Pokun wrote:
I understand that you didn't like Nintendo's choices, but if I were Miyamoto I wouldn't like that other people kept making up things about my characters on their own.
But Miyamoto created Mario as the everyman. "Donkey Kong" was created as a shoutout to "King Kong" and "Super Mario Bros." as a shoutout to "Alice in Wonderland". Mario got a real world name, a nationality and a real world job.
If Miyamoto didn't like the American background story, why didn't he invent its own, but where Mario is still from the real world? Why did Mario, the Italian plumber, have to become a Mushroom Kingdom native who was brought by the stork?
Why did Mario need a prequel with his baby self at all? If the games aren't about story, why do we need a game dealing specifically with Mario's backstory and with the start of his rivalry with Bowser (even making him some prophesized messiah type)?
Just keep making the games as you did for 15 years and just leave Mario's pre-"Super Mario Bros. 1" days pretty much unmentioned.
Pokun wrote:
But do you really think Mario should've been drawn like that as well just so he can fit in better in the world?
No, in the contrary: I think that the New Donk City residents shouldn't have been designed in a realistic style.
Mario should be a regular human in his universe. The way Mario, Luigi and the Princess look like, that should be what homo sapiens looks like inside this world.
You can still create a modern city with skyscrapers, taxis and people in suits. But the people themselves should still be shown in the same style as Mario and the others.
Just because you have a big city instead of a mushroom-based kingdom doesn't mean that the characters in it have to look photo-realistic. Including realistically-looking characters into the comic book world simply means that Mario is actually a different species from the realistic people.
When celebrities cameo on "The Simpsons" or when the Simpsons visit New York, you don't see these non-Springfield characters with actual skin colors and realistic proportions. They are drawn in "Simpsons"-style because that's the way humans look like in that world.
Pokun wrote:
I think Mario's small form is generally thought of as his normal height no? The Super Mario form is bigger than normal (on the other hand in the New Super Mario Bros games he looks normal in his Super form and super deformed in his small Mario form).
That was always pretty inconsistent.
In the old games, small Mario was called Mario and big Mario was called Super Mario. But all the other elements in the world are only to scale when he's big: A Koopa Trooper is a giant to small Mario, but a regular turtle to big Mario.
O.k., so maybe using a Super Mushroom is the defeault status for every Mushroom Kingdom inhabitant since it makes you stronger and protects you from harm. It's not your birth status, but a "medicine" that all of them use for most of the time.
Fair enough.
Now, enemies like Bowser and the Goombas obviously don't have a small and big form. Attacking Bowser doesn't make him small before another attack finishes him off. This only works for humans and mushrooms.
And still, when they gave official heights for the characters (like Mario being 1.55 m or so), they did so with the assumption that Mario is only slightly smaller than Bowser which means: Mario's official height is based on his super form, implying that this is his default size.
The same is true for "Yoshi's Island": Baby Mario's size relative to everything else implies the super form.
With Wario, it is even more clear: Big Wario is the regular Wario. And the small Wario is literally called Chibi Wario/Small Wario, complete with a ridiculous haircut and no hat.
(Fun fact: The German manual for "Super Mario Land 2" mentions Mario knowing Wario from his old days in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, this has no weight at all. And even the English manual only mentions their childhood days, but not the location.)
"Super Mario 64" is pretty strange as well: Bowser and the Goombas look like Mario and the Princess are in his small form. But the buildings are to scale to this small Mario.
So, can't we just declare "Super Mario World" as the big finale of the classic canon? That was the last game that still made sense. Let's put all the other games into a new continuity or several continuities.
Pokun wrote:
Anyway, your points are valid in a way and makes sense, but still IMHO it's all still just nitpicking about details, and it can all be hand waved like always in Mario games (Mario games shouldn't be taken seriously bla bla bla). I still think it's all about the style of the game and the different worlds it takes place in.
Of course, when it's about actually
playing the games, it doesn't matter. I don't sit there in front of my NES and think about the plot when I play it.
But it's an interesting thing for meta discussions like this one here.
If story shouldn't be analyzed, they shouldn't have invented
any to begin with.