I know you needed a breather after the double-barreled blog barrage I fired your way earlier this week, so I decided to give you some days off.
I’m lying! But you knew that already, some of the nervous sweat being flung at your face by my (also nervous) tic landed in your eyes! I’m not a very good liar. What really happened is my job exploded due to some unexpected things happening, the details of which did not involve food, drink OR video games, and as such are outside the scope of this blog.
Suffice to say that only part of that (metaphorically) blinding (metaphorical) sweat/tic combo is due to my poor lying-to-you skills — the other half is due to my work flying off the proverbial handle.
Historically, when Video Games become a necessary source of order and sanity in this crazy world, I have turned to the largest, deepest, driest games I can find. Morrowind got me through a rough winter at school (and a breakup), Fallout (1 and 2) kept me sane through a rocky transitional period, and Rome: Total War helped me make it to graduation.
So, seeing as I’m already halfway(?) through Dragon Age, you’d think I’d be questing long into the night. Well, here is (are) the problem(s): I’m tired at night these days. I don’t have the blocks of multiple hours that are required to sink back into the groove of knowing who’s equipped with what and what my hotkeys are and how my five layers of tactic slots translate into how to keep my mage from being immediately fricaseed by angry Darkspawn™.
Instead, I’ve been turning in the exact opposite direction: the far reaches of Space. Crazy Space. Mario Galaxy Space.
I realize I’m about 2.5 years (25 Video Game years) behind on this one, but it took me that long to find a copy for a decent price (not entirely true, but still, BURN).
In short: this game is consistently stunning me. Mario Galaxy is continually set for stun, firing at my pleasure centers (giggle) with ruthless abandon. Granted, Galaxy is the first 3D Mario game I’ve played since Mario 64, so you’ll understand if my level of stunnedness is more stunny than average (thanks, thesaurus!), but still, man. STILL.
Mario games have always contained a strange, peripheral acknowledgment that what you are participating in is a performance of some sort. Super Mario Bros. 3 begins with a stage curtain opening (and New Super Mario Bros. Wii stages end with applause). Mario continually breaks the fourth wall to pose, scream at your head, or just acknowledge you, the participant/controller/victor.
(Clarification: I use the identifier “Mario Games” to refer solely to the Mario Bros / Mario 64 world and subsequent variants, excluding various Mario-themed games that ride along Mario’s incredibly long marketing tail (Mario Party, Mario & Sonic Do The Olympics Or Something, Mario Teaches Typing, etc. This is an obvious and unnecessary clarification. Anyway. I’m sorry?)
Mario games are a performance in which you play the role of both the performer and audience, and therefore can tap into the joy experienced by both. I’m convinced that this two-sided technique is core to how Miyamoto has always, since the very beginning, sought to capture your love, joy, and attention — with expression that expands as far as technology allows him.
From the very, very beginning, Mario games have been about exploration and discovery. There is a Secret Warp Pipe in World 1-2 of the original Super Mario Bros, and the path to it involves going outside the level’s — and your television’s — boundaries, for heaven’s sake.
Super Mario Bros. 3 expands on this concept by allowing you to crouch on any white block in the game, which allows Mario to walk behind the level’s two-dimensional scenery — a bizarre (and at times completely useless) feature that exists solely to whisper in your ear: Hey. You. There could be secrets anywhere. This practice continued to develop: Super Mario World legitimized the previously never-directly-acknowledged secrets by revealing right on the world map when levels had multiple secret exits (those level dots are red — but anyone between the ages of 15 and 30 probably knew that already).
More progress: Mario 64 transformed those levels into worlds with multiple non-secret endings & goals. In Mario 64, Mario begins a level by jumping through a magical painting and appearing in the world. In Mario Galaxy, Mario hurtles through space, landing with a flip-thud (and a satisfied “yeaaaahh!”) in each world — in each case, ready to do … whatever you like.
What I’m saying here is I’m convinced that, had graphics (and physics engines) allowed, Miyamoto would have flung Mario through outer space to land on Super Mario Bros level 1-1 (which then would have contained 3 official (and 2 secret) goals). Jump (or spin) and Mario cries out in exuberance — I’m convinced that, had sound technology allowed, Miyamoto would have replaced the 8-bit “boing” sound (the best that was possible at the time) with Mario’s current overenthusiastic voice, and the bleep-bloop theme would have been immediately full-born as the orchestral swells of Mario Galaxy.
Dozens of coins have given way to hundreds of Star Bits. Standard platforming gravity has given way to mind-bending 3-dimensional pulls where Mario runs up, down, and around spheres, discs, and areas where gravity has switched just because. Mario will leap from one micro-planet to another, momentarily hanging in the space between, pulled by multiple gravitational fields. Bosses range from dozens to hundreds of times larger than Mario himself. Super Mario Galaxy is joyous excess.
After all these years of limitations, Super Mario Galaxy feels like Miyamoto exhaling and flexing his imagination in a celebration of pure capability. I’ll probably keep playing it each night, because it makes me smile.