40 Years of Super Mario Bros.

This is a head gun podcast.

And now, in honor of Super Mario's 40th anniversary, we present a clip from Get Played in 1985.

Hey, y'all play this new game, Super Mario Brothers?

Yeah, it's really, really good.

I'm really enjoying it.

So, the game involves moving from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen.

And so you can walk, but you can also jump.

Yeah, I kind of don't see how it's going to really catch on.

Guys, I'm sorry.

You guys hear that TWA airliner has just been hijacked?

Wait, what?

There's 133 people on board.

Oh, my God.

Oh my God, it's a hostage situation.

I don't know.

It's 1985 and this shit's crazy.

That is crazy.

Do you think it's so crazy that I should cancel wanting to go to the movies to see the breakfast club later?

No, no, no, no, no.

You know what?

You know what?

I'm just going to turn off the news for a while and try and focus.

Yeah, let's try to focus on that.

What are you guys talking about?

You're talking about Super Mario Bros.

Yeah, Super Mario Bros.

For the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Oh, is that the one with the robot?

Well, yes, they have Rob, the robotic operating buddy, but actually not involved in playing the Super Mario Bros.

game at all.

In fact, what you use is it's like a joystick, but it's like a little square that you hold.

And the buttons you press with your thumb, not your finger.

Yeah, it's a little bizarre.

And you move with a D-pad,

which is like a cross that you can press different directions.

It's definitely an adjustment, but you know what I mean?

Oh, my God.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I can't focus.

I just heard about the Achille Laurel hijacking.

It's a cruise ship.

Oh, my God.

The cruise ship's been hijacking.

Jesus.

It's just a cruise ship and a plane.

It's 1985.

That's so crazy.

Oh, God.

Guys, real quick, I'm sorry.

I hate to take a break real quick.

I'm just so thirsty.

I got to take a sip of my new Coke.

Boy, that looks good.

I got to have one of those.

Ah, man, that's new Coke for you.

It's really good.

Drink or stank?

I think it's a...

You know what?

I miss the old Coke, but there's no way we're ever getting it back.

So I guess it has to be a drink.

Those days are gone forever.

Just back to the order of the day.

Here's what I'll say about Super Mario Bros.

Although I guess it's spelled B-R-O-S, but I I guess it's actually Brothers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bross.

Yeah.

I was so confused by this.

Super Mario Bros.

Because also there's only one of him.

Yeah.

So there's Mario.

Well, here's the thing.

Yeah.

There is a second one if you go into two-player mode.

No shit.

So you press the select button on your controller, which again is like a square that you hold, and you can press start to go to two-player mode.

So sorry to interrupt.

Yeah.

I don't know if you guys saw this.

What?

Hulk Hogan and Mr.

T just defeated Paul Orndorf and Rowdy Rowdy Piper.

Paul Piper?

Yeah, Piper.

He took the fall.

It's WrestleMania 1.

He assumes it.

WrestleMania?

Yeah, it's WrestleMania 1, which is I assume we're just going to be more WrestleManias.

You're not doing Kayfabe, are you?

I'm not.

No, fuck.

You know what that means?

No.

Good news that...

The hostages on that plane all got out.

I'm totally safe.

Oh, okay.

Well, that's good.

We, yahoo, and let's a go as we celebrate 40 years of Super Mario Bros.

this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger.

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr.

Games Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Wow.

Very affected.

We should give some context for, I mean, like, I guess everyone,

because

we're not primarily a video podcast though we do release some clips

you have a Matt is currently wearing an Oasis bucket hat and sunglasses

inside yeah Heather did the sunglasses the other day and I thought it was really cool but I did see Oasis when they came here to the Rose Bowl wow and I bought the bucket hat This was an after concert purchase.

I'd already been in the merch line.

Wow.

My wife and I love the concert so much that we both bought bucket hats.

Yes.

That's incredible.

It was just good stuff.

And I figured I'd wear it because, honestly, to honor my friend Heather, but also it was like, I got to get on record that I wore the hat at least once.

Yeah.

Pretty exciting.

Pretty good stuff.

And you know what?

You kind of forget that you're wearing it.

It's a different, it's a different type of hat.

Yeah, I don't forget.

No, you don't forget.

You're looking right at me.

But you put a bucket hat.

You're doing the only thing I can see.

You put a bucket hat on.

Also, the funny thing, the reason we got two,

one did not fit both of us.

Well, I got a share and bucket hat.

No, no, no, no.

We kind of thought we could get away with getting one.

Yeah, sure.

If they had one that was like magic and fit both of our heads.

If you got a tiny little head, I got a big one.

Yeah.

What are you going to do?

But

it kind of feels different than a normal hat.

I'm usually a hat wearer, right?

Baseball cap kind of guy.

Right.

Yeah.

You put that hat on, you're sort of just like, okay, well, like, I know this is on.

This hat's shrouding my whole peripheral vision.

Yeah.

I can see the hat in my, in, you know, in mine eyes.

Yeah.

But after a while, you kind of just get used to it.

It's kind of just like part of part of your head.

It's I are people going to look back on this era when baseball hats are so omnipresent and kind of like be like, but I know it's not the same as like back in the 50s, you know, when businessmen all wore hats.

But I mean, that was like, I feel like the first half of like the American century was just like, like men by default were wearing hats.

Yeah.

You know,

yeah, well, yeah.

But

these, whatever the, the standard sort of business hat is, I don't know what

I guess it's a fedora.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

You know what I mean?

Like, there was like the standard businessman look for a while, and those kind of fell out of fashion, I guess, in the 60s.

So, do you think that the future is going to have no baseball cap?

Well, I do.

No, I just wonder, will it be the sort of thing?

Because where it's like kind of a curiosity, where there will be an occasional baseball hat in the same way, you'll see an occasional fedora in the wild.

But, like, you'd see a picture of a bunch of people all wearing baseball caps now

at, you know,

at a baseball game.

I was going to say, yeah, yeah i was gonna say

i was gonna say a baseball game yeah good place to wear one yeah but but i don't know just any sort of crowd shot i feel like there's a lot of people wearing baseball hats and that's not always going to be the case no that's going to endure forever i wonder what the next hat will be who knows maybe we'll maybe we'll be done with hats bucket you think it's going to be bucket i don't know this is the only one that i have back wow bucket actually you're right you know what heather's right actually welcome back bucket hat rancher producer shell channel do you ever wear a bucket hat i own a few bucket hats I feel like you're mostly wearing baseball hats.

I like the idea of a bucket hat, but I don't know why I just don't like it on myself.

Got it.

Would you say hat by default?

Is that kind of your standard look?

It depends if my hair is washed or not.

Got it.

I had never purchased a luxury good from one of the, like, you know, the big brands, the...

the Burberry's, the Louis Vuitton, the Gucci's.

Never purchased one, but Liam Gallagher wore a Gucci bucket hat.

Wow.

that's pretty good.

And

he took a lot of flack for it because he's a man of people.

Yeah.

So he stopped wearing the Gucci bucket hat.

But I was like, I have to go buy my first ever luxury good.

Yeah.

So I saved up some pocket change and I went and I purchased the Gucci bucket hat.

Yeah.

There is no time in my life that is appropriate to wear it.

Yeah.

You can wear it here.

I can wear it here.

I kind of broke the seal.

Anyone can do whatever they want now.

Well, I mean, that seal was long broken on this show.

There we go.

You're ready for next week.

Nick comes from the Borat singlet.

Another char.

Yeah, actually, yeah, the char helmet was the real tar.

The char breaking.

That's right.

What char helmet?

You're right.

You're right.

I forgot.

Yeah, you're right.

Did char guest on the show?

No, no, no, no, no.

No, you know it.

I love char.

But hey, I know that I was sort of wearing like a different thing, and I'm kind of putting out maybe a different vibe right now.

It's still the same old me.

Yeah, that's what I like about it, Matt, is that I know at its core, it's still the same old you.

No matter what accent you're speaking with, that's right.

I might try to do a couple other ones later.

You know what?

I'm going to do a change right now.

I'm going to take off the sweater because it's getting a little warm and I'm going to put on my glasses.

Okay.

Yeah.

Should I change something?

What do you got?

I mean, I can put on a sweatshirt, but like how you said, it's a little warm.

Yeah.

It'd be kind of insane.

Layer up, why don't you?

Did you have Matt as Heather steps out to fetch her spectacles?

Yeah.

Had you seen Oasis before?

I had not.

No.

So this was my first time.

Obviously, they'd been

away

for a long time.

They broke up.

and got back together.

But I just appreciate the Ark as a brother myself.

Sure.

i guess i've never uh gotten to any uh scrapes in in in that way with my brothers but uh i i i just also i just think they're so funny so it was it was nice to see honestly like the show uh

was obviously heather's such a big fan and talked of it very highly yeah uh and so i knew i knew going in that it was going to be great but it was honestly like maybe the biggest concert i've ever been to in my life biggest yeah probably in terms of like the scope and like number of people there number of people yeah it was, I mean, two nights at the at the Rose Bowl.

What's that?

That's, I mean, I don't know.

85,000 per night.

85,000, yeah.

It's like, it's, it's quite big, but then also just like, I don't know if I've been to a show that had such

stakes is not the right word, but, you know, vibe.

Vibe.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, you know, you go see like a band you like and stuff.

They're like promoting an album and it's like, it's great and it's fun.

And, you know, you get to see your favorite band.

But like, that was like such like a, I felt like everybody was all on the same page and just loving it.

It was really, really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess my equivalent was seeing The Simpsons live at a Hollywood Bowl.

I did see that.

You know, I actually immediately take back what I said.

Got to see a voice actor in real time do a voice he shouldn't do.

He put on a vest to indicate that he was changing characters.

You're right.

Okay.

And that's, you know, honestly, I was confused up until that point.

I'm glad he just put on the vest.

Yeah, I'm glad it started and stopped there yeah

uh

look we we could talk about concerts all day but uh this is a video game podcast is it i think it's a gift podcast all right i think i think maybe we gotta give we gotta give nick a little gift what you have a gift for nick we got it we got a we got a gift for you nick and it's not wrapped because uh

i mean come on who cares um but there you go it's a little gift from uh from the pod to you what what the what on earth is this okay

open it up okay i'm i'm i'm unboxing this.

User's Guide Cyber Tool.

Wait a second.

Cyber tool in the sense of this being a Swiss Army knife, a classic Victorinox.

Is that the brand?

Yep.

Wow.

Look at that.

You see the logo on it and everything?

This is great.

I'm a knife guy now.

It's both a regular knife, but it also has a bevy of computer and glasses specific tools.

Wow.

So that it is not a bunch of shit that you probably would never use oh my god be careful i almost just got myself what the fuck the the the good thing about this is that you'll never struggle struggle to open a box again yeah the flips the flip side of it though is that you you accidentally cut off your hand

yeah we we saw that that that you know when you were unboxing your um

your minions uh gift that you were struggling and we saw you do that is the same with the death stranding box i don't think the listener doesn't know about the Minions gift.

We got

Minion Blind Boxes.

We did.

That was

fun.

Minik and Heather all got the same one.

It's got like a computer screwdriver.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

I don't know what you call that.

Oh, it's like a hex screwdriver.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's nice.

Very nice.

Oh, how about that?

Very snazzy.

That's really cool.

And you got some different heads.

It looks like you can swap in the hair.

How about that?

Oh, my goodness.

What a gift.

Thank you so much.

This is so thoughtful.

Look at that.

Soon we'll have them in our own bodies.

Knives?

Yeah.

Oh, no.

Thanks for the weapon, everyone.

I can just put this in my bag.

Is that the thing I can just carry around?

I also carry a Swiss Army knife at all times.

I'm a knife guy now.

Yeah.

My EDC includes a knife.

Yeah, there you go.

Just remember to

take it out of your bag before you get on a plane or they will take it away from you forever.

Which my grandpa, who has a boot knife at all times, forgets every time he goes somewhere, he's not supposed to have one.

A boot knife?

He's got boot knife

yeah how many boot knives has he lost at this point i more than a handful certainly quite a quite a few and he's always so mad yeah i would be they're really nice he's a sicko he's a sick freak

you should all everybody should carry a knife they're handy tools i think i should get one yeah

thanks so much this is so look at that yeah wow how about that it would have been funny if the the box was hard to open and then when he got it open that's the i did think about wrapping it in like duct tape

Yeah, so if you ever get something like this, now you could open it.

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What are we talking about on this video game podcast?

It's not a concert podcast.

Yeah.

And it's not a gift podcast, actually.

It is a video game podcast.

It's a video game podcast.

Yeah.

All right.

And the question that we ask on this video game podcast is about some video games we've been playing lately.

That question is: what are you playing?

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

People are always asking each other what they're playing.

That's right.

But have we asked ourselves in this country?

What should we be playing?

Oh, interesting.

I posit that to you.

Wow.

Makes you think.

It does.

Wait, who wants to go first?

You, Matt?

I'll go first.

Matt, what are you playing?

Thanks so much, Resident Evil Flow.

You're welcome.

Look, Silk Song's out.

What else am I supposed to be doing?

Right?

Yeah.

I'm playing Silk Song.

You don't need to do anything.

Hollow Knight Silk Song.

As someone who recently finished Hollow Knight, as I'm sure as I know you've mentioned on the podcast.

Yes, that's right.

Recently finished Hollow Knight.

People are upset about my

percentage completion,

but credits is credits, baby.

I'll get back to it at some point.

I'm playing Silk Song,

and I just have to report

that I beat two bosses pre-patch.

And that's just, I have to, I just have to say it.

I have to say it, don't I?

I beat Moor Wing, and I beat

the, oh, shoot.

What's uh, what's she called her, Anch?

The sister

splinter.

Sister Splinter.

Didn't this happen to you also with elden ring didn't you beat a boss free patch sounds sounds like me sister splinter sounds like they made ninja turtles woke

nick that's good shit

i even smiled at that

uh but yeah they they uh announced that they're putting out a patch i think by the end of this week at some point uh or you know beginning of next week that they're going to

decrease the difficulty of some of the early game bosses, at least some of the Act 1 bosses.

And I just had, those two were specifically mentioned, and I just had to get in there and say that I beat them pre-patched.

I will say, you know, that the Silksong developers

obviously worked in that for, what, seven years?

As someone who has worked in development

on bad games,

to mediocre games, but have worked on games, I will say you experience that ratchet effect of difficulty in development just because you're replaying the same thing over and over and over again.

And even if you have play testers, that feedback will sometimes come that it's just like you have to be really, really hyper-conscious of what is a first-time player experiencing.

So I understand how something like that can happen, especially if you spend a lot of time with it.

It's similar to the sort of thing that I think happens with, you know, sometimes you hear about with.

when they're filming comedies that, and I've certainly witnessed this, where you have a good script but they start to do improv on set because they're just like well we know these jokes and then something new that's coming up is like ah that's like we like that because it's new yeah but it's maybe not not any better than what you've already established it's just that that that one's not that's not surprising to you you know it's it's kind of hard to to to trust yourself at a certain point right right but then also like this game

Obviously, it was in development for so long, and it was originally intended as DLC.

Right, yeah, you got to be part of a data.

The difficulty at the beginning of this game would have been more toward the end of the last game, right?

So you would have been more primed

for that.

But I just like, it's kind of interesting.

I haven't played Silk Song, but it's interesting to see the discourse.

about game difficulty that for the first time does not seem like get good toxic.

You know what I mean?

Like I feel like that's always the case.

And for whatever reason, for this one,

people are able to have a slightly nuanced like,

maybe this is like this is not quite balanced, you know, or may or arguing the other side, but like something other than just saying that anyone who's who's has an issue with it is unskilled.

I do think people are being big babies.

Because I've just seen a lot of the, like, I do think it, I, I think it is, um, admittedly, um,

degrees harder than Hollow Knight, having just finished it myself, right?

Because, like, some of these, some of these enemies are, uh, they have really fast attacks, so like sometimes you're losing like two damage immediately.

You only have five to five or six to start, I think, or something.

So you're like, you're losing like half your life

instantly, like with like basically like one hit.

And so you're then kind of scrambling.

But then you do get these other abilities that like, I don't know, you get them kind of quickly that then make things a little bit easier too.

So like it's just about

like just relearning how to like play this game like at a slightly more elevated

way.

Because like even hornet we talked about this last week hornets um di uh down slash that you can use to like pogo on things yeah is diagonal so you have to like learn where to position yourself but also if you're like on the thing like like let's say it's like this like floating rose or something and that's the thing you're pogoing off of if you're on that like exactly it doesn't matter where you land as long as you hit it as you're like hitting the the rose basically it still works wow so like you have to just really like learn how to like

finesse what you're trying to do.

But I'm just, I'm really enjoying the world is so much different,

so much more, it's different than Hollow Knight, and like, it's a little more interesting, and there's an act structure, and there's quests and stuff.

And I'm just really, really enjoying the very obvious seven years of work that went into it.

It's just, it's not just like,

here's more of it.

It's like, this is elevate, this is like elevated Hollow Knight.

I'm just really, really appreciating it.

Ranch,

how are you enjoying it so far?

I think I'm past a 20-hour.

Whoa, wow.

Wow.

Yeah, incredible game.

So happy to have this world expanded.

And I think I've unlocked the wall climbing.

And

yeah, finally feel like, I think there was a part where I was very stuck until finally I got that ability.

And now I feel like I'm unstoppable.

I'm at the widow right now.

I don't know if that oh, yeah, I have not beaten her.

No, she's tough.

Yeah, she's really tough, but I am, I'm gonna maybe go back to some areas now that I have the wall jump and see what see what kind of nooks and crannies I can find because that's the thing that I'm doing is I'm smacking everything and I'm you got it got it.

I'm just trying to go everywhere that I can to see you know what I can find.

But yeah, that's the game to me.

It's just like getting everything and finding a secret passageway.

I said last week, or maybe, you know, in previous weeks, that Death Stranding was going to be tough to beat for Game of the Year.

Uh-oh.

And I kind of am like, this is just like such an incredibly designed game that, like, I like,

it's, it's just unbelievable.

This is like an easy Game of the Year contender.

It's been a great year for games.

Yeah.

Like, I know that neither of you played Kingdom Come with Deliverance 2, but that was a phenomenal, huge game this year.

Yeah, I know.

Expedition 33 people loved as well.

Yeah, Expo 33, Stranding, Silk Song, lots of great bonanza.

Bonanza.

Bonanza.

Oh, banana.

Oh, banana.

That's right.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I'm playing Silk Song.

I'll be

people are finishing it, which is crazy to me.

You know, people.

Yeah.

I just unlike that's like, it's very impressive.

It's just, it's, it's extremely cool.

But I wish, uh, I'm not even out out of Act One yet, but I'm enjoying all the stuff.

There's like some weird, like these, these pilgrims that have rosary beads, and that's like one of the main currencies in the game.

You got to take them down so you can get rosary beads, and those are scarce.

And then the things that you use to, the things that you buy with them cost a lot of money or cost a lot of beads.

So then when you don't have them, it's so frustrating.

But I can't wait to know what's going on or what the lore reason is that they have rosary beads.

It's just, it's extremely good stuff.

I'm just, I'm loving it.

It's funny because there have definitely been times in my life when I was, I mean, I'm thinking when I was younger and I was single and unemployed, um, uh, or, or just during the summer, yeah, and just having like Final Fantasy VIII was one of those games that, like, I beat in like one week.

It was like insane how quickly I blazed through that game just because I was like not doing anything else.

Yeah, I was just putting like 10 hours into the game every day because school hadn't started yet, you know?

And like, the thought of doing that now sounds, I mean, it sounds great.

It sounds amazing, but then also just like the way I feel like my body has changed since I've gotten older.

Like, that would just be

an absolute disaster to me.

My hands have been getting sweaty playing Silk Song.

That doesn't happen to me.

Right.

So I'm nervous.

Yeah.

I know.

Sounds like paradise.

But that's what I've been playing.

Silk song, baby.

I love it.

Wow.

Heather, what are you playing?

Well,

I'm back on Persona 5.

Wow.

I'll switch to, I don't like it up-reses the game.

It looks like,

you know, watery bullshit, but I love the game and I will continue forward towards beating it.

But the truth is, I did beat a game this week.

That's right.

I beat

Virtual Boy Wario Land.

Wow.

Now.

I think you're the first person in history to do it?

No, not at all.

It's a short game.

It's a short game.

Nick, I brought this with me so that you could see how pleasurable it is on the 3DS.

Yes.

Because it is a totally different

and extremely kind experience when you play it on the 3DS instead of the Virtual Boy.

So this game that I actually own for the Virtual Boy, but I have never really gotten to sink my teeth into.

I found myself this weekend.

I was sick.

I stayed in bed and had that new 3DS and I played Wario Land whenever I was awake and beat the game.

It is only a

two-hour and change game, but there are apparently eight endings to it because there's a ton of secrets.

The game was here.

I'm going to pull up some info on it because after I finished playing it, I was like, why was this game so good?

Like, it's a Virtual Boy game.

Who the fuck?

Like, what happened?

But the truth is that it is a Nintendo RD One developed game.

That's their primary, that's the Metroid team, the Zelda team, the Mario team.

This was the flagship title for the Virtual Boy, and it really shows.

It is really, really

fun

and really pleasant.

And it's dense.

There's like

lots of secrets in it.

And there's a lot of like foreground and background movement that you can do.

you can uh you'll be playing in the foreground and you'll see the secret rooms in the background like two-dimensional planes that are scrolling by in 3D.

And you have to figure out how to get to those zones.

When you go to those zones that are in the background, the screen does not transition to make that the foreground.

You stay in the background.

So you're tiny and you're running around doing shit in like caves in the background, and you're tiny.

And the foreground is parallax scrolling over that plane.

So you'll get lost behind monsters or behind stuff that is in your primary plane of

playing.

Yeah, I just experienced, like, I'm playing as Heather is talking.

I just experienced that right now.

I just got a sent to the back plane, and I think you can see this here.

Yeah.

It is a cool effect.

And this is one of those things where the 3DS's, you know, kind of magical built-in 3D qualities are really, you know,

displaying their power.

Yeah.

It was co-directed by Hiroji Kyotake and produced by Gunpei Yokoi.

Yokoi is, of course, the

guy who created the Game Boy.

This was like his baby was the virtual boy.

What's fascinating about the title as you're playing it, though, is that there is an automatic pause built into the game.

Every 15 minutes, the game asks you to take a break.

And it makes me wonder at what point in the development process of the virtual boy did they know that they had a problem?

Because

to

the system was not marketed as

also, again, if you're joining us for the first time, what is the virtual boy?

You weren't born,

you're 25 years old and you were born in the year 2000.

You don't know what the fuck a virtual boy is.

Virtual boy is a tabletop system.

that looks like a pair of goggles that the Nintendo released that was only on the shelves for eight months.

You have to sit at a table and look into the goggles in order to play the machine.

And it was causing headaches, some seizures.

And the system was released with built-in timers that would ask you to take a break.

You're going to pay me for it?

No, no, no, no.

I was trying to surreptitiously get chapstick out of my bag.

Oh, okay.

It didn't work.

Matt just got out of his wallet.

I just kind of figured out, like, I could just figure how much noise can I make while I'm trying to do something sneaky.

But,

but the system was a disaster.

There were only 22 games released for it.

And I had always hoped that somebody would make an emulator for it for the 3DS.

And sure enough, they did.

And so sure enough, I had to leap on

that grenade.

But

I wonder if there was an internal conversation that was like, we should sell this as a toy instead of a video game machine.

Like, oh, you play with a ViewMaster for 15 minutes.

It's a toy that you can pick up and play with for 15 minutes, and then you put down and

you show it to your friends, you play it another time.

Because the idea of anybody playing a video game for only 15 minutes is crazy.

That's not any length of time to be playing a video game.

Like, you don't sit down and play Mario for 15 minutes.

So

the fact that they had to release these games with these built-in timers means there was internal understanding that the virtual boy hurt people

before they put it on shelves.

Anyway,

I also looked at the scores for this game

staggeringly low.

Five out of ten.

Like people dragged this game, and a lot of it was because of the system and the timers and the fact that it's only about two hours and change long.

people were like, why?

I'm paying full price

for a Virtual Boy, which I think was $300 or $400.

Jesus Christ.

I really want to, I should look that up while I'm, while I'm, while I'm, I'm, I'm looking it up.

Let's see.

The Virtual Boy.

$300 to like hurt your neck and make you want to throw up.

Yeah, because that's the thing.

The experience of playing it is so nauseating.

It was $179, which is equivalent to $370 in 2024.

Yeah.

That's a lot.

Nintendo puts out this thing, this peripheral.

It's like, okay, so it's like, it's like a hammer, and you're playing a game, and you just hammer your dick and balls into play.

I do think it's interesting that

Shigeru Mayamoto had minimal input on the Virtual Boy.

This was all a different division.

And I imagine him looking at it and being like,

I'm not going to work on that thing.

Are you insane?

It looks like War of the Worlds.

I mean,

I don't know the actual

involvement in the Game Boy, but I don't know that was so much Goompei Yokoi's brainchild that I could see Nintendo just sort of implicitly trusting him of just like, well, this is the guy who made the Game Boy, the most successful, you know, at the time for many years, the most successful

video game, you know, machine of all time,

piece of hardware of all time.

And

why wouldn't we just say like, oh, this guy knows what the future of gaming is going to be.

Let's let him go nuts.

I like this this paragraph in the Wikipedia about the Virtual Boy.

The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops.

Its failure has been attributed to its high retail price, unappealing red and black display, unimpressive stereoscopic effect, poor ergonomics, lack of portability, and reports of adverse health effects such as headaches, dizziness, eye strain.

It is a notable outlier in Nintendo's hardware history, being by far the company's lowest-selling standalone console, with just

make a guess how many how many virtual boys were sold 16.

I'm gonna guess 70,000.

I mean that's really low.

Well I'm guessing low.

Yeah

it's six figures 70,000 the world over?

I don't know.

I mean if this thing was a true bomb

I'm going to guess it's not more than 200,000.

It was internationally 770,000.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, that's still bad.

That's still bad.

We just undershot it quite a bit.

It's better than I could do.

Yeah.

Matt, that's a great point.

I don't think it is.

I couldn't put you think if I put out a video game console, it's going to sell more than the virtual.

No, I don't think Matt's hardware would sell.

I don't.

Because I don't think Matt's hardware would work.

I'm not known for that.

I don't think he knows how to do it.

I don't want.

I don't know how to do it.

Here's the thing.

If, Matt, if you actually produced a working video game system, I think it would sell more than 100%.

Yeah, I thought if it worked and it was good, people would buy it.

Yeah, but like if I just made one as me right now, there's just, there's just no way.

No.

You right now, no.

No, no, no, no, no.

But if you got some VC money and you were like, I've got an idea for a video game system, I can't get it.

You wear it on your neck?

It's a neck pillow that you can, you blow into it like a harmonic pillow.

You have to wear it on your neck and look in a mirror in order to play it.

And it only has

Kingdom Hearts games exclusively for it.

But yeah, that's, I beat Virtual Boy Wario Land this weekend,

which I thought was thematically appropriate for the topic of our podcast.

Nick,

other than Virtual Boy Wario Land, which you're playing right now.

That's right.

I'm going to exit out of this.

I'm going to hand this back to you.

It's fun.

It is fun.

I mean, like what you mentioned, the

foreground and background interactions.

There was a mini-game that I was playing where they were shooting hearts at the screen and you had to, or I'm sorry, hearts were scrolling from one side of the screen to the other.

And then you had to shoot Wario from the foreground to the background

and the other direction and vice versa to try to collect the hearts.

And it was like, oh, this has a fun rhythm to it.

Again,

it would make your eyes bleed on the Virtual Boy display, but playing it on the 3DS, it's like, oh, this is pretty fun.

It's a very straightforward platformer, but

it's a well-made one.

Good physics.

The final boss is...

a boss that hovers in between two trampolines

and you bounce from one trampoline in the foreground to a trampoline in the background yeah trying to knock him in the nose as he's flying around i couldn't i didn't even think that wario would have a villain you would think it would be mario

no i i don't think it's that cut and dry where mario is just the bad it's not like donkey kong rolls where mario is the bad guy of donkey kong i guess but it's like he said he's his enemy because he's good right yeah but i guess it's not i don't he's not such a bad guy he just likes money i guess i don't know what the story of the game is he's on an island and he's looking for treasure, and the final boss is like kind of a ghost clown.

Sure.

Yeah.

The more details we get about this, Heather, I'm starting to think it's not very good.

It's good.

I enjoyed it.

I mean, the Wario game's not known for their stories.

They don't include simples.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Nick, what are you playing?

Heather, thank you so much for asking.

I brought in a book that I've talked about on the podcast before, but I've only in passing.

I've never really, you know, dedicated much, much runway to this.

A theory of fun of game design, or I'm sorry, for game design.

A theory of fun for game design.

This was

originally

published by Rafe Coaster, and there's a foreword by Will Wright.

I read this during the pandemic, and

it was first published in 2004.

And it's one of those things where it's just sort of a very readable

bit of,

I mean, from the title, actual theory into into what makes video games work.

Like, what makes them playable, what makes them fun,

what you should be thinking about from a developer standpoint.

But it's also very, you know, illuminating from just a purely from a gamer standpoint.

This, this book, which I can pass around, has, it's very readable, it's very breezy, it has a lot of illustrations.

It was published by O'Reilly, which, you know, I remember back from when I was learning computer programming, you would just like buy like a, like an O'Reilly guide on C or Perl or whatever the fuck.

Like it was more for, it tends to be very, very techie sort of computer sort of stuff.

But

it makes sense for this as well.

A big thing that it

is about is like pattern recognition, which makes sense because that's what we humans are pattern recognition machines.

We play lots of games that we're used to recognizing patterns and implementing.

and having gameplay implemented from that.

But the big thing that I took away from it is just about how games are an exercise in teaching.

And so much of

gameplay is just

a game conveying something to you either directly with a tutorial or more elegantly, as is done in Super Mario Bros.

1, especially in

that first level, through gameplay, through emergency gameplay.

And yes, emergent gameplay.

And we actually see that right there.

There's a Super Mario Bros.

1 illustration inside

this book itself.

But

like, here's how these objects interact with your,

here's how these, the, you know, your player character, if a player character is present, here's how they interact with these objects.

Here are the rules that are established.

Right.

In Super Mario 1,

that first level will show you like

a sort of broken pyramid, like a split pyramid of blocks.

And there'll be a trough in it, and you'll have to like learn how to jump over that trough.

And then the next time you see it repeated, there's no trough at at the bottom.

It's a bottomless pit.

Yes.

And so like all of those interactions are just teaching you the thing you're about to encounter dangerously.

Yeah.

So you've learned the skill.

Like here, like, here's, here's what the, here's what, here's the rule.

And we're just going to keep riffing on the rule and we're going to keep finding different ways to spin on it.

Another example of this, which I think is like really, really concrete is the game Inside, which we've talked about.

But that is just like a whole series of like, hey, here's this new thing.

And this is how this works.

And mess around with this for a little bit.

Okay, you got it.

Let's move on to something else.

Here's another new mechanic.

Here's another new rule set.

We're going to teach you this and then we're just going to test you on it, basically.

And

I just kind of liked how like, like straightforward and elemental that is.

You know, it definitely has some

parts, especially towards the back end where it gets.

First off, it is very much in that early 2000s discourse about what, about video game content, you know, back when like Grand Theft Auto was like a hot and dead or alive extreme Volleyball were like hot button issues.

So some of that sort of bleeds through.

But I do think like it's not like it's a prudish book or anything like that.

It's just more like talking about how

whatever the content of the game is,

it should not be superfluous.

It should not be gratuitous.

But I don't know.

I really,

if anyone hasn't read this and is just looking for a book about video games that isn't like.

I feel like these are, they're generally about like why a studio failed.

If you're just looking for a video game book that's about something else,

I think it's like

it's interesting how little, again, theory exists about this emergent art form.

And this is just like the most digestible sort of Bible for it.

So yeah, I don't know.

I figured I'd bring it in.

Why not?

Cool.

Yeah, thanks for sharing it.

I'm going to recommend that to a friend of mine who's

trying to make a game.

Hey, there you go.

That's good stuff.

I'm going to recommend a virtual boy Warioland to anybody who's got a 3DS that's hacked and wants to download Red Viper.

Well, it was the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.

And here we are.

We should note we are recording this before the Mario 40 Nintendo Direct, so we don't have any context, any breaking news from that.

But

we figured we'd talk about it anyway, because, hey, this is a notable

occasion.

Can we do a little speculation?

Yeah, please.

Do you think they're going to announce a big new game?

I'm guessing no.

Okay.

But yeah, if they do, it'll be like a tease only,

nothing concrete, because like the Bonanza team was the Odyssey team.

So I would imagine that they would be back for whatever the next Mario

is.

So

I would assume that we're not getting a new 3D mainline Mario for a few years.

Yeah, have we seen like a, like, is there, is, is Mario Wonder like a Switch 2, you know, upgrade game or anything?

That makes sense that they can get it.

Yeah, I could, because I could see something like that being the announcement.

But hey, I would love to be wrong.

I'd love for there to be a new mainline Mario that's announced it'd be great

maybe even

what do you call it a release of Galaxy 2 could be nice because Galaxy 2 is not sure to switch to the switch at all yet that could be nice I would love it I bet you we'll get news about the new movie because that comes out I think in April

The next Mario movie?

Well, the new one comes out in April.

Wait, in 2026?

That's that.

Well,

they knocked that out quickly.

I mean, I'm sure they had it in production before the first one even came out.

I think it's in April.

It's at least

pretty soon.

Wow.

Wow.

So they got to start marketing the movie

at some point.

But yeah, I'm guessing that we'll get maybe some new tracks.

Maybe it's too soon for new tracks for Mario Kart.

I don't know.

Could be.

But who knows?

It's an hour-long direct, which is longer than normal for them.

They did announce, so I know that this isn't going to be part of the direct.

They did already announce an additional set of alarms coming to the Alarmo.

Did they actually announce them?

They did.

I'm glad they did it outside of the Direct.

I would have been mad if they took up some time in the Direct.

I think it's Kirby

who's coming to the Alarma.

Wow.

I'm not going to buy the Alarmo.

You're not.

You do not need to buy the Alarmo.

I got to buy the Alarmo.

You don't need to buy the Alarmaro.

Love it.

I'm so happy I got it.

Are you using it?

Every fucking night.

Wow.

Every night I go to sleep with the sound of Animal Crossing as my sleepy sounds,

which plays like a little lullaby, sort of like wind down music.

And then in the morning, I'm surprised by which villager comes to visit me and what they have to say.

That's pretty good.

And the music that they play.

So sometimes it'll be KK Slider and he'll be like,

but sometimes it'll be the fucking like bird at the airport.

And he's like,

oh, fuck, I got to get up.

Do Do you think it'll ever be catch up the red duck with green hair?

Could be, I don't know.

I love catch up the red duck with green hair.

It's a surprise.

It's blathers and he's just talking all day.

You're like, dude, you should go to work.

Come on.

We still at it.

The fuck, dude.

We get it.

You love bones.

Yeah, I mean, who knows what the fuck will happen?

Maybe they'll confirm

the size of Luigi's hog and speculated from that Mario tennis still.

You don't think they're actually going to do that, do you, Nick?

That could happen.

Who knows?

It's kind of crazy that they're like, actually, it's an hour long because at some point, we're getting nasty with it.

We know you sit goes on.

We're going to get a little freaky in the direct.

No, yeah.

I mean, I think that what's it's nice because there's going to be non-Mario stuff in this direct, too.

But, like, you know, I think Saturday is the actual anniversary.

So

they have to get something out.

Like, for, like, they can't get, they can't let a 40th anniversary go by without something.

40 years of Mario.

Yeah.

That's fucking horrifying.

Specifically, Super Mario Brothers.

Mario, the character, predates Super Mario Brothers.

Right, of course.

He was in Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario Brothers.

The first

instance of the name Mario in the title.

I had a question for you guys because I don't think I know this.

Do you guys remember your first Mario memory?

I absolutely do.

Yeah.

And this is actually a big thing that got me into video games and specifically console gaming.

So

my brother, my older brother, my older brother Nate, had a very good friend in elementary school

that lived on our block, just lived on the one street over.

So he'd walk around the block and go to his house.

And his parents were Japanese immigrants.

And so he had, I mentioned this in the podcast before, he had a Japanese Famicom in his home.

Wow.

And I played a Japanese Famicom prior to the domestic release.

I mean, I'm that old and I was also that young at the time, prior to the domestic release of the NES.

So Nintendo and Mario were already on my radar.

This is just one of those wild things or just happened to know somebody who had a Japanese console at the time when the only console I knew was the Atari 2600.

You're literally the kid on the playground who's like, I've got a friend who's got a game machine.

100%.

And I'm playing Super Mario Bros.

and also Super Mario Bros.

The Lost Levels,

which was

Super Mario Bros.

2 Japan.

Yes.

I'm playing both of these before Super Mario Bros.

I'd played on the NES.

And so...

I like, like, I remember encountering poison mushrooms in Super Mario Bros.

2 and like just knowing that was a thing.

And that, again, becomes a thing.

Like, you tell kids, like, no, there's a part two that has poisoned mushrooms in it.

I'm serious.

And then Super Mario Bros.

2 comes out, and it's a completely different game.

It's a reskin, dokey dokey panic you look like a fucking asshole but uh i mean like it's i'm serious it's seven inches flaccid

i'm talking about luigi's hawk as a child at elementary school

anyway i i went to the south park school

so yeah i do i do remember that like vividly and that was a big thing i was like holy shit i want to play i i got to get one of these and that was part of me and my brother talking my dad uh at the time we played other we played computer games my dad at a Commodore 64 at home, but we're like, we talked my dad into getting an NES when it was out in the U.S.

And then I remember playing the shit out of Super Mario Brothers when it came out then.

Wow, cool.

Yeah, what about you, Heather?

Uh, well, um,

first experience of Mario is a Donkey Kong cabin, which uh, I would get an allowance, it would be a buck, I would break it into quarters, and I would play Donkey Kong

at a pizza restaurant near uh, near my parents' uh

plot of land at that that point in Wisconsin.

My first experience of Super Mario is that my cousin had a Nintendo and I

went over to his house and his mom was extremely good at Tetris and he had Super Mario.

What?

I said that rules.

It fucking as a kid, you don't know what that means.

But like,

we would watch her play Tetris and be like, wow.

Because you were

idiots.

We didn't know how to be good at Tetris.

It's also, and I'm sure for our younger listeners whose parents played video games,

they probably watched them playing video games growing up.

It wasn't a common thing.

Like there was still a generational thing where a lot of people who were of the, I guess, baby boomer generation,

them like

a parent playing a video game was a little bit like, whoa,

you got a cool dad.

Yeah, rapping granny.

Yeah.

But that was my first experience of

Super Mario because I was a Sega kid.

So there was, I don't think there was a point

until

after the Genesis that I had a regular Nintendo.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My first Mario experience came

later than most.

It was weirdly for it was when I played.

Super Mario World for the Game Boy Advance.

Okay.

Because

my first console was PlayStation, no Mario there.

And for a long time, the only Game Boy games that I had were just Pokemon games, because that's like why I got a Game Boy, was to play Pokemon.

And so I had not had any real Mario experience until that one.

But that's like starting with

like...

It's like if your first song was like Stairway to Heaven or something, you're just kind of like, oh, this is cool.

This shit's good.

Yeah.

This is great.

So I'm starting with one of the best Mario games.

And I like played that like

so much like each each save file had like completed like runs of like that game just because it was just like something I just played so much.

That's really cool.

And I really really loved that.

And then because again my uncle that played video games was not really like an he had Nintendo stuff but like by the time I was interested in video games he had moved on to like

you know Genesis and which was like I think maybe what like the older like cooler kids liked like like that maybe a little bit more um and then and then PlayStation of course so I wasn't seeing uh Mario or or or any of his ilk

I was looking as a child I was looking at the Super Mario Advance series because on the Game Boy Advance because those remakes where I did play

I guess all of them.

I'm looking at this list now, but they it's one of those things where it's just like the way they're titled is so confusing.

So Super Mario Advance was Super Mario Bros.

2 slash Super Mario USA.

Super Mario World was Super Mario Advance 2.

Yoshi's Island was Super Mario Advance 3, which is also Super Mario World 2.

Yes.

So, I guess the full title,

Super Mario Advance 3, Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island, or vice versa.

And then Super Mario Advance 4 was Super Mario Bros.

3.

They couldn't even make the threes line up.

No, they couldn't.

And they also just didn't need to do that.

It's so stupid,

but it's also delightfully Nintendo.

It is very Nintendo.

But then my first, like, I played Super Mario 64 on the DS, right?

Okay.

That was my first experience with like a 3D Mario, which is kind of insane.

Yep.

And then my first full mainline 3D Mario wasn't until Odyssey.

Wow.

Which is my first Switch game.

And that was like my first.

like Nintendo home console.

Wow.

That is a long journey.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like now, like, he's like, I mean, obviously, he's just like one of the number one guys.

He's like the number one guy.

He's a good guy.

He rocks.

He's a great guy.

I guess he's the number one guy.

It's pretty.

I mean, it's got to be a Nintendo character, I think, right?

Like it's him or a Pikachu, depending on, and I don't know.

I mean, like, even though Pokemon is a bigger IP is Mario the Morakanic video game character.

Yeah, I think, I mean, gosh, it is kind of crazy.

I think just because of how big of an IP Pokemon is, just like,

you know, internationally, just like,

or globally, really uh it is probably the two of them at the top yeah uh but i i kind of feel like nintendo would take pikachu out back and jesus beat the shit out of him to to make uh mario their number one guy wow i think i don't know i don't know i i i have to say why do they have to do this why yeah what would they have to do dominance they're like yeah yeah yeah like you're like part of the family but just remember that it's always mario number one okay and you put some respect on mario's number okay so it's kind of a a Soprano sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, I'm re-watching the Sopranos with my wife.

It's like the

drawings I've seen of Mickey fucking Elsa.

It's kind of like that.

Yeah, it's like those drawings I've sent you to fad through.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Let me check this out.

Pretty good drawing.

Interesting drawing at the very least.

Photorealistic.

Horrifying.

You know, I.

Speaking to our first Mario experience, I have to say that I come into the podcast with a Sega bias because of being a Sega kid.

Yes.

But

my experiences over the last couple of weeks with strange Nintendo hardware have really increased my appreciation for Nintendo as a brand.

Sure.

Like there have been so many strange, like a lot of Nintendo stuff is the Dreamcast.

Does that make sense?

Like the Dreamcast being a primary system for me puts other systems in the vocabulary of the Dreamcast.

So the we is like, oh, wow, it's like they tried to make like a crazy system.

Yeah.

It's like the Nintendo Dreamcast

and the Virtual Boy and the Alarmo, all of these are like increasing my appreciation for the strangeness of Nintendo.

And it's neat that something as ubiquitous and mainstream and straightforward and vanilla as Super Mario Bros.

also goes hand in hand with a company that released like a scale.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at the

mainline hardware in between the Super Nintendo and the Switch, it's like, what?

It's like the Nintendo 64,

home consoles, Nintendo 64.

That thing's fucking weird.

Stubbornly still using cartridges, the weird three-pronged controller, the introduction of the analog stick, which completely changes 3D gaming.

The whole shape of it's weird.

The whole shape of it's very strange.

Weird, rounded boy.

GameCube is weird.

Again, the stubbornly refusing to commit to DVDs, ostensibly because of piracy.

They have their proprietary disc format.

They're little discs.

A thing that snaps onto the bottom of the

Game Boy.

Sorry, the GameCube to let you play Game Boy games.

Yeah, so you got that.

It's also, it just like, it looks...

It's a weird cube form factor with a handle on it.

And the controller, again, is very bizarre.

The Switch you mentioned,

I'm sorry, the Wii rather you mentioned, the Wii U, of course, obviously is just so fucking insane.

Yeah.

And then the Switches and the Switch into the Switch 2, that's the outlier when they just did a straight upgrade.

Yeah.

They've never done that before.

No, they've never done that before, but also, like, I feel like their crazy swings work more than they don't, though, right?

Yeah, sure.

Like, I mean, like, even the GameCube controller, I mean, still, like, it's, it's weird, but it, but it works and it has its fans and it still has its place in the mailing.

They're making amiibo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, amiibo are weird.

I like amiibo.

I think, I think the weirder the game experience is, both through hardware and software, the more it sticks with me, which is why a lot of the Mario titles aren't the most exciting or most memorable experiences of my life

because they are often like just incredible games.

Yes.

But

I know you guys really connected with Bonanza more than I did, but like.

I don't think about Bonanza, you know?

I don't, I, I, the, the Mario game that I think about the most is Galaxy.

And it was, I think, the weirdest.

Well, Galaxy is fucking a

huge swing, and it's really cool.

I mean, the way it uses gravity, the way it uses spheres, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a really awesome

expansion.

You got to play it on the Wii, man.

You know,

of what a 3D Mario is.

And again, just after Mario's Sunshine, which was a big swing that didn't really land, it was so,

it just so invigorated the idea this character.

And it was just kind of thinking of like, oh, yeah, Mario's not going anywhere.

Part of the thing is that you're holding the nunchuck in your hand to move him around,

and you're also using the

button on the Wii remote, but you're pointing at the screen to collect stars while you're running around.

Yeah.

It was really cool.

One of my biggest things about

the Wii, I think, that I don't like is that it's trying to just make me do too much

like I don't got to be doing all this I don't like that's like one of my least favorite parts of like Switch games that make you do stuff like with the Joy-Cons and stuff I don't want to be doing I don't want to be moving my I don't want to be doing any of that well they they you know that was the the big thing with uh Twilight Princess yeah is just adding in some like like arm movement for the swords and I was like I don't give a shit about

doing this I'm waggling this wand it doesn't even feel like moving a sword you know the only time I want to do anything like that is in like a time crisis situation with like a light gun or something yeah that rips that's so fun yeah and then obviously the the like everyone thought like oh this will be a golden age for light gun games but then because the way it worked it wasn't great for for shooters either the wii remote but yeah like for the gimmick games of uh Wii Fit was mentioned, but then of course the Wii Sports were so awesome.

And that's that's what made that thing such a sensation.

Like, just like, yeah, Galaxy was Galaxy was was rad.

I mean, like, for me, the NES Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros., even though Super Mario Bros.

2 was so bizarre, I did really, really enjoy it.

And then Super Mario Bros.

3 is just such an incredible feat of design and a game that absolutely holds up.

Super Mario World and Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island, I both was, were, were maybe more impactful for me.

They hit me when I was a little bit older and I could appreciate games a little bit more.

And I was also just like had the motor skills of a, you know,

a 10-year-old versus like a five-year-old or a six-year-old.

And so like it was a

like,

I played the shit out of Super Mario World.

I, you know, 96 starred it.

I, I, I was totally obsessed with that game.

Um, I think it's still probably

at least the best 2D Mario game.

I know people will advocate for three, but like I played all of those growing up.

And then, of course, Super Mario 64, which is maybe like was kind of like a farewell to my childhood, but was like, like, like that was like a game that I, I just, like,

it's,

it was just so staggering.

And that was another one where my friend had rented a Nintendo 64, and I remember playing it at his house and being like, I can't believe how fucking good this game is.

And then I had like money that I'd saved up from like, you know, birthdays and holidays

that I, that,

I had a little bit of a, of a stash that I just went around and I remember buying, uh, finding one Toys R Us that had the Super Mario 64 of the game, and then a separate Target that had the Nintendo 64 console.

And I bought those two, and that was basically all I had for a while.

Yeah.

But, you know, again, just like such an incredible game and a game that like you would bring kids over to your house to show them

like Super Mario 64 and they'd be like, holy fucking shit, I can't believe this thing.

I know I've told my

story on the podcast before, but I'll just say that

my biggest association with Super Mario 64 is when I kissed my first girl.

That's right.

And

but

my instinct when I brought her over to show her Mario 64 was yours was,

you got to see this.

It's so cool.

The first girl I ever kissed was on Jenny Jones as an out-of-control teen.

Isn't that wild?

Wait, what?

It wasn't on the show.

No, it wasn't on the show.

The girl was on the show.

The girl was subsequently on an episode as an out-of-control teen.

Jenny Jones, one of one of those exploitative 90s talk shows.

Nick's stories

are

like,

I know we all got stories on this show.

But his stories are just like, they're just, it's like the metal is bent on them.

And you're not.

I don't even know what to think about it.

Yeah.

This is coming from the the the the person who uh used to haunt the woods with in a gas mask so yes

if anyone is to be in a glass house here

yeah i'll put that rock down

let me let me let me demonstrate the difference between those two stories yeah one is a little kid yeah like trying to make the best of a bad situation and just putting on like costumes as a kid would and running around in the woods versus Nick telling us that some lady tried to kiss him at an i checkup.

Well, that was a different, although that was a different thing.

You're conflating stories here.

Or that he kissed some girl who's then on the news.

When I hear stories from both your lives, I just realize I'm playing.

You're thriving.

The optometrist who tried to kiss me is different than the girl I kissed who went on Jenny Jones is out of control team.

That lady should have been on Jenny Jones.

I kiss my patients.

I don't care.

The audience booing her, some of them cheering me.

I do think the way things are going, we need to bring shows like that back.

For sure.

For sure.

I was like looking back at that as like, man, that was a better world.

People thought things were bad then.

People thought I was like, holy shit.

I can't believe we're culturally just fucking sliding into a pit watching Jerry Springer, you know, have a too hot for TV.

Yeah, exactly.

DHS exclusive.

Bring it back.

I'll do it.

Maybe.

Maybe that was the steam valve for society.

Yeah.

We needed to have just like junk on television that would allow, I guess, reality TV is what happened to the Jerry Springer.

I guess so.

It's wild that on Jerry Springer, they used to like bring out Nazis and the whole crowd would boo

instead of inviting them on the news

or letting them host.

I wrote down a couple of things.

We've got both sides of the issue, a Nazi and a different kind of Nazi.

Yeah.

This one just joined.

I wrote down a couple of little things.

They're a little silly about things I like about Mario.

I got to just share them real quick.

Okay,

one, I like how he jumps.

Jump is great.

The jump is good.

And when you can do like a triple jump in a game like, you know, 64 or something like that, that's a home run.

That's great stuff.

Great, great physics, great, great feel.

I mean, like, like and i also like that a lot of the jumps that got like a lot of stuff that got established in turn as far as locomotion and in mario 64 has just like continued on yes uh can i can i be the the grouch yeah

what are you gonna say about the jump heather i'm gonna say i love the mario jumps across the board okay except in the new super mario brothers series i don't love well okay the new super mario brothers we can get into i'm not the biggest fan of the new super mario brothers games in general uh you know super mario brothers wonder pointedly not a new Super Mario Bros.

games, but but but the I'm trying to think what the I guess it's probably new Super Mario Bros.

U, as I would say, is the best of that.

But I just I was never really into any of these all that much.

I think they all like kind of felt kind of weird.

They feel weird.

I like the one for the 3DS quite a bit.

The 3DS was new Super Mario Bros.

2.

Yeah.

Yes.

Because that one is just like a coin frenzy.

You just get coins.

There's more coins in the game than you know what to do with.

The idea of collecting, like, is it a million coins in the game?

You're getting so many coins.

That is fun.

It's good because the noise is good too.

I mean, come on.

It's just like, it's just, that's good stuff.

But I do think that the

new branded ones are

jump is floaty.

It feels strange.

Yeah, it's not cool.

The rest of the jumps have like the perfect, like the pitch up is great and the drop is great.

It's a, it's a, you feel solid when you hit the ground.

Yeah.

It's a good jump.

I mean, I do kind of like that they're just called new because it's just like, it's an easy way to demarcate these, like, okay, these are kind of different, you know,

the Shin Marios, I guess.

But they're also, they're not going to do like Mega Man like X, like they're, you know, Mario X.

He's got a gun.

Who are we?

Sega?

I think his outfit is good.

His outfit is great.

It's iconic.

Yeah, it really is.

You got the red hat, the hat, the overalls.

Yeah.

Maybe with the

only good red hat wearing Italian.

It's a really good outfit.

It's a great outfit.

It's a great outfit.

It's an excellent outfit.

And

I like specifically the big M on his hat.

Yeah, the M on the hat is great.

And look, if anyone's wearing just the hat, you know who it is.

Yeah.

Certainly you're wearing the full, the total fit.

It's unmistakable.

With having spent so much time with Wario over the weekend, I like his version of Mario's outfit.

Yes.

Down to, and this is something you can see in

Virtual Boy Wario Land because the sprite is so big.

He's got W's on his gloves.

That's really good.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, it's really fun.

I mean, like, you know, it's been talked to death, but just like, you know, Mario's got the M, Luigi's got the L.

Wario's got the W, the upside-down

M.

And then Waluigi has the upside-down L.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

It's great.

The math is perfect.

It's really good.

All the different colors are great, too.

The colors are fantastic.

There's really good.

I was about to say do you think there's room for another one and i kind of don't think so i think we're good oh oh another one what another one

another mario type no i mean i think the babies kind of accomplish a lot oh the babies another mario type like well like or uh you know another i have a i have a huge pitch what's that where's wah princess Wah princess is really good.

Yeah, there could be, I mean, a wah princess would be a wah peach.

I don't remember if there ever was a wah peach, canonically.

I don't think so.

Wah peach is really good.

I need a Wa Peach.

What about Wonki Kong?

That's good.

Now you're getting nuts.

I mean, like, it just makes me think of the fan created Bowsette.

I was like, Nintendo should canonize Bowsette.

Man.

Bow, wow.

Bow, wow.

What happened that made Bowsette?

So

there was an item that Trenton.

Trimmer got off the TV and no one had anywhere to put

it.

There's a crown that

transmogrifies you into a different different version.

And so basically, like of the character.

And so basically the logic was applied of like, what if this crown was on Bowser?

It would make Bowser into Bowsette.

I'm trying to remember what game that was.

Wasn't that Super Princess Peach?

Might have been.

They need a Wa Peach.

We need Wa Peach for sure.

I think all the noises he makes are really good.

You know, Wahoo is great.

That's always a lot of fun.

But the noise he makes when he burns his little butt,

that's really fun.

It was actually, it was not, it wasn't a Super Princess Peach.

It was new Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe that are the Super Crown.

The Super Crown transformed Toadette into Peachat.

And so this was like what it would transform Bowser into Bowsette.

Logic is ironclad.

My favorite sound that Mario makes is when he clips a wall in

Mario 64 and goes, ooh.

Oh, yeah, I know.

That is good.

You're right.

That is really, really good.

Whoa, there's a bouette.

Oh.

Sorry.

Oh, look at me.

Nick's like, that's it for you, baby.

And I think there's something to this

because, like, obviously he's the hero and like bad stuff's happening usually that he has to stop.

Yeah.

But something I like about him is that he's never really too bothered by it.

He's always kind of like still having a good time no matter what he's doing.

And I think that fun, that level of fun translates to you, the player, kind of.

Well, he does get scared.

He gets scared.

Yeah, but not in the same way that Luigi does.

Yeah.

One of my favorite things that

seems to be a Mario rule.

Like, that must be up on a wall at Nintendo somewhere.

Is that Mickey can get revenge, he can get mischievous, and he can get angry in a way.

Yeah.

You can see Mario determined.

Yes.

But you don't see him mischievous or angry or vengeful.

Yeah, you don't see him mean.

And I think that's just like, it's just nice.

Yeah.

I I truly like it.

He's vengeful.

Yeah.

Like, you'll see his eyebrows go down when he's throwing like a fireball on a box art.

Yeah.

But he's not, he's not like gleefully trying to hurt people.

And I do think that that's what created the vacuum for Wario to fill.

Yes, because he looks all messed up and mean.

He is all of the id

that that has been stripped from Mario.

Yeah.

It's been planted in this greedy,

angry.

But on the same, on the other side of the coin, he's still kind of just having fun, too.

He's kind of just doing what he's doing.

It's just kind of like his fun's different.

I know I have Wario on the brain because I played a lot of Wario.

Yeah.

I do want to, I would love a game where Wario, the princess is captured,

and Wario is like

he's trying to get Bowser's treasure.

That's good.

And then sees the princess is captured and kind of accidentally becomes a hero.

That's fun.

I like that a lot.

You should tell them.

How does.

It's just,

this is part of what's amazing about the Mario franchise is that Wario is like,

you know, could have been a tertiary character,

but he's like an iconic video game character just in general.

Like he's like almost like gotten bigger than the franchise.

Just conceptually, the idea of Wario is so engaging.

Yeah.

And he exists as basically Dark Mario, but he's such a well-realized character that he, you know, he broke out.

I love the idea of the meeting where

they're like, let's make Wario.

What should his,

what's he like?

And somebody just went greedy.

He fucking stinks.

All right, we're done.

He likes boogers and shit.

Because the WarioWare games, which is, you know, that's a whole other topic, topic, but those games are incredible.

Very fun.

They're so, so fun.

Those are great games.

And so are the Wario Land series on Game Boy.

Yeah, the Wario.

Yeah, those are really great.

Nick, so you were saying that Super Mario World is probably your favorite Mario game.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean,

top three.

Top three, boys.

Top three.

What are your top threes?

I'm looking at the whole list, and

it's, you know, is three in there.

I think Odyssey has to be in there yeah

or maybe it doesn't because i do like 3d world so much i got i think odyssey is just like a bet like a more

i i i

like like like like 3d world i i matt i know you have so much affection for yes but but i i just kind of think like odyssey is so much more like what a 3d mario is yes in terms of the way the play spaces are structured in terms of the way the the goals are achieved that i'm just like i kind of feel like that one is the the 3d entry that i would pick

what it gets tricky after that is like even though super mario world you world 2 yoshi's island is a mario game i just think of that as a yoshi game yeah i feel like it's kind of a cop-out to toss that in there because uh of its of its original title

i know i i i think i might you know what i think i would probably do

world

odyssey

And I might throw the OG in there just to be comprehensive.

Wow.

But I think I'd probably do Super Mario Bros.

3 instead.

World Odyssey, Super Mario Bros.

3.

Two of mine are similar to yours.

Yeah.

I'm throwing Super Mario World probably at number three.

Super Mario Odyssey at number two.

Wow.

And as mentioned, Super Mario 3D World number one.

And the reason I love it so much is that it does both things

perfectly.

It's a perfect marriage of a 2D Mario and a 3D Mario game.

Yeah, the sort of linear platforming in 3D.

And it's just, and you know, the cat stuff goes a long way.

That's great.

That's great.

That's not good.

Little cherry is great.

It's, oh, man.

I even forgot about the cherry.

I love the cherry.

Also, I was thinking about this earlier when we were talking about getting small.

Getting small and getting really big,

that's just good shit.

That's like funny.

That's fun in any game.

It's fun to get small, fun to get big.

Yeah.

I think it might be fun to get, it might be more fun to get small.

This is another thing about Mario.

He gets big and he gets small.

These are just like, he gets a power-up that makes him big and then he gets hit and he gets small again.

Power-up gets you two.

Yeah.

My

three are

Galaxy

3.

Yeah.

64.

Those are great.

Great choices.

Here's the thing.

There's so many good ones.

Yeah.

We're kind of all objectively right.

They're all

good.

Can I say another thing about my boy Wario from Virtual Boy?

Yeah, you love Wario.

I love this Wario game.

Yeah.

When he powers up, he gets big, right?

He can get small and he gets, he can get big.

Powers up to get big, and all of his powers are hats, right?

He's got like a bird hat, a fire hat, a combo bird and fire hat.

Like you get the bird hat, and then you get a fire hat, and then it turns into a dragon hat.

The thing is, you can power up like multiple times.

He takes one hit and he gets tiny.

He loses all of it.

Yes.

And he is ugly as shit when he's tiny.

I noticed that while playing a little bit.

Yeah, when taking damage, he gets small, like imp-like.

He's repulsive.

He's got like two hairs.

That's so funny.

It is so, he looks hideous when he's small.

Whereas Mario, when he's small, still a charmer.

Mario farts, right?

Yeah, he does fart.

I think that's funny.

He's a fart move in Smash Brothers.

It's funny.

Yeah.

Wario sucks.

He's so good.

He's got a motorcycle.

He's great.

Big nasty freak.

He's like, and I drive a motorcycle.

You know, there's a couple, there's Mario games I wish I can get into that I haven't, like, that I've tried, that I just, they haven't really ever scratched the right itch for me.

And I know that they're, like, beloved.

But, like, every time I've, I've played three different Paper Mario games.

Oh.

And I can't ever, really,

really fall in love with it in the way I want.

Yeah, I guess we're getting outside of the Super Mario franchise.

I mean, like, I do love Paper Mario and Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door.

Yeah.

But

I could see just not clicking with those.

I I mean, I never really clicked with the Mario and Luigi games.

Yes.

I checked those a few times.

And those are

great.

People love those games.

And then same with there was a couple of Mario and Donkey Kong ones, too, that I messed around with that I

didn't really understand what was going on there.

Yeah.

And same with

Super Mario RPG, which we did an episode on.

But I just can't ever really.

I bet you it'll hit me one day and I'll appreciate it, but I just have not really given its due diligence quite yet.

The Super Mario RPG remake was well done, but I do feel like that was such a time and place game in terms of just like a Square developed back when Square and Nintendo were on good terms, a Square developed

Mario game

that had RPG mechanics was just so, it just felt like revelatory.

And I think that a lot of that charm was just like, again, just when it came out.

Ultimately, like there have been so many game, like RPGs that have borrowed some of its conventions or just had similar sort of conventions.

And we've seen Mario in so many different contexts now that it's just kind of hard for it to have the same sort of impact.

He's with the freaking Rabids now and doing tactical combat.

I do like that first one.

I played that quite a bit.

It's good.

I never tried the second one, but it kind of, because I never really played a tactics game like that before, so it made me understand how to play a game like that.

And it's good stuff.

The rabbids predate the minions.

The rabbids were from Rayman, and then Rayman gave them up and were like, you can be with Mario now.

But the rabbit, but I'm just saying, like, another, like, you know, French a French developer,

as the Minions are also, you know, French.

Trebian.

And

they've got the similar sort of like madcap antics.

It's just like,

I don't know.

I like the minions, but was there any sort of, you know.

Inspiration here?

Probably.

To be charitable.

Maybe

it could be it.

Could it be...

So wait, they predate?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the rabbits are first.

not even parallel to the first one.

I think so.

Yeah, interesting, interesting.

I wonder how Rayman feels about all that.

Getting cucked by Mario.

I mean, we won't get him on the record.

No, we'll never get an official answer.

He's just screaming about his missing arms.

My hands are here, but where are my arms?

3D World, you mentioned.

I also 3D land on 3DS.

No slouch.

That game was super duper fun.

Really great.

I played some of that this weekend.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, you have that gorgeous 3DS.

Yeah.

Playing that that ips new 3ds ll from japan

oh matt i didn't have a game boy i had a game boy advanced later but i never had an og game boy did you ever mess around with super mario land or super mario on 2 i did not know because yeah that like

i there was maybe like when i was a kid like i i was so laser focused like i mean i was only playing pokemon games were like my main video games uh for a long time and then it would be like you know uh

honestly like stuff that you worked on nick like like uh like licensed video games from movies i had just seen right like i had played the fantastic four game that you uh worked on wow when i was a kid um

and like my brother probably still has it like he probably still has it in our like old room uh but uh like so i was playing a lot of like more licensed stuff like in you know games aimed at children

and then like so like mario for some reason just wasn't on my radar because i didn't i didn't there was not he wasn't on TV or anything, and there wasn't really like, uh,

like, none of my friends were playing Mario, so I just had no exposure to him until I like decided to, like, investigate myself.

Like, when I got a Game Boy Advance, I was like, oh, they're putting out these old games, and they weren't, you know, not now, cut to now.

Uh, but they weren't old then, you know, and it's like, it's just kind of crazy to think about how long the long tail of Mario, honestly, it's kind of in impressive.

I um eventually got an original Game Boy again long after the Game Boy advanced.

Like I'll go back and get the hardware that I that I didn't scoop up at the time in the rare

circumstance when I didn't get the hardware at the time.

And I played Mario Land on

the Game Boy and it's weird.

It is a weird, I mean, I have played it, but I, yeah, it is a, it's like the main thing I remember is the physics of the fireballs.

They're not really a fireball, it's more like a bouncing ball.

Yeah.

Yeah, they, they bounce, And it's very strange.

I mean, they bounce, but they have different, like, it bounces, it's more like

a pong bounce.

Like it goes off in the same angle that it hits as opposed to like kind of the loose forward sort of dribbling that the fireball has in the original.

It's strange

and it.

Also, on the original Game Boy, there was so much ghosting and blurriness.

Yes.

And Mario in that game, I think one of the

to talk about my virtual boy boy,

he moves really slow in the game.

I think it was probably to prevent from too much milkiness on the virtual boy screens.

Mario Land, the boy moves so fast that the screen becomes kind of a greasy blur.

And I found that off-putting.

Yeah, I can see that.

Didn't like it.

I should go back and check out.

Mario Land on my analog pocket.

That'd be a nice way to

check it out.

There you go.

I mean, there's a reason the games that really popped on the Game Boy were like Tetris, like short burst games, and then like Pokémon, because it's like, that's a, hey, that's a, that's a, a turn-based game where you don't have to worry about the sorts of things Heather's describing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, and also just like, gosh, the idea that we were replacing batteries.

I like

probably owe my mom

hundreds of dollars for just buying us batteries like all the time.

I remember she bought us like a

wall charged, like a little insert for the Game Boy Advance that had like

that, it wasn't a rechargeable battery, but it was like you put it in place of the battery pack there

and plug it into the wall.

And we were like, then had to be by an outlet to play a Game Boy Advance so we wouldn't have to buy batteries.

And let me tell you.

If that thing comes out of the Game Boy Advance, screams were heard often.

It was not perfect.

Yeah, the speed with which my parents got me the AC adapter for the Game Gear was sonic stuff.

Like,

I think probably I went through the first, I think it was six batteries on our first big car ride.

And I don't know if it made it all the way, you know, in the car ride.

It did not.

I mean, this is the thing.

The Game Gear had the color display, which looked way better, but part of the genius of the Game Boy is that Nintendo did prioritize things like battery life.

So it did not chew chew through batteries the way that a Game Gear or Atari Lynx did or let alone the Sigan Nomad, which was ridiculous.

So I remember my parents getting the cigarette lighter adapter for the Game Gear in the car and the AC adapter for it at home.

And I never ever used batteries for it.

That's pretty sick though.

I guess so.

We've talked about Sumeri Brothers Wonder on here, but I had a lot of fun with Wonder.

I had a lot of fun with Wonder, and honestly, I think about Elephant Mario a lot.

I really liked Elephant Mario.

I wasn't blown away by Wonder.

We've had this conversation before.

I preferred the Sonic game whose name I don't even remember.

I think it was called Sonic Superstars or something like that.

Yeah, I really liked Sonic Superstars that came out at the same time.

I kind of hope that there's a Switch 2

upgrade and then maybe DLC for Wonder.

That'd be a nice thing to do.

That would be fun.

Yeah.

And we've done full episodes about Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine.

I mean, wait, did we do?

We did one about three, too, didn't we?

Did we do that?

I think we did.

But, you know, like, I mean, it's, this is the thing.

64 is such a masterpiece, obviously, so influential.

It plays a little wonky today,

but it is just things like the turning radius with the, you know, with Mario.

Like, some of the analog stick movement doesn't feel as elegant as a contemporary 3D platformer, but it was also inventing it.

And it's a game that's almost 30 years old, which is fucking insane.

Yeah.

um so it's it's it's and mario sunshine is a very flawed game uh with some great running around and some great water spraying um the the the actual levels where you lose flood your backpack are are really fun platformers challenging platformers i did finish it for the first time because that was like the first mario game i did not finish back when it came out on the gamecube um when we we recovered it on the podcast uh and yeah just it's it's it's a interesting

weird outlier in the franchise.

I think part of why I don't like it so much is I don't like gunk.

Yeah, there's a lot of gunk you have to clean up.

A lot of that game is just going around spraying gunk.

You mustn't really not really like be into Splatoon at all.

I mean, people get mad when we talk about it because none of us know anything about Splatoon and they think it's like ignorance on purpose.

I just like don't know it.

Sorry.

Like I can't know everything.

But man, yeah, gunk's not really my thing.

I'm familiar with Splatoon because it is an alarm setting on my alarm button.

Ranch, you remember your first encounter with

the famous plumber Mario?

I did not know he was a plumber.

Wow, there you go.

I didn't want to learn that.

My cousins had a Nintendo 64, and I used to watch them play the 64 version.

And then I would always want to play Mario Party, but they would never want to play Mario Party with me.

And that's my experience with.

Mario Party is a fight starter.

You gotta be careful with Mario Party.

I was just about to say that it would maybe be fun to play Mario Party like live on the show, but actually maybe it wouldn't.

Do you remember that Mario Party game?

There was one of the games that involved spinning the analog stick around as quickly as possible.

And so the way to do it is you'd use the palm of your hand and you would just get like this fucking like blister in the middle of your palm.

Yeah.

Just as hard as you fucking could.

I've like told close friends

looking directly into their eyes to go fuck themselves themselves playing Mario Party.

There's a time I remember in Mario Party, I was playing it, and I was like,

I will win if I steal my friend's star.

And I just had to do it.

I was like,

I got to use the ghost to steal my friend's star.

I've had so few in-person multiplayer video game experiences that I think maybe I've played a Mario Party once.

So if we wanted to cover it on the show, it would be a brand new experience for us.

I think it would be kind of funny because we could narrate what's going on well and then do it and then record us live becoming upset.

It could be a thing to stream too sometimes.

Yeah, that could be fun.

If a new entry comes out, yeah.

I went, what was the last?

The last one was, what do people think of?

What do people think of?

Mario Party Jamboree.

And then they just did a Switch 2 version of it.

I played it at a friend's house.

The thing, it's like,

they're fine.

at a certain point.

They became fine.

Like after Mario Power 2, it's like these are all just the same.

You may reuse the same boards or like they come up with new boards, but like the game mechanics that you're doing are the same, so you can't really can't really iterate it on it in the same way that you could like a 3D or like a 2D Mario game.

I have a pitch for what I would like them to announce on the 40th Mario anniversary.

I want, so you guys remember, remember Nintendo Land for the 3DS?

Yes.

It's like a game where you play micro versions of all the Nintendo games.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you get like a tiny bit of Zelda, a tiny bit of Mario, a tiny bit of Donkey Kong, etc.

I want a Mario land where you play mini versions of every Mario game that's ever been released.

Hey, that's cool.

So you get like

two minutes of Mario Sunshine or two minutes of Mario 64 to achieve some challenge.

And I want that game.

The thing with your ideas, Heather, is that they're too good and they won't do it.

Like, it's too good.

That's too good of an idea for Nintendo to be like,

who is a company that's allergic to making money

in a normal way?

But somehow is the most lucrative video game company on Earth.

Because they know that we're in our please, sir, have another era.

Well, I mean, also their games don't go on sale.

They do things like that.

And yes,

they have such big IP and they somehow have the biggest hardware on Earth still.

Years after people pronounce them for dead repeatedly, it's crazy how the Nintendo is going to go third party was like a meme for like 15 years.

Oh, yeah.

And then now they're just like,

there's just no need.

Now, I guess the new thing is Nintendo is going to be bought by Apple.

That's the new meme.

And then it's just like, you know, whatever.

We'll see if that.

I can't imagine that would ever transpire.

Yeah.

I always think things can't get worse, but I'm proven wrong every day.

I wish that Sony didn't have a game system because what I would love is if Sony had never made PlayStation and they bought Nintendo because the next system would be so fucking weird.

You have to put your feet into this.

What?

It's my

you have to chew the cartridges before you use them.

What?

Should we talk about the Super Mario Brothers movies at all?

I mean, like, I'm a defender of the Illumination one.

I know it's kind of slight, but I do think just like visually, it's such a

it does really evoke what Mario is, what playing Mario is.

But I think maybe the more interesting thing is

a movie we've talked about before, but is the Bob Hoskins John Lake Wasambo live-action movie, Super Mario Brothers, in

name only from the 90s that was adapted by

two weirdos who just took the IP in a wildly different directions and were somehow able to get away with releasing it theatrically.

It's a fascinating movie that's not very good, but is also like amazing that it exists.

Yeah, I think more interesting is correct.

Not necessarily better, but yeah, it is, it is an interesting watch if you've never seen it.

I've got the director's cut saved to my hard drive.

And it is not a better movie,

but it is even weirder.

I'm going to bring you a

flash drive.

I'm going to have to see that.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I just like so it eliminates like the voiceover at the beginning that's like

back when there was uh dinosaurs, they got hit by a meteor, and then and then New York City was in the same place, like they got rid of all that in the director's cut.

It's just like it opens dystopian, like it's just so strange.

I do like, I do like the illumination one quite a bit.

It is that's like a tough movie to go see uh solo opening day matinee, like to be.

Well, kind of every movie you see is a matinee.

He's fucking back.

Did you see that?

I did see it.

Generational talent.

It is true, but like, it's like, in the same way that I go see these Sonic movies, like

10 a.m.

the Friday, they come out.

Sonic, though, you go to see Sonic and you're like, at the end, you're amped.

Yeah.

You see Mario and you're like, I was here by myself.

Well, the first Sonic movie,

I feel like I had the same experience watching the first Mario movie, where it was that, I can't wait to see the next one.

Right.

Because we don't have to do all this bullshit setting up what's going on.

I'm so actually, I'm legitimately very excited for what I believe they're calling Super Mario World, the sequel to the Illumination movie.

Excited about that?

Super fucking excited about Zelda.

Yeah.

Oh, yes.

But like, I'm like, we're talking all this stuff about Wario.

They got to introduce Wario in these things, right?

You think you're going to put Wario in the Illumination one?

I know they teased Yoshi at the end of the first one.

That's going to be a big new ad for the first one.

I wouldn't be shocked if Wario was the tease at the end of then credits, the post-credits.

It'd be pretty sick.

I mean, by boy.

Not Waluigi, though.

Maybe both of them together.

I could see it.

Man, Jack Black is Bowser yet again.

He's so good in the movie.

The Peaches Song?

A lot of fun.

I know we got Lava Chicken from Minecraft, but just before we had the Peaches song, and that was dominating the charts back then, he's look, he's an entertainment magnet.

How strange is it to be Jack Black and be so bankable?

Yeah.

Like to be like, to be like, I don't know if Hollywood understood how big Minecraft was going to be before it was released.

I think there was a lot of skepticism.

And that dude both came out, both brought Super Mario for Illumination across the billion-dollar line, and then Minecraft across the billion-dollar line.

Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

He's got, so, yeah, the, the,

he's that, he like, he's

him and him in the illumination Mario and him in the, you know, the, the, uh, the Minecraft live action are just like, he's, he's such a reason why those succeed.

And it goes, it shows just like how unwatchable the Borderlands movie is that he is claptrap in that film and like nobody saw wow.

Yeah.

Here's the thing.

Well,

it's a voice performance.

You kind of want to see Jack though.

It's a voice performance in

Super Mario.

Yeah, but you kind of like, you see some of them in it.

I don't think a live action,

like, I think if they give

Jack Black one of the human roles in Borderlands, that movie is still actually hard.

I mean, they get fucking Kate Blanchett isn't that movie.

It's like

insane i wish i could read the original script that got those guys attached yeah because i i must be it must be great a hundred drafts ago yeah yeah

uh should we do a segment let's do a segment yeah did we miss anything mario wise i don't know i feel like we were reasonably comprehensive happy 40th mario happy 40th mario mario we love you Mario, time to get a call on options.

Are you just going to blow a kiss at the camera?

I was going to blow a kiss at the camera for Mario, but then Nick started talking.

I wanted to hear what he had to say.

I don't regret it, I guess.

Man, I got that to look forward to in a couple of years.

Yeah, look forward to it.

Please, Doc, can I get it early?

I might be at listening.

You should.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They should do it soon.

I got a segment for us.

It's the return of an old favorite, Game Overtime.

And to keep us on theme, for today's episode, I'm going to name some various Mario games

from the broad spectrum of Mario games.

So not just Super Mario.

Okay.

And you're going to tell me how long they take to beat.

These are all sourced from how long to be, and we're only looking at main story only.

Main story only.

So a lot of these are, of course, going to be self-report because, you know, some of them are old.

Yeah, that's by its nature it's self-report.

So these are, but this main line, main story only is the first of the three categories, right?

Yes.

Main story, main story plus extras, and then completionists.

Exactly.

Okay, got it, got it.

So this will be the fastest one.

Yeah, the fastest one.

And I feel like probably more in line with

your average playthrough of a game like this, unless you're being, you know, comprehensive and

crazy.

Got it.

Like how I like to play some of these sometimes.

Here we go.

Super Mario Bros.

2, U.S.

How long does it take to beat Super Mario Bros.

2, U.S.?

Super Mario Bros.

2 slash Super Mario Bros.

USA.

I think I'm going to say the main story only is three hours.

Okay.

Nick?

Heather?

Three and a half.

Nick takes it exactly three hours to beat the story of Super Mario Bros.

2 U.S.

Here we go.

How about this one?

New Super Mario Bros.

2 for the 3DS.

All right.

So this is the aforementioned coin collecting game.

Yes.

You're in the.

This is probably not getting you to a million coins.

Yes, right.

You're just trying to get...

But don't you.

Four hours.

You have to get a million coins to finish it?

I don't remember.

I don't think so.

I think that's like the overall sort of like in the same way that like there's 120 something stars or whatever.

I can't remember.

You said four?

Heather's saying four hours.

I'll say two and a half hours.

Heather's going to take this one.

It's five and a half hours.

Super Mario Brothers 2.

Little meteor.

Not nothing.

Pretty nice.

Not nothing.

How about this?

Super Mario Galaxy.

Oh, God.

It's a Thai game.

Anybody can take this still super mario galaxy main story only

i'm gonna say 11 hours i'm gonna say nine hours

this one's going to nick 14 hours wow two to one oh wages in the lead big game what a fucking video game i gotta play it it sounds good god it's so good uh you never i never played galaxy 2 that's my big blind spot well i hope it comes out on friday so you can play it yeah I would love that.

And if you don't do it, Nintendo,

come on, dude.

Do it for Nick.

Let him have it.

How about this?

Super Mario RPG.

26 hours.

Squaresoft RPG.

Heather's saying 26 hours.

I'll go lower.

I'll say 18 hours.

I'm not going to price his right rules this one.

Nick is closest, even though he did go over.

Okay.

Wow.

12 hours.

12 hours.

Okay.

Not that.

12 hours.

Not that.

Yeah, it's not super.

I remember not being super long, but super short.

So Nick's in the lead now.

I think think he, I don't think I've gotten any of them.

No, you got the first.

You got the

second one.

You got the second one.

Oh, I did.

Yeah.

Super Mario Brothers.

Super Mario Brothers, too.

This next one right here.

Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS.

Okay, Super Mario 3D Land.

I'm going to say right at five hours.

Shit, I shouldn't let him go first.

Have we not been alternating?

I don't know.

Heather's answered first a couple of times.

I think we've been alternating.

I've just been correct.

I was going to go with five.

I'm going to go six.

Going second made you win this one, Henry.

Wow.

Seven hours.

Wow.

There you go.

That's a big game.

Big.

In such a

compact package for the 3DS.

Virtual Boy Warioland.

Two hours.

Super Mario.

Henry.

Just give herself a point.

3D Land.

I mean, just a.

I should replay it.

We don't get World without Land.

You know what I mean?

And I know 3D World is just a better realized version of it, but 3D Land is so fun.

It's so good.

I think I want to replay it.

Because I've got this 3DS, I've been playing so many 3DS games.

Wow.

They're so pleasant.

Yeah.

And I love the 3D effect.

I love it.

I'm very happy that I got this system.

Yeah.

Maybe I'll toss it on soon.

Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island.

Okay.

Wait, who went first last time?

You did.

You did.

Okay.

I'll let Heather go first.

Super Mario Land World 2, Yoshi's Island is a

nine-hour game.

Nine hours, Heather says.

Nine

hours.

Hours.

We got to shut out the map theme.

Good stuff.

That's when we order Coco Ichibanya for dinner.

That's what we sing.

Coco Ichibanya song to the Yoshi's Island map theme.

Yeah.

Coco Ichibanya.

Coco Ichibanya.

I'll say.

Very cute of us.

I learned to play that on the piano, and I showed my piano teacher.

Didn't really care.

I didn't know what it was.

This is a food song me and my friends sing.

Okay.

Heather said.

I'm sorry.

Heather said nine hours.

Heather said nine hours.

And we're not doing price's right right rules.

That's right.

I'll go six hours.

Heather then gets it.

Wow.

Because it is eight hours.

Eight hours.

Wow.

And we threw away the price is right rules.

Nobody likes them.

Yeah.

Nobody likes him.

I like them.

Well, yeah, in that case, you would have really liked that one.

I would have.

So now here's the thing.

It's a tie game.

We got one more.

Wow.

Kind of designed this one pretty good.

Yeah, it's worked out great.

Mario and Luigi, Dream Team.

How many hours to beat?

Mario and Luigi, Dream Team.

Which one was Dream Team?

Which platform was it?

This was I think the last one for the 3DS.

The Waldorf Brothership, I think.

For the Switch.

I have no idea how long those games are.

I'll go.

I'm first this time, right?

That's right.

Mario and Luigi Dream Team.

I'm going to say 16 hours mainline only, main story only.

What is this game?

This is a RPG.

RPG.

Yeah, this is RPG.

Dude, 16 hours?

I'm like, for what?

This is like the Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga games.

It's, you know, like a light RPG,

some action combat.

So there's some like, you know, timed button presses for combat.

10 hours.

Nick's going to be our winner.

Wow.

But I regret to report that Mario and Luigi dream team to complete the main story.

It takes 40 hours.

That is a huge game.

That's a huge game.

The Mario Luigi game, I had to, I sorted by,

you know, longest time to complete for main story.

And the top, one of them was like a game that was like not released here.

And it's not really, it's like a puzzle game.

It's like 48 hours or something.

But the top

two were both Mario and Luigi games, and they're both clock in at 40 hours.

Crazy.

I'm faint.

I'm bringing up, I just, I just did this.

I opened up

how long to beat the main page.

Cyberpunk 2077, main story only 26 hours.

That's a lot of game they're giving you.

It's good.

Hey, Nick's the winner.

Guys, we love Mario.

I think we're all winners this week.

Mario is a good guy.

Yeah.

And this is a good anniversary.

I had a nice time talking about him.

That's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chin.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore.

Sard, Ranch, anything you're streaming?

I beat Silent Hill 2.

Let's go!

what's the verdict um i loved it yes and i also watched all the endings that i didn't get wow and um the just want to talk about the dog ending great ending

uh the rumor is that uh silent hill is coming to fortnight No way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If I can run around his pyramid head with a machine gun, it's great.

Great day.

It sort of makes him less scary.

Yeah, but what if you play him like pyramid head?

Just watch him.

him.

You just walk real slow.

That is good.

Get sniped.

Yeah, you're 98.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com, MerchantKinshipGoods.com, and GetAnimate, our sister show, is over on Patreon.

Matt, what are we watching this week?

We're starting a new show.

Wow.

Heather, you want to tell us what it is?

Well, it's time for the final season of Stranger Things on Netflix.

Stranger Things isn't an anime, but it was heavily inspired and influenced by an anime.

And And we are watching that anime.

It's Elfin Lead on Get Anime.

Wow.

Patreon.com/slash get played.

I think Mario got played.

Yeah, Mario got played.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh,

oh,

that was a hit gun podcast.