmick is okay enough for a cereal box prize or game, and realistically much more portable after I cut it away from the box than an actual amiibo figure would be if I were to want to get free hints on the go.

The actual cereal is mixed berry with marshmallows, I guess just so it was something different as Lucky Charms is a General Mills product. The stars resemble starfish more than the stars I’m accustomed to in Mario games, and all of the marshmallow shapes are crushed and warped beyond recognition. I’m not sure why berry was the mixed flavor chosen, either. There’s basically no resemblance to anything Mario thanks to the production process of cereal aside from what’s on the box. Aside from that, the cereal isn't that bad. It really just literally tastes like a mixed berry Lucky Charms, down to the marshmallows feeling incredibly fake and scraping like styrofoam peanuts along my teeth. The cereal milk leftover was also a good chug. I don’t feel like it filled me up much at all, like something heavier such as Life or Mini Wheats; it’s a really inoffensive somewhat sugary cereal. It got its marketing point across, and got me to buy it, without really pushing me away. I wouldn’t buy again but I don’t exactly regret the money I did spend on it.

Rating:  8.75oz bag of Trail Mix Chex Mix that you get at a gas station for $2.69 because they upped the price but you still want something more than just a Fudge Round.

Explanation: A mystical illusion that mesmerizes you into thinking it’s a decent purchase up until you physically interact with it, breaking the spell and realizing you could’ve spent just as much money on a lot more stuff that would be just as, if not more, satisfying; but it’s not bad enough to render you catatonic with regret and grief.

Tune in next month where I review stuff! So specific! Also, tell me what to review next! It can be games, movies, shows, physical actions, trying new foods, music, literally anything and I’ll cover it eventually if it’s not too ridiculous. Just send me a message here on my talk page or PM it to me on the forum. Don't like what I have to say? That's fine, and probably bound to happen because I've been told about how much people like Super Mario 64 and how they feel about any criticism of it! We at Critic Corner will welcome your alternate review of it as a new section for the next issue!

Movie Reviews
Written by:

Deadpool 2

Back in 2016, I began reviewing films for The 'Shroom on a permanent basis. The first film that I properly reviewed was the hit superhero-comedy film Deadpool. And now two years later, we're here with the sequel to it.

To get this out of the way, Deadpool 2 is not as good as the first Deadpool. The jokes are just as funny, the action is still as gory and the fourth wall is still broken in a multitude of ways. But nothing compares to seeing these things the first time around. However, that is not to say that Deadpool 2 is a bad movie, because it's not, not by any stretch of the imagination.

However, when the movie isn't “Deadpooling”, and by that I mean either having action or comedy happen, it is painfully dull. The mutant prison scenes are dreadfully boring, in which barely anything happens. I don't think anyone goes into a Deadpool movie goes in to watch the character fight cancer after his mutant abilities are removed.

Another big issue is that the main plot revolves around Deadpool trying to save Firefist from Cable. And given the fact that Cable's motives for wanting to do so are pretty noble, and the fact that Firefist is potentially one of the most unlikeable characters I've ever watched in a movie, I genuinely could not care less if Cable did kill him. And considering that Deadpool is supposed to be an anti-hero, it didn't particularly bother me if he didn't if he failed to act like one.

The only other issue I have with the movie is that some exchanges went on for way too long. An argument between Deadpool and Domino over whether luck constituted as a superpower felt like it lasted for five minutes, it did not have to go on for that long. And another scene near the end of the movie, that I shan't spoil, was similarly dragged out.

Now, even though I haven't said anything nice about this movie, that's not to say that there isn't anything good about it. When the movie is “Deadpooling”, and by that I mean hammering you with jokes and action sequences, it is amazing. It is just as funny, if not more so, than the first movie, and the action sequences are just as good.

The relationship between Deadpool and Domino is brilliant, and the pair have a fantastic chemistry between them, it's just a shame that more of X-Force wasn't seen and experimented with. Although any scene with Peter in it was a good scene. And similarly the rest of supporting cast is just as good. Characters like Colossus and Dopinder don't outstay their welcome, whereas I would have liked to have seen more from characters like Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio.

Like I said at the start of the review, Deadpool 2 is not as good as the first Deadpool. It might be just as funny, but the slow bits are just so slow and dull. The first movie gets a pass on this as it was setting up the character, but in the movie they just feel completely out of place. That said, I still highly recommend it.

Character Review
Written by:

Luigi Long time readers of this section will probably know that I tend to stay away from the major characters in the franchise. In fact, since 2015 the only two major characters that I have covered are Yoshi and Wario. But, considering that this issue was all about the man in green, it seems rather silly to not have a review on him.

I like Luigi. Like many people, I prefer Luigi over Mario. He may have originally have started as colour-swapped plumber, but since his debut Luigi has become more than his own character. His most defining trait being his timidness. I love how they play on this, by having shocked by the slightest little thing, like a Scaredy Rat, and then have him try and overcome it in his own game series.

The Luigi's Mansion games are some of the best game for Luigi's overall development as a character. He's afraid of everything, and yet his love for his brother still motivates him to overcome his fears and save him from a ghost-infested mansion. And then of course five more ghost-infested mansions. And although it's just a minor touch, I love how Luigi seemingly tries to distract himself from the creepiness around him by humming the theme song for the game.

His timidness is present in the Mario & Luigi games as well, whether it's him crying alongside the baby bros. or attempting to escape from travelling to places like in Superstar Saga, however as much as I would love to comment what he is like in the Mario & Luigi series, I haven't played far into many of them to accurately say anything.

Another thing I like about Luigi is his romantic interest in Princess Daisy. I may not like Daisy much as a character, but I loved the touches in Daisy Circuit with the two of them together. However, with that said I am aware of another ship involving Luigi, and of course I'm talking about Prince Peasley x Luigi, however as I have no experience with Superstar Saga I am unfortunately unable to comment on that possible relationship.

And throughout most games, the one thing that shines through is Luigi's commitment to Mario, even if he is incredibly jealous of his exploits in Paper Mario. From cutscenes in Mario Power Tennis to the relationship seen in Mario & Luigi it's clear that Luigi holds a lot of love for his brother. And with all of his characterisation, it's no wonder he's frequently voted as our Favourite Major Character.

G. TV
Written by:  and

Hi Guys! Happy Summer to all of you! I hope you all have some awesome plans to do this summer. Whether that’s to take some time off work and school. If you don’t quite have the time to relax this season, just try and take some time to yourself. Get away for a few days and just relax, because we all deserve time to just calm down and enjoy life. Now please get comfortable because I’m about to dive straight into the pool of some serious meme garbage, about our all-star of the month, Mama Luigi. Honestly, I wonder what brought me to watch all these episodes. Oh, that’s right…. It all started a month ago, me and Meta (talk) and I were hanging out at my house, in the middle of watching some videos together.

Meta Knight: Hey hun you do know your deadline is coming up right? Geeky: Uh-huh, what about it? Meta Knight: Well I had an idea that'd be pretty funny. Geeky: Oh? What’s that? Meta Knight: Well you do know that the Mario franchise had cartoons, right? Geeky: Yeah I remember there being some memes about— wait... Geeky: ''*deadpans giving Meta an "Are you serious?" look*'' Geeky: No...No absolutely— Meta Knight: Perfect. We're doing it. Geeky Finnneeeeee…

Gee thanks Meta for giving me that idea... Although I must hand it to him, he did have a great idea in wanting me to watch the old Mario Cartoon shows. I guess it’s time to dive straight into this meme dumpster. To begin I decided to watch all three Mario Cartoons. I only had time to watch one episode from each iteration. I'm going to bring Meta into this review to help me out. Mainly because I thought one iteration was so cringe-worthy that I constantly was saying to myself "Oh God why am I watching this?" and attempted to suppress the memory from my mind to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. We'll start this with what my favorite episode was. Now without further ado…

Super Mario World: Mama Luigi

Geeky: I think out of all of these the Super Mario World one was my favorite. Meta Knight: You just be happy I got one of the better episodes of this series. Geeky: But it was so cute! I think I'd maybe want to watch more someday. Meta Knight: I think I'd rather die. Geeky: Oh you...

I honestly found this episode to be cute. Yup, you saw that right. This episode was so adorable. The concept of having Yoshi think of Luigi as his Mother is cute. I really like the fact that Luigi tries to push away the nickname from himself, however, he continues to look out for Yoshi just like a parental figure. Honestly, I think it'd be hard to find someone who wouldn't find the loving parental companionship adorable except Meta who's just a party pooper.

The plot has Luigi tucking Yoshi in bed and telling him about how the Mario Bros. came to the dinosaur world. The entire episode is essentially a flashback, and Yoshi is a baby. Yoshi ends up saving the princess and things are a-okay. I like the idea and found the episode cheesy but charming. Yoshi interacting with Luigi was simply adorable. At the end of the segment, Luigi embraces the fact that Yoshi looks up to him as a "Mama", and it's all so cute. It was a cute little bedtime story exploring the origin of Yoshi.

A few things that I did have to adjust to was Mario and Luigi’s voices. I didn’t picture their voices turning out to be so New York-ian. I wondered why they had decided to leave their voices like this. I also wondered why they had needed to do that much exploring in this episode. I know that Yoshi had to be discovered but why couldn’t they have made it more simplistic? I also noticed that they sneaked in some suggestive imagery for a kids show. Considering Yoshi swallows everyone and gets larger, someone was definitely trying very hard to work their kink into the show. Although I think I may have overthought that one. Another thing I strongly disliked is the musical number. For absolutely no reason at all, they have a "unique" song playing over the background that is so awful. Anyways…. I honestly thought that this was okay, and while I thought that it was somewhat convoluted, I still think that it was okay.

''Super Mario Bros. Super Show: The Bird! The Bird!''

Geeky: I don’t want to do this! Get your butt in here, this was your idea! Meta Knight: This was a great idea. Geeky: I hate you. Meta Knight: You love me.

It looks like I'm gonna handle the Super Mario Bros. Super Show since this is the one that was too much for her. In this episode, Mario, Luigi, Peach (who at this point was just Princess Toadstool), and Toad are all climbing a mountain. Suddenly, Toad gets kidnapped by a Birdo and taken away to a house. Peach begs Mario and Luigi to save Toad, so the gang makes the trek in order to try and save him. Meanwhile, Bowser (in the show referred to as King Koopa), tries his usual schemes to try and take over the Mushroom Kingdom. This episode is incredibly cheesy, and personally, it was a chore to sit through. However, I'm not the target audience, and for a children's show, its fine. Something I really like is the integration of music and sound effects from the game. It's a detail that I think that even as ridiculous as the show is, fans of the game will appreciate that.

As I mentioned, it is completely fine as a children's cartoon. It is corny, but it's by-the-books. That said, it is still fun to over-analyze and rip it apart. For one thing, the voice for Birdo is extremely grating. It turns out that she mistakes Toad for her child, and constantly tries to smother him. At least the parental interaction with Luigi and Yoshi in Mama Luigi had a clear interaction of why Yoshi would mistake Luigi for his mama, and Luigi knows it. However, this is just annoying. How in the world does a Toad look anything like a Birdo? There's a scene where the Birdo drops Toad out of the sky for a "flying test". Toad is terrified and ends up using his "cap" as a parachute. This is an old cartoon, but now it is canon that a Toad's head cannot do that, and besides, it's just weird.

Let's talk about King Koopa for a second. He looks completely different, but this was a different time. His appearance doesn't bother me that much. His voice is honestly pretty great. He's one of the better parts of the show, but I can understand if someone would hate this incarnation. In this particular episode, he's trying to take over a mountain for... some reason? I wasn't really paying attention it's just the "get rid of the Mario Bros." shtick. There's a scene where he sits on his throne and says "I want his feet licked" and then has his feet licked by a couple snowmen. It's... weird. It's also been meme'd to death by now.

Another defining feature of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show are the live-action segments. I'm not sure if this is true for everything, but on the DVD's I own the live-action segments are absent. They're also cheesy as expected, but the added depth of seeing real people is entertaining for me. For this episode, Mario and Luigi end up making a mess on their visitor. Some other episodes have live-action segments have big names like Mark Hamill. Overall, this episode is extremely hard to sit through. It's fine though for what it is, and there are some good moments, but there's nothing more to it than that. Just like I made Geeky watch a better Super Mario World episode, I probably made her watch a worse episode of the Super Show.

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Beauty of Kootie

Meta Knight: There, do you feel any better? Geeky: Yes, thank you. Can we finish this together? Meta Knight: No. Geeky: *makes puppy-dog eyes* Pwease? Meta Knight: *sigh* Fiiiiiiiine. Geeky: Yay! ^-^ Meta Knight: God help me.

This episode takes place in Desert Land, with the Sultan calling the Mario Bros. over to fix the plumbing in his palace after his hot tub leaks a bunch of oil. It turns out that King Koopa is siphoning the oil from the Sultan's palace in order to fuel his airship. It's up to Mario to stop them. Throughout the episode, there are magic shenanigans from the Koopalings.

Speaking of the Koopalings, Meta did inform me that the creator's of the shows had renamed them. I'm wondering why they had found it necessary to rename them. Why can't they just keep the same names within the video game and the cartoon, so that this would prevent confusion?

Because it was completely unnecessary that's why. Maybe they thought names like Larry or Wendy would be boring, and the Koopalings are so forgettable that they have names to have something related to their personality. Still, who the hell names their kid "Cheatzy" or "Kootie Pie"? And before someone says that they aren't Bowser's real kids, it doesn't change the fact that someone named them that.

Throughout the two previous episodes I had watched there wasn't really any characters that I found downright annoying until I reached this episode. Kootie Pie Koopa... Kootie Pie freakin' Koopa the brattiest character I have ever seen in this series. She whines whenever she doesn't get her way. She is absolutely conceited about the way she looks. Oh and that voice... don't even get me started with that voice. You could make me listen to nails scratching against a chalkboard all day and it would be so much better than having to listen to her speak in her bratty attitude.

Poor Luigi... he was so unfortunate in getting transformed into a Koopa to save Princess Toadstool, Toad, and the Sultan. I liked that he was the hero to save them however I really wish he didn't have to kiss Kootie Koopa to save them. However, at times heroes need to do something they don't want to do to save the day.

This episode is the worst out of the ones featured in this section. There's another out-of-place complete garbage musical number. The Sultan's voice acting just sounds like it was just phoned in. The desert setting is boring, complete with the stereotype of oil in the desert. The worst part of this episode is that literally, everything about Wendy/Kootie Pie is god-awful. The Koopalings had everyone trapped in a dungeon, and her bratty attitude allowed them to escape. Not only does Luigi end up kissing Kootie Pie, but before that Mario ended up falling for Kootie Pie transformed into a human.

In all fairness, the Mario 3 series as a whole is tolerable. This is just a really bad apple. King Koopa is basically the same, so if you liked him in other iterations you'd probably like him here too. However, he's barely in this episode. Luigi is the real hero here, but the implications are horrifying, and even a kid would find this episode to be pretty boring.

Conclusion

Geeky: Well those were certainly memey... Meta Knight: Wasn't it the best? Geeky: You were hating on it the entire time we were watching. Meta Knight: It was glorious.

Well I hope you guys enjoyed reading our input! I didn't have a whole lot a time to watch the whole series, but based on what I've seen, Super Mario World was my favorite, followed by the Super Mario Bros. 3 iteration, and finally the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. However, I know that one episode may not be enough to judge a whole series, so if you want to see it for yourself, I would say that if you like cheesy cartoons you'll probably find some value in it. I mean, I'm all about cheesy shows so I can't say it was all that bad. Thank you so much for reading! Do you have anything else to say Meta?

Meta Knight: Let's do the Donkey Kong Country cartoon. Geeky: Shut up.