Review: Super Mario RPG (Replay)

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is a game I played as a kid. It came out for the Super Nintendo in 1996, made piles of dough, spawned several sequels (none of them very good) and to this day is considered one of the best games of all time.

Since I've been studying media theory, I notice things in the media of my youth I'd never noticed before. So I'm playing through some of these old games and I think there will be a paper (book?) some where in the future about the media messages in these games.

First the back ground. There's no underestimating the power of a story. Anyone who's played video games knows there are A LOT of bad storylines out there. I'm the guy who reads "Cyrano de Bergerac" for fun in the evenings so I'm a bit of a story snob. I can stand a certain level of bad dialogue (of which this game is guilty--more later), but I cannot stand story that lacks basic plot structure, a good idea, etc.

Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the story:

The game begins with Mario entering Bowser's Castle to rescue Princess Toadstool. During the battle, a giant sword crashes into Bowser’s castle and sends Mario, Peach, and Bowser flying in different directions and shatters the Star Road, breaking it into seven fragments. Mario finds his way back to the Mushroom Kingdom, where the mushroom chancellor insists that Mario recover the princess, then discover the purpose of the giant sword.

Mario leaves the Mushroom Kingdom to aid a new friend of his named Mallow, to regain his frog coin from a raptor thief named Croco. When Mario returns, he finds that the kingdom is overrun by creatures claiming to be part of the Smithy gang. He then goes into the castle and finds the first boss in the game, a giant sword/spring like creature named Mack. When he defeats him, he finds a mysterious Star Piece and takes it, hoping to find out more about it later.

During Mario’s search for the princess, he meets a star spirit, who takes control over a doll named Geno, who joins Mario. He tells Mario that the Star Piece is a part of the shattered Star Road, where the star spirit resides. He must find all seven of the shattered pieces of Star Road in order to repair it, which are held by members of the Smithy gang. Mario agrees to help Geno in his search.

Mario eventually finds Bowser, trying to reassemble his forces; and the princess, as she is about to be forcibly married to a character named Booster. Bowser and Peach then both join Mario’s party and help look for Star Pieces.

When they have most of the Star Pieces, they learn that the last one is held in Bowser's Castle, which they return to and discover that the giant sword is a gateway to Smithy's factory. They defeat Smithy and use the Star Pieces to repair the Star Road.

Positives:
(1) Intertextuality- the Super Smash Bros. series or Kingdom Hearts series ring any bells? That's because they're some of the best selling video games of all time. What do they have in common with Super Mario RPG? They're intertextual. To see my paper on the use of this in Kingdom Hearts, click here. In Super Mario RPG, we have an appearance from one of the bad guys of Final Fantasy II (IV) who is accompanied by music from the game. There's also a classic mid-90s appearance of the "Power Rangers." Remember them? Prepare to laugh. In Super Mario RPG, they appear as bad guys (which means Mario gets to do what we all would like to do--kick their ass) and are called the "Axem Rangers." They have color-coded costumes, etc.

(2) Interactivity- this is one of the first role-playing games to mix up the turn-taking system and the slash-and-hack system. In this game, you are rewards for pressing buttons at the right time during battle. It adds to the experience and makes a it a forerunner for how games are generally done today.

(3) Geno (left)- first of all, Geno is one of the two original protagonists thought up for this game. Unfortunately neither he, nor Mallow appear in future games. In this game, we have something, my old friend Terry Mattingly would cause a religion "ghost." He's a doll, sent by a higher order to make sure everyone's prayers are answered essentially. They de-religion it pretty heavility, replacing prayers with "wishes" and never naming who sent him. But as I'll show in future posts, Square-Enix does like to throw religious/ethical messages in their games.

Negatives:
(1) Bad Dialogue-seeing a trend here? Bad dialogue is infectious and it takes over most every game. Now granted this game is marketed to kids and it is still superior to dialogue in later games. Yes Sonic, I'm talking about you.

(2) Gameplay-The gameplay was mostly good. But there were a few parts of the game where accomplishing the tasks before you were really hard. This was an early attempt at navigating someone around a 3-d landscape and Square-Enix/Nintendo just weren't there yet.

(3)Bowser- getting Bowser on your team at first seems like just such a cool thing, but the fact is it makes little sense. The Bowser we're accustomed to doesn't cry on command and throw temper-tantrums. Granted this is a tongue-in-cheek game with some gratuitous corniness, but Bowser is over the top and his level of involvement isn't warrented by the story. His motivation makes sense. The "hey-buddy" nature with which he treats Mario and Toadstool (basically his archenemies) is not.