[Game Review] Super Mario 64

Whenever I try and collect my thoughts on what I consider my favorite game of all time, it always comes to a neck-and-neck race between several contenders.  Do I give it to A Link to the Past, the game that so defined my preteens and holds up so well today?  Or perhaps Dark Souls, which has become my modern equivalent for "that game I just can't get sick of".  Super Mario Bros. 3 is certainly up there, but it falls to the trend I see a lot of these games seem to fall for: they are either older games I used to play, or newer games I play now.  Newer games are obviously fresher and easier to play, but have yet to feel the weight of time diminish them to their core aspects, yet to truly measure up to that most difficult challenge great art must face in its version of the silver years.  Likewise, I don't feel particularly compelled to play older games outside of the occasional revisit, and always through quite a lot of "being in the mood" adaptability going on.  When the mood hits, it can be a blast, and I can often go through a series at a time, but without the correct, most of these games can feel rather like chores to get through.  Well, except Super Mario 64.  I've beaten Super Mario 64 nearly every year since college.  Going back in and getting those 120 stars doesn't ever seem to get boring, no matter how many times I try for it.  I've played mods, played for better times, practiced jumps and tried to break the game.  There is something so fun about just being Mario in Mario 64.

Super Mario 64 is legendary in the history of gaming, and largely for good reason.  The transition from 2D to 3D was notoriously difficult for games, and several franchises didn't survive the migration.  Mario 64 is considered the standout success along with Zelda: Ocarina of Time of 2D to 3D conversion stories, and it isn't a coincidence.  Mario had the benefit of belonging to a genre that had potential in the 3D realm.  Platformers were really built around a few simple mechanics: physics, jumping, powerups, and obstacles.  3D, 2D - it didn't matter, what mattered was how they were approached.  The pieces were there inherent in the genre, but most games still struggled to properly move into the new graphics.  Crash Bandicoot found its solution by creating a semi-linear approach to level design, allowing you minimal y- and z-axis range in favor of walking forward (and occasionally backward) down a virtual hallway to the end goal, jumping over pits and enemies as you went along.  It was a neat trick, and it worked remarkably well.  Super Mario 64 decided to rewrite everything about Mario up to this point.  From the multiple powerups of Super Mario World before it, now we have only 3.  No longer are we limited to running in one direction to the end goal, but rather have an entire open level to explore and platform through, but now there are far less of them.  Mario 64 stripped away a lot of what had made Mario such a success up to this point, but in its place it innovated.  3D worlds hadn't been so explorable before, and replacing end-of-level goals with discoverable stars (6 on each level, plus one for collecting 100 coins in the level) allowed that exploration purpose, giving reason and motivation for exploiting Mario's moveset.  Now Mario could do a double and triple jump by consecutively jumping in time, each jump getting higher.  He could do a back flip to get hard to reach places, or, if you were a skilled player, you could use the side jump which required running and cutting backwards and then jumping to do a quick high jump without halting momentum.  Dives, kicks, and punches allowed for quick movement and new ways of dealing with enemies.  The game came well equipped with the tools needed to truly exploit its new areas, to find new and fun ways to get Mario where you wanted him, to be creative while doing it.  Playing as Mario feels damn near a medium in and of itself, something all subsequent Mario games would continue.  You could spend countless hours just running around Peach's Castle, practicing your jumps and still having fun.

The game follows the basic Mario beats: Peach is missing and Bowser is behind it.  Collect 70 stars to battle him for the last time and save the day.  There are 120 stars total in the game, and I'll be damned if I can play this game without going after every last one of them.  This game is a completionists dream, a camp I don't even consider myself apart of yet can meet here on the fields of Bob-omb Battlefield.  There are 15 stages total, each a pocketed little world with 5 exploration based stars, 1 red coin collecting star, and 1 100 coin collecting star.  As you collect stars, the game will give you slight hints as to how to get the next star by way of star quest title, but after that you are left to discover it yourself.  Occasionally, you come across the rediculous obtusely hidden stars such as the one on Whomp's Fortress hidden in a completely unhinted breakable wall (seriously, it looks like very other wall), but by and large each star is fair and should take you no longer than 15-20 minutes to gather, once you know where to look.

Level design in Mario 64 is incredibly well executed, if graphically dated.  Dated may be an understatement here.  Several levels and a lot of in game objects look more akin to a mid-90s tech demo than a fantastical world.  Rainbow Ride is just floating grey platforms over a murky skybox, and several moving platforms on various levels are simple rectangle objects with a checkered pattern on them that seemed prolific in the early days of computer generation.  One level is a box room full of water with massive windows that I swear was the testing grounds for their swimming physics.  There aren't that many tech demo styled levels, however.  Several, like the excellent Tic Tock Clock are built stylistically around their design, being the inside of a clock with moving gears and keys as platforms.  Tic Tock Clock is probably the most difficult level in the game, but also the most rewarding for how mony moving platforms there are, and how many different tricks you can pull to ascend the writhing clock.  Several of the levels in this game have become iconic now, such as Bob-omb Battlefield, the first map, that gives you an open green field to play around in with little goombas waddling around, and a mound to climb with a mini-boss at the top.  When Mario 64 keeps to the basics such as this, the aesthetic truly works and gives an evocative, childlike excitement and sense of place.  Nothing visually here ever quite matches the design of games like Spyro, but it does far more than just a competent job.  They create proper difficulty escalation as you unlock more levels, giving you stars for platforming challenges, collectible quests, and exploration of every nook and cranny of the map.

Mario 64's greatest accomplishment outside of basic level design is its controls.  It is also its most dated aspect.  Using the joystick to run around as Mario, and combining it with the various attacks and moves Mario has in his arsenal feels extremely good and responsive.  Mario has a tendency to not like to turn around if he is under the influence of even the slightest momentum, but it doesn't take long for this to become a second nature concern.  The challenges here are usually platforming obstacle courses with multiple paths.  Later games such as the Mario Galaxy series would siphon you through a relatively linear set of challenges, but Mario 64 would rather set the obstacles up and let you find your own path through them.  It encourages creativity not by prompt, but by design.  Sure, you could crawl to the edge, backflip up, and make your way up that tower that way, or you could attempt a wall jump into a flag pole and get there that much more efficiently.  It's about how you get up there, not that you get up there at all, allowing for all difficulty levels to enjoy, and it is the controls that allow this to execute so well.  The real issue with Super Mario 64 is the camera.  The newly ventured 3D world was still figuring out how exactly you go about showing the new polygons within the camera's frame.  Crash's linear levels allowed for a camera on rails, but Mario 64 needed far more freedom than that.  Interestingly, they gave it a physical avatar and physical presence in the world.  Lakitu, one of the most frustrating characters in the 2D Mario games, is now Mario's camera man, and you can direct him with the C-buttons around Mario.  This means that telling the camera to turn will sometimes cause it to get stuck on walls or wedged between Mario and other objects.  As interesting and funny as it was to give Mario's camera a physical avatar, in practice it's annoying to wrestle with while trying to complete precise platforming challenges.  Not only that, but it doesn't move smoothly around Mario, but rather in quarter-of-a-circle chunks.  Precisely angling the camera behind Mario becomes a chore into itself, one you are not likely to win.  Playing levels several times over to collect all of the stars does allow you to somewhat memorize the layout of levels, allowing for you to platform even when things are obscured just from memory, but I can't say this is optimal game design.

Super Mario 64 may not have aged perfectly, but it is uninhibited fun from start to finish.  Even camera wrestling can't diminish the pleasure of finally landing that dive-to-long-jump you've been trying in order to get that star just that much faster.  The game isn't difficult in and of itself, but rather a toolbox of fun tricks and moves that create that ever pleasing self imposed challenge.  Its legacy may be tarnished in the eyes of those who cannot get past having minimal control of the camera, but it's a lesser evil than most older games are burdened with.  Mario's first outing in 3D has aged extremely well, and still, even as I've completely memorized the game, never ceases to put a smile on my face during my annual playthroughs.



10 

[Game Review] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

90s video game commercials will always be something special to me.  There were far more surrounding people in mascot costumes than I would have thought, considering the games they were advertising were showcasing this newfangled thing "3D graphics" which one would think would sell itself (ugly as these games look today, there was a time where their ugliness was exciting).  Crash Bandicoot and Spyro both had people in costume with plenty of attitude, that very 90s trait that meant something was cool and youthful.  Nintendo only did this once, as far as I can recall, and it was to get me unbelievably hyped for Super Smash Bros.  In it, several of the playable characters in Smash skipped through a field of flowers before one of them is tripped and it descends into an all-out brawl.  I remember thinking the commercial was funny at the time, but more importantly it seemed to realize that often debated schoolyard field of debate: the smash up.  The idea of playing Mario against Pikachu or Link against Donkey Kong was extremely exciting, even if I wasn't totally clear as to who Samus or Kirby were.  I didn't own a Nintendo 64 at the time, so trips to my friends' houses who had one became far more common.  I never got any good at it, and it always seemed Kirby and Samus were always the favorites in any session I played, but it never stopped being fun.  Something about blowing your friends off the stage instead of stressing over an ever-draining life bar seemed a more exciting fit for the fighter genre.  For one, it allowed for a lot of staying power if you were skilled enough to return to stage, where as the usual fighter would have you out at the 100% mark.  Here, 100% was where things started to get intense.  This flexibility was very empowering, and very addictive as a party multiplayer title.  As such, even in college, after two more titles for the series were released, we were still playing the original.  

The quick rundown of the series (by most standards) are as follows: Smash 1 is great, Melee, the Gamecube sequel, is the unparalleled classic, Brawl on Wii is a disaster, and Smash 4 on Wii U and 3DS are much better, but still not up to the classic status of Melee.  Melee is truly great, incredibly quick, and will put you to your test.  Brawl I have a much more temperate position on.  It was floaty and certainly not as competitive, but as I've never been particularly great at Smash, it did its job.  Smash 4 I quite liked, but playing it primarily on the 3DS had its drawbacks as it always felt cramped in my hands and not ever quite what I wanted in Smash.  After years of excitement draining with each new release, I was beginning to feel maybe Smash just wasn't for me, until I picked up Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with my Switch. 

Ultimate is, in a word, tight.  If you miss a dodge, don't properly bounce out of a fall, etc. the game is punishing.  On the flip side, when done right you are rewarded with a quick return to an attack stance. It feels really good to play, and I have easily become the most competitive I've ever been in Smash.  I'm not the best in the world, only really handling myself with an AI level of 7 or so, which may damn me as a poor perspective on this title's quality to the more hardcore, but considering I started at AI 3 when the game came out, Ultimate has done a tremendous job of motivating me to improve.  Good game feel promotes the desire to get better, and a whole host of side content certainly helps quite a bit.  

The big selling point of the new Smash is the large, 74-man roster, including every character from previous games as well as a host of newcomers like Ridley and King K. Rule.  Rather than having to do specific things to unlock everyone, simply playing the single player mode or playing a local smash game will cause the "challenger approaching" event to appear every 10 minutes or so with a new character to unlock.  Starting out, you only have 9 or so characters unlocked, so it can take quite a while to get them all.  Many of the characters are clones of one another, but as Masahiro Sakurai has stated that clones don't take up spaces that new characters could have due to their inclusion being opportune rather than planned, I don't consider this a negative.  

While the classic mode is still here, now with a unique progression per character, it is the Adventure mode, subtitled World of Light, that is the true focus of single player offerings.  World of Light introduces spirits, which replace trophies from previous games and cause various buffs and debuffs to basic smash play.  One spirit could make you resistant to poisonous ground, another can let you spawn with an item when you start a match.  Spirits are separated into two camps: primary spirits, which give you an overall buff and contain slots, and support spirits, which give you the more particular buffs and fit into the slots of the primary spirits.  World of Light is built around these spirits, using them to confront challenges created by other spirits, and unlocking those spirits if you win.  The game mode has a board game type space where you beat spirits to unlock them and to progress on various branching paths.  World of Light is enormous.  Too big, really.  Likewise, the amount of spirits here far outweighs the number of trophies in previous games, but I haven't been nearly as compelled to collect spirits as much as I was to collect trophies.  Spirits feel like cheap trading cards that, while adding a little to your World of Light game, don't feel as substantial as 3D model trophies with descriptors about the games they are referencing.  This is certainly a your-mileage-may-vary situation, but, as fun as spirit collecting is, it still feels like a step down from previous games. 

It took roughly 20 hours before I felt confident enough to play the game online, and that confidence was horrible misplaced.  I've won one game so far.  Yeah, I'm not very good, but online play is still intoxicating.  Playing against other players is the quickest way to truly tune up your play, find which characters people are excelling at, and generally give you that competitive thrill that playing AI characters alone just can't give you.  But outside of the general thrill of online play, the online section is the most severely lacking aspect of Ultimate.  Online games have connection issues about a quarter of the time, and only a few modes and settings are allowed.  Connection problems are usually not so great that the match is ruined, but such a frequency of issues in this day and age feels like a mishandling on Nintendo's part, and a horrible oversight on a game as competitive as this.  The modes and settings being limited is incredibly frustrating.  No squad battle, no 4+ player free-for-all if two players are on the same console while online, no playlists, and only the most basic settings on "preferences" feel far more limiting than they should be.  The preferences setting is particularly frustrating as a replacement for playlists, allowing you to suggest to the matchmaker what you'd like to play, but ultimately being victim to whatever the matchmaker decides to give you.  It's not awful, but it's one of those things that feels incredibly dated in this day and age where matchmaking feels nearly perfected in most games.  

Ultimate isn't the perfect package, but it very nearly is.  With the exception of online limitations, the rest of my issues are entirely dressing to the core game, which is phenomenal and rewarding.  The game is responsive and easy to pickup but insanely difficult to master.  It's the kind of game you could play for ages without being bored, and the next chapter in the series is going to have to seriously blow me away to convince me to replace Ultimate as my go-to Smash title from here on out. 

9.5

[Game Review] Pokemon Red/Blue

RPGs came in two flavors in 1998: the action oriented RPGs like Zelda or Diablo and the turn-based, story driven content of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest.  Turn based RPGs were extremely foreign to me outside of the demo I had for Final Fantasy VII, and I didn't much like it.  They were dense with stats and systems to learn, swollen with hours required to beat them, and often preferred the planning and building of characters over immediate, reaction based gameplay.  But Pokemon Red/Blue had several things going for it to capture the uninitiated: it was portable, and its marketing toward the collector in everyone.  Obviously, this game blew up.  It is hard to overstate how impactful Pokemon has become as a franchise.  It was extremely well marketed, with a trading card game and anime released soon after to help promotion, and suddenly the late 90s was engulfed in Pokemania.  It can be hard nowadays to look at the games that started it all through the haze of cultural ubiquity, but this wasn't just some trendy garbage with a good trick up its sleeve.  Piercing through the haze is a rewarding RPG.  The original Pokemon games have their issues, but they are still incredibly fun and absorbing to play through, even if later entries in the series have vastly improved upon the formula.

The series' famous catch phrase was Gotta Catch 'em All!, and the game follows suit well, if as a "side quest" of sorts.  You play as a boy set out on his own in the world of Pokemon, where kids take little monsters of the same name and hold glorified cock-fights to get stronger until they can finally earn all eight badges around the region and challenge the Elite Four, the best-of-the-best Pokemon Trainers, and become the Pokemon Champion.  Along the way you encounter an organization called Team Rocket, who use morally corrupt ways to capture, abuse, and sell rare Pokemon, and to generally influence others for political gain.  Naturally, you use your Pokemon to battle them and save the day.  As a side quest, you are entrusted by Professor Oak, a mentor of sorts who gives you your first Pokemon, to fill your Pokedex, an automatically filling encyclopedia of Pokemon that updates every time you catch a new Pokemon.  There are 151 Pokemon in total in the original game, many of which are difficult to get or exclusive to particular versions, and one that can only be caught through cheats or special Nintendo events.  This latter part is particularly where a lot of the mania came from about the series.  The idea of finding 151 of these weird and wild monsters, capturing them, befriending them, and pitting them against each other in battle was an insanely novel idea, even if it had been done in certain series to a smaller extent, such as in Dragon Quest.

You start the game with one of three Pokemon:  Charmander, the fire type salamander that turns into the dragon Charizard on the cover of the Red version, Squirtle, the water type turtle who turns into the gun-toting Blastoise on the American only Blue version cover, and Bulbasaur, a  grass type frog/dinosaur with a seed on its back that turns into a much larger version of itself found on the Japan only Green version.  In most RPGs, your player character and those in your party level up and learn new attacks as you progress.  Here, it is your Pokemon who level up, and at certain levels or under certain conditions they can evolve into stronger, new Pokemon.  Charmander evolves into Charmeleon at level 16, for example, and Charmeleon to Charizard at level 36.  Other Pokemon evolve with special items such as Clefairy when a moonstone is used on them, a rare item in the game.  Pokemon can be discovered through random encounters (a staple in turn based RPGs I hate, but can tolerate here) and captured with a pokeball, of which there are several varieties, but should be battled to low health or different health status before attempting to catch to increase odds of capture.  Pokemon can get health status debuffs such as being paralyzed (where speed is heavily dropped and they may be unable to attack), poison (where they take damage every turn in battle, and every step outside of battle), etc.  Battling is turn based, where the speeds of your Pokemon and the enemie's Pokemon are compared and the faster of the two gets to attack first.  Sometimes certain attacks have higher odds of attacking first, and other times attacks can cause turns to be skipped for a cool down or by affecting the status of the Pokemon doing the attack.  You win or lose a battle by no longer having any more Pokemon to battle with in your party, of which you can hold six.  Pokemon faint when they lose their health, requiring revive items or a trip to the Pokemon center in order to revive them.  A Pokemon's typing affect what they are weak or strong against, and likewise attacks have typing that can cause critical damage if the opponent is weak to that type.  Water is weak to electric type, grass to fire, etc. and in some cases being strong against a typing can render the type completely immune to damage, such as with ground typing to electric.  More often than not, if you are strong against a typing you take reduced damage, such as water taking minimal damage from fire type attacks. Pokemon is a turn based RPG at its core, but it keeps things relatively unconfusing, easing you into things such as status effects, items, and typing.  Because of this, your starter Pokemon can determine some early game difficulty, if you didn't know that the first gym was ground type, or the second water type (making fire type Charmander not ideal, and water type Squirtle and grass type Bulbasaur much easier in the early game), but picking up wild Pokemon on the way to the gyms can help mitigate any headaches tremendously.  It creates a slightly different start for each player depending on starter, if only marginally so.  There is a host of complexity behind the scenes as to how various stats grow when leveling up, and which to use for what situation, but the game keeps things relatively easy so you don't have to get a degree in Pokemon physiology to figure it out.  The game has some serious balancing issues, particularly with the psychic type that dominates basically every type including other psychic types, but this is primarily the most broken part of the game, and there are only select sections of the game with proliferant psychic Pokemon about (and psychic Pokemon specialists), and you're more than likely to have some in your party at this point anyway.

Progress through the game's gyms, plot, and final challenges aren't going to give you too much trouble once you get your head around the game's few systems, but you'll have fun teasing out new parties as you grow your Pokemon and discover new ones in different areas.  What will challenge you, however, is capturing them all.  The game comes in two versions in order to encourage play and trading through he Game Boy link cable, something still novel to this day and one of its best features.  Trading Pokemon between versions made the game inherently social, something a lot of games lack, and when they do include social aspects it is often mitigated to the competitive sphere.  Here, you're making trades, working in each other's favor to try and fulfill that call the game's box placed centered and forefront.  Want that Jigglypuff?  Well, it's only found in Blue version, so you'd better find a friend willing to trade with you.  Each version had several Pokemon exclusive to their version, and there was only one version of the starters you could get in the game, and it would be the one you chose.  This meant needing friends to get even the three starters, a tough proposition and one unlikely to happen without grinding through the early game numerous times and just resetting one person's game until everyone had one of each.  This was always the weakest part of the first generation Pokemon games, as we didn't have the breeding mechanic yet which would make this a viable option.  No one was going to part with their starter as they were generally boasting the highest non-legendary stats in the game.

Legendaries and pseudo-legendaries are another compelling aspect to the game's gameplay.  Extremely powerful, one-of-a-kind Pokemon called Legendaries could be found in specific places in the game world, and you had one shot to capture them, and they were often incredibly difficult.  In the original games, there were three legendary birds and Mewtwo, the absurdly overpowered Pokemon you could capture after having beaten the Elite Four, essentially your endgame reward.  Pseudo-legendaries were normal Pokemon that were also one-of-a-kind, such as Evee (which had numerous evolution lines you could choose from, rather than just the one like every other Pokemon), and Snorlax which serves as a plot device more than anything.  Again, you only had one chance to collect these guys, but they weren't nearly as difficult as the legendaries.  The last one-of-a-kind Pokemon in the game is Mew, often considered a "mythic" Pokemon, a banner used in later games to denote Pokemon not catchable in game, but rather through events at Nintendo stores or designated times online.  Mew became the source of schoolyard legend, with tricks passed around as to how to capture the elusive Pokemon.  Spoiler: you can't.  Not without cheating or glitches, anyway.  The Pokemon had to be attained at a Nintendo store or event, or by trading with someone who already had him.  It wasn't exactly fair if you truly wanted to catch them all, but catching the original 150 without Mew was still an extreme challenge, and one my schoolyard buddies and I were more than willing to embark on.

What is incredible about these games are that such a large and obsession-festering experience could be had in your pocket.  The fact these were on the Game Boy (thus able to go wherever you went) made the games social in an entirely new way than games had ever been before.  It is interesting to see the rise of mobile gaming over the last decade take over so many people's commutes and idle time, and to realize how the Game Boy and Pokemon got there first.  Having a Game Boy with Pokemon in your pocket wasn't just great for passing idle time at the grocery store when you were ten, it was also a way for you to socialize with friends, for you to play wherever, whenever, no matter if you were on a long car ride or shipping back and forth between friends' houses.  It went with you, and everyone who had a game could sit right there next to you and participate in your journey with you, talk about where to go, who to catch, and what you'd be willing to trade.  They could be played in bite sized chunks, or hours long sessions.  It was a whole new way to play an RPG. 

The game has some dated aspects that make it less than ideal to play nowadays.  Sprites look a bit strange when compared to how the Pokemon look now, there isn't a run button making the game incredibly slow to get around in, and there are bugs that can get you stuck in the game, corrupt your save, or be exploited to the point of breaking the game (such as item duplication with the infamous Missingno. glitch).  The remakes, FireRed and LeafGreen, are definitely the way to go if you want to replay the game as close to the original as possible without the rough edges, but if you chose to go with the originals you wouldn't be disappointed.  Pokemon Red/Blue are substantial games in the video game cannon, not only as RPGs, not only as cultural touchstones, but also in the way they perfectly used mobile gaming as a way of always being connected, and always ready to connect with others.  The original games are perfect for phone emulation, which can (illegally) be done with ease these days.  I've played through these games so many times the Kanto region feels more like home than whatever apartment I'm living in at a given moment, and there's always a reason to jump back into those tiny pixelated shoes and try and catch 'em all all over again.



9.5

[Game Review] Super Mario Bros.

Like most kids who grew up with an NES, I've been in love with Mario games since the very first game.  Although I was a bit too young when I first played the red plumber on NES to make any substantial progress, I had considerable amounts of time in the late single digit ages to get through the whole game on the Game Boy Color.  With Super Mario Maker 2 on the horizon, my nostalgic anticipation is beginning to get the better of me, so I booted up the NES library of games on the Switch and gave the original another spin.

To be honest, I've always been far more partial to Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World than this one, but to my surprise I wasn't able to put Super Mario Bros. down in the couple of hours I spent with it.  The original Mario has aged quite a bit better than the original Zelda, that's for sure.  The first four worlds are a breeze, with the challenging levels ramping up from world 5 thru 8, but the difficulty wasn't just in the levels, but rather the run up to and through them.  This is where the most antiquated part of Mario comes out, with the lives system and lack of a save.  Granted, all NES games were built with short lengths but difficult ramp up on purpose.  Kids weren't owning a lot of games back in the 80s, and so each one had to last them months at a time, and adding a save feature or taking out lives makes for a very short game.  It is to Mario's credit that when I decided to use save states, which virtually get rid of these, it didn't diminish the game in the slightest.

Mario has far more moves than you probably realize in his (relatively) first outing.  The obvious moves are running and jumping, and the powerups like the mushroom, fire flower, and star.  But the thing that is going to kill you more than anything else is momentum.  Momentum is a picky bitch in Super Mario Bros., sliding you off edges or into enemies when you aren't careful, and allowing you to fly over levels, skipping on the choice blocks along the way when you've found momentum's flow.  Momentum is core to the Mario experience as much as his jump: it's the medium in which his jump interacts.  When used properly, it can be the most important - or, at least, most fun - tool Mario has.  Later levels like to abuse your over reliance on speed, positioning flying koopas to spawn at the edge of the screen or piranha plants popping out of pipes, or placing slightly misaligned pits in your path before you notice them there, requiring either some starting and stopping as you traverse, or otherwise memorizing the enemy placement and obstacles best you can.

My use of save states and general play had a few rules because I didn't want to take too much from the experience of replaying the game: 1) no saving in levels, only at the very beginning during the "World x-y" screen, and 2) no warp pipes.  Warp pipes were something I most definitely over relied on as a child, and to keep myself from leaping over whole worlds and literally stealing parts of the game from myself, I forbid them.  I found that this way of playing felt really good, but Mario was still susceptible to just being plain old.  In particular, when falling I found it difficult to jump once landed if I wasn't falling specifically from a jump.  I fell into many a lava pit this way, specifically 8-4, which starts you and a descending staircase of sorts right into a lava pit that required me to come to a dead stop on a step and take a running jump to make it over.  just running left and hitting jump wouldn't work, as my jump wouldn't be registered until I came to that stop.

Otherwise, my experience was about what I expected, if more addictive.  Platforming feels good when you get a feel for how floaty it can be, and enemies feel fair, challenges ramp up at the correct pace, and powerups feel far more scarce the farther you get, requiring more precise play.  Unfortunately for the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 exists, and it surpasses it in just about every way.  But even with that younger brother passing it in quality and fun, the original has more than enough here to give you that nostalgic tinge without hurting your patience, and feels the classic status it has earned.



10

[Film Review] Mrs. Doubtfire

Note: Spoilers for Mrs. Doubtfire.  Also, I may hurt your nostalgia a little bit...


Who is the bad guy in Mrs. Doubtfire?  The impression you get is that Robin Williams' character Daniel is the one wronged, but in every way he is the one doing wrong.  His ex-wife has moved on, her career is doing well and she is seeing a handsome man who shares her interests and likes her kids.  If anyone is wronged here, it is his suffering wife trying to make the best out of a sudden change that, honestly, she should have made a long time ago.  But instead, we are placed in Daniel's camp, feeling his need to see his children and feeling, in the end, that what he had done had to be done.  In no way is this true, and the film is tone deaf to just who really got hurt and how we should deal with that.  Mrs. Doubtfire is extremely confused as to what it wants to say, or how to say it even, often saying competing things at the same time with no sense of cohesion.  To be sure, the movie is funny and the performances are charming and far above what you would expect out of a summer family film, but it does little to make up for the incongruences of the script, direction, and characters.

Mrs. Doubtfire follows Robin Williams' Daniel as he finds himself suddenly unemployed and in the middle of a divorce with Sally Field's Miranda.  After a judge rightfully tells Daniel he can't have co-guardianship of the kids until he gets a job and an alright apartment, a situation they will readdress in three months, Daniel decides he can't wait that long and goes undercover as the elderly nanny Mrs. Doubtfire in order to be around his kids all day.  Hijinks ensue as he tries not to get caught, comes to understand his ex-wife and why she left him, and tries not to get too jealous of her handsome new lover, Pierce Brosnan's Stu.  It all goes awry when he attempts to juggle both being the nanny and a job interview for a TV show in the same night, at the same restaurant, at tables mere feet from one another, while getting drunk.  After this inevitably fails, a judge considers him not a good judge of character (obviously), and says sorry, but you can't see your kids for the time being.  He gets the job playing Mrs. Doubtfire on the TV show he interviewed for (somehow), and watching him in the afternoon with their kids encourages Miranda to reach out to him, apologize that he can no longer see their kids and her part in it, and to attempt to defend her side.  The scene ends with Daniel saying he had to do it to see his kids (rather than just waiting three months and reconvening with the judge, remember), and that she basically made him do it.  She concedes to letting him babysit the kids after school, and everyone is happy.

Before we dig into this, I want to flesh out the beginning of this movie leading to the divorce, because I actually think it is quite good and in some places contradicts the later film.  The movie starts with Daniel in the recording booth, doing voice over work for a cartoon, which gives us a great incite into his personality while letting Robin Williams play.  The cartoon scene comes to a point where his character is given a cigarette, and Daniel goes off script moaning about how awful the cigarette is.  The producer stops him, and tells him to read the script or get out.  Daniel is furious, telling them they are basically marketing cigarettes to kids and how immoral it is, before finally deciding to quit and go home.  Daniel has made a moral decision he thinks is best, and quits for his convictions.  Good character development for only a single scene.  Daniel goes to pick up his kids, and talks his middle child into throwing a birthday party even after his mother explicitly told him he couldn't have one because of his slipping grades.  Daniel's response is: "Well, your mother won't be home for four hours."  He proceeds to throw a missive party, with farm animals and every kid on the block by the looks of it.  Naturally, the cops are called, and they call Miranda, who is furious and storms home to stop them.  As Daniel and Miranda clean the mess up, the three kids stand at the landing near the top of the stairs, listening to them fight.  Daniel yells at her for being a nag and being no fun, and she screams back that he makes her into the responsible one because he refuses to ever do it.  She says she is done with it.  Daniel backpedals, says yes, they fight, but come on, they love each other.  Sally Field's facial expression as it dawns on her that no, she does not in fact love him, is one of the best parts of this movie.  It's extremely expressive with no words, and we see all of their marriage come crashing down in that one look.  

In the first few scenes, we've established a few things:  Daniel is virtually a fun-loving man-child, great to have around but not terribly responsible.  He has intense convictions, and thus far what we've seen is that they are in favor of kids getting their fair treatment - even if his idea of fair treatment comes at the cost of accountability.  But, all-in-all, this beginning set up is fine.  The whole execution, however, is missing its ending.

Daniel's entire plot to be Mrs. Doubtfire is an insane overcompensation.  The judge tells him he doesn't have a job or an apartment, so he can't have his kids.  Fair enough.  Before he even becomes Mrs. Doubtfire, however, he gets both.  It's just a waiting game, but being the man-child he his, he has zero patience when it comes to being able to see his kids again.  Daniel's error is he doesn't trust that things will work out in his favor (which it will - Miranda doesn't want him out of their lives, she just doesn't want him in hers, thus not wanting him to babysit them requiring her to see him everyday), and so he decides to go to the extreme.  All of this is ridiculous, but it follows what we know about him and gives us a funny point to start with in his arch.  The set-up is fine, but it never quite comes into any kind of moral focus, especially since the movie is trying its damnedest to say something moral about your right to see your kids and smothering you with sentimentality.  There is no payoff for his character to see repercussions for his mistakes or otherwise even acknowledge he did much wrong.  He never learns to be accountable.

We get one semblance of growth from Daniel by the end film (outside of some minor improvements as a father).  In the middle of the film, Daniel as Mrs. Doubtfire is talking to Miranda, asking her what went wrong in their marriage.  She tells him that she found Daniel funny and unpredictable, but that he never took anything seriously, and that really began to get in the way of her own personal development.  If he wouldn't be serious, suddenly she had to be serious for the both of them, and it made her into something far more strict and negative than she ever wanted to be.  She was compensating for his shortcomings.  At the very end of the film, after the horror of what Daniel did fades a bit, Miranda decides to go see him on set after shooting an episode of his Mrs. Doubtfire children's show.  She apologizes for how things were handled in court, but reiterates that he seriously fucked up and what he did was rather deranged.  Daniel hits back that he had no choice but to do what he did, because she took his kids from him.  In a sense (and I'm stretching a bit here to give Daniel something like an arch) Daniel has finally decided to be serious.  He doesn't crack any jokes, he just tells her straight up how he feels.  The problem here is that he wasn't forced to do anything.  He could have waited out the three months and he would have co-guardianship.  Things would have been fine, but he overreacted, and even after the fallout he thinks that he was, underneath it all, in the right.  Sure, he does concede in court - after being grilled by a judge for his behavior - that he might have done some things in poor taste, but Christ in no way does this make up for his behavior, or even count for much since he contradicts any kind of acknowledgment of wrongdoing.  The fact Miranda caves in at the end and gives him what he wants is such a conflicting message I don't even know what to think.  Firstly, of course he should have been nannying his kids after school.  I mean, why not?  He was available, free, and desperately loves his kids.  But as it is framed at the end of the film, he is being rewarded with what he wanted all along, despite what he has done, which is a terrible message.   Discussing this movie with friends of mine, it has come up a couple times that this is a family movie and looking too hard into themes is overkill, to which I respond with bullshit.  The film itself acknowledges the impressionable quality of children with the scene where Daniel quits.  Seeing a cartoon character smoking a cigarette is bad because it influences children, but seeing a grown man disregard his ex-wife's trust and still gets his way doesn't?  Kids are especially impressionable when it comes to how they see adults act, and Daniel, being the protagonist, is not only a terrible example for kids, but for adults, and one that doesn't seem to be worth his arch.

Not content to just rag on a movie I feel conflicted on, I have a solution as to how this film could have been improved.  Keep the first two thirds of this movie the way it is, up until roughly when Daniel talks to his wife about why she left him.  At this point, Daniel should reflect on what he has done up to this point and have that moment-with-a-mirror where he looks at himself and realizes "what the fuck have I done".  The remainder of the movie has him trying desperately to get out of the Mrs. Doubtfire job, but due to it seriously screwing over Miranda (it could be that she needs time to work on that project with Stu, which is important to her company), or his youngest daughter's attachment to his character, he finds it difficult to get out of.  Here, the joke is that now he can't undo the stupid mistake he is completely aware he has made.  When things are revealed in the end, he has long since known he was probably not getting out of this, and has a much better bargaining tool in the end for not being a piece of shit.  Finally, he should apologize to Miranda, he should acknowledge his faults, and then I'd be willing to concede the ending we got.  It isn't perfect, but it definitely gets a few marks up in my opinion.

Mrs. Doubtfire is such a well acted and funny film, it's honestly a disappointment that the script can't hold its end of the bargain.  The set up was good, the characters well realized, but there is only so much you can do to make up for what amounts to one rotten character ruining everything.  A better vision and a better third act, and we could be singing a very different tune.




5.0

[Game Review] Crazy Taxi

In the Dreamcast's brief life, it hosted a strange library of games that felt unique to the platform.  A lot of the games felt like a reflection of arcades in the 90s, with House of the Dead 2, Soul Caliber, SEGA Bass Fishing and Crazy Taxi focusing on high scores and over stylized aesthetic.  There were a host of arcade titles on other consoles, but for the most part the gaming landscape was heading toward narrative games and competitive play, with online deathmatches growing on PC and just over the horizon for consoles.  Arcade titles haven't died out, much as the platformer never truly died out, but it is no longer quite the behemoth it once was, marginalized to mobile apps and mini-games.  I always associated Crazy Taxi with the finale of classically 90s styled arcade game (if there is such a thing outside of my compartmentalized nostalgia), regardless of whether it was actually true.  I was a Playstation 2 person, myself, still playing in the platformer playground with Jak and Daxter, and finding myself more and more falling into the first-person shooter hole I'd find myself in for the better part of the next decade.  So, going over to my friend's house to play Crazy Taxi felt a bit of a throwback, even to preteen me.  It's a weird thought to remember, because I equally remember how ridiculously fun it was, regardless of grand social context.

It is to Crazy Taxi's credit that the game mostly holds up today, even despite a finger-locking control scheme on PC, where I played it this last week.  It is so fun, as a matter of fact, that I was frustratingly motivated to get better at the awful controls so I could play more of the game.  Crazy Taxi has you picking up passengers, dropping them off within a time limit, and trying to earn as much money as possible before the level timer expires.  Doing well requires you to master accelerating and braking, a silly thing to say for any other car based game, but something rather tricky here.  Reverse and drive are bound to separate buttons rather than a toggle, requiring some tricky maneuvering with your fingers in order to hit the buttons in the correct sequence, not to mention confusing the brain a bit.  On PC, "D" is reverse, "S" drive, "E" gas, and "Q" brake.  Quickly bounce between those and you'll be playing a game of twister with your fingers.  Granted, you can rebind the controls, but presumably these are the controls the game wants you to play with, which is bizarre and not immediately intuitive.   In action, if you lay on the gas you'll find yourself doing a tail spin, likewise braking has a long runway before you come to a full stop.  The trick is to use the gearshift: switch to drive and gas to boost forward quickly from a stop (toggle between reverse and drive quickly while driving to boost your speed), and shift to reverse while braking to stop quicker.  Holding gas and brake will allow you to slide and drift, gaining you more money during your run by giving you combo bonuses and helping you come to a tight stop while orienting you in a particular direction.

Speaking of combo bonuses, doing jumps and near-missing traffic without hitting them will also net you bonuses, tempting you to controlled-yet-reckless play that enhances the game's frenetic feel.
Probably the biggest contributor to the frenzy is the physics, which bounce and jostle the taxi all around, sometimes to a myriad of glitches such as clipping through sidewalk only to be launched upwards or toppling over a multi-car pile-up.  Traffic is another concern, clogging up roadways and sometimes wrecking on their own, creating pockets of unpredictable chaos that add a lot of personality to each run.

Personality Crazy Taxi has in spades.  It is extremely fun to go back to today and hear that alt-metal, ska, and early-emo soundtrack rain over bombastic physics, rude driver-rider interactions, and slacker-type player characters.  Axel's spiked green hair, in particular, felt so of a time it can only be properly framed by an Offspring song.  Characters are rude and more than willing to jump out of a speeding car if you don't get them to Pizza Hut in 20 seconds flat.  The announcer, easily the most iconic part of the game, will deride you if you get a low score, screaming "Is that your best?!" at the grading screen.  It's all attitude, a glorious time capsule to the late 90s and early '00s.

One of the somewhat annoying drawbacks to being an arcadey title is the lack of content.  Arcade styled games often rely on replay ability more than a breadth of content.  The version on PC is the Dreamcast version, which has 2 maps and 4 characters.  There are 12 challenges that will test your knowledge of techniques, but altogether it took me maybe 6 hours to go from novice to fully completed game, achievements and all.  I would be inclined to give the game a pass for the most part since the game was so addictively fun, if it wasn't for the fact that this thought has come up with every friend I've talked to about this game.  Unlockables would have been a fun reward for getting S-rank on the two maps, or completing the challenges, as well as further setting it apart from the arcade version of the game (as it stands, the one extra map and challenges are all that set it apart - granted, a good 50+% increase in content, but given the starting point this doesn't amount to much).  In a lot of ways, this lack of content is the most dated part of the game, even considering the alt-metal soundtrack and muddy graphics.  Older games are infamous for being short-yet-difficult as they were trying to either shake you down for quarters or extend their lifespan since a kid wasn't likely to get more than a few games over an entire console's lifespan.  One of the biggest shifts in games during the 5th and 6th generation of consoles was the prominence of the save system, and with it a design around a sense of progression.  I'm not implying that Crazy Taxi should have a story or adventure mode (although that honestly might work to better contextualize the challenges), but I think it is a notable aspect of the game that it adheres to a style falling out of favor.  Multiplayer, another growing arm of the gaming landscape, was likewise absent in Crazy Taxi, which is pretty crazy since the game seems perfectly built for crazy head-to-head matches. 

These drawbacks, however, only dampen an otherwise great game rather than tarnish it.  Crazy Taxi stands as an addictive oddity, and one of the best games on a system with an unfortunately short lifespan. 



8.5