The Buddy System
"The Buddy System" is a comic featured as part of the Super Mario Bros. The title refers to an arrangement where two people work together or help each other.
Plot synopsis[edit]
The story begins late at night as Mario and Luigi attempt to stop loud booming noises coming from the Transport Tubes in Princess Toadstool's basement. Mario finds the pipes to be cluttered with trash, discovering on a sneaker that it all belongs to King Koopa. He hops into the pipe, leaving Luigi behind and taking the sneaker with him, to search for the tyrant.
Soon, Mario finds Koopa (still wearing the other sneaker) instructing Lemmy on dropping bombs at a wall's base and running away. Lemmy asks him to go over it repeatedly, and finally Koopa questions if he knows where the main pipe actually is. Lemmy tells him that Mouser told him where it was, and that blowing it up would cause the entire underground area of the Mushroom Kingdom to flood; this would make transportation impossible. However, Koopa reveals that Lemmy already blew up ten sections, leaving one Warp Pipe remaining. Lemmy uses four bombs to make sure it works, but the results are catastrophic: Luigi hears the explosion from the basement; Lemmy is blasted out of the underground world; and Mario and Koopa are sent flying towards a colony of Mice.
The Mice chain Mario and Koopa together, and Koopa ends up revealing his plans to flood the underground world after the Mice accuse Mario of being the more intelligent of the two. The lead Mouse questions why he planned on doing this, and Koopa explained that he would open a taxi service that people would use in place of the useless, flooded underground chamber. The Mice tell them that their location is incorrect and show them the real water main. The Mice light the fuses of several bombs and demonstrate how they would blow up the main; thus flooding the underground.
Koopa drags Mario to a Transport Tube, running as quickly as he can. However, the tube does not take them anywhere, because, as Mario explains, the pipes de-activate after the water in the underground reaches a certain level. Mario and Koopa have to work together to get the valve of the water main turned in order to stop the water (as they do, Koopa wears a plumber's cap like Mario). After it stops, an emergency drainage system activates, and the Transport Tubes begin working again. As the two leave, Koopa grabs a large branch off of a broken tree.
The instant the two reach above ground, Mario fights Koopa with a plunger as he counters with his branch; but Lemmy soon arrives with another bomb and drops it. The bomb narrowly misses Mario and Koopa, breaking their chain instead. As Koopa chases Lemmy, now wearing both of Koopa's sneakers, through the kingdom, Mario returns to the castle to find that everyone else is celebrating because they think Luigi fixed the plumbing. Princess Toadstool tells Mario that it appears his brother is a better plumber, and a reluctant Mario agrees.
Characters[edit]
Notable mistakes and errors[edit]
- The comic uses two inconsistent designs for the Mice. While most pages feature them without an underbelly, the fifth and sixth pages feature them with pink underbellies.
- On the last page, Wooster's cap is colored white instead of orange.
Names in other languages[edit]
| Language | Name | Meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish | Paha putki[1] | Bad pipes | |
| German | Verschwörung im Untergrund[2] | Conspiracy Underground | |
| Swedish | Rörigt värre![3] | Play on Rörigt värre! ("Messy as ever!") and rör ("pipe") |
