A Period of Boring Mario

you bastard you took the relatable Turtles out of paper Mario I want to talk about a very specific era in the Mario franchise and that being uh the the the lame ass one many people have coined this as the Bland or safe era of Mario uh you know it's hard to really figure out when exactly it began but but I think around the time new Super Mario Brothers Wii released and uh it lasted you know it into the Nintendo switch era I'd say potentially like we're still kind of in it because as much as Nintendo does kind of like you know go past this era it it always finds its way coming back sometimes you know so what do we mean by this well uh this is the era of Mario where everything seemed like it was specifically themed around what you'd expect out of a new Super Mario Brothers game which would be nothing all too special look back at the GameCube ER of Mario okay and they're they're trying all kinds of new weird stuff I mean like the game that era was Super Mario Sunshine and that Mario game had like full-blown voice acting way more cutcenes than you'd usually expect an entire new world with new residents to explore and interestingly enough that bled into the spin-off games and and all other kinds of things and spin-offs would bleed into the main Series so you had Luigi's Mansion at the launch of the GameCube and elements of that found its way into Mario Sunshine I just know that like Bowser Jr's paintbrush had egad's uh logo on it and it was implied uh or or specifically said by Bowser Jr that it's just like yeah this this fing guy gave me the paintbrush and it was very much alluded to that it was EAD which is weird much like all the other Mario games from this era I mean you have like Mari and Luigi paper Mari the Thousand-Year Door and both of these games you know RPGs One on Game Boy Advance one on GameCube they're both doing like their completely separate things they're both still Mario but they don't really care what either or are doing it's very much like Mario and Luigi is just doing its own thing expanding the Mushroom Kingdom in its own way and Paper Mario is doing the same thing but in like the complete opposite direction and you know what I think that kind of scared Nintendo a bit the fact that like Mario had like all these branches you know branching off the fact is if you're a fan of like paper Mario and you have just this favorite character from those games I mean like that that character is pretty much only in Paper Mario that same goes for Marian Luigi and Luigi's Mansion to an extent that's what I find fun about this franchise it's just this like magical nonsense world like let your imagination go wild it's all about creativity it's all about fun it's all about like who cares if this makes sense even though a lot of time you know they they try to make it make sense within the context of you know that it's all about hey this is this is a colorful world for you know kids and adults alike to just get lost in and just be like you know what nothing else matters I'm just going to enjoy some some fun colorful and just creative worlds and characters and everything and then they decided to uh specifically make Mario all about uh like like like three three things by the time we got to New Super Mario Brothers Wii this is where kind of this new era of Mario hit now new Super Mario Brothers Wii it's a good game though it it is obviously very sanitized you look at that first game and it's just like it's doing all kinds of things there's all kinds of extra characters and enemies in that game that like you just don't expect to see from the new Super Series whereas new Super Mario Brothers wi uh this box art is very indicative of what the entire experience feels like in terms of style and grace it very much feels like you are playing uh the image on a Mario lunchbox which I feel like was honestly like a big element of this era was uh merchandising opportunities I feel like Nintendo wanted Mario to just kind of consolidate into into the the basic stuff you know like what you'd expect out of Mario we don't really want to Branch off we really we don't really want to introduce a lot of new things outside of just like let's stick to the big stuff you know toad Yoshi Goomba sanitizing the Mario franchise a bit and just kind of theming it all around like what new Super Mario Brothers Wii was doing kind of would help to uh sell other Mario games like other spin-offs if the spin-offs were also sanitized to Oblivion and we had Mario Party games that included like characters from Paper Mario now with Mario Party 9 which released after new Super Mario Brothers Wii let's theme all the boards around new Super Mario Brothers let's just have generic Mario crap but I think they were trying to make Mario more accessible to everybody if they just kind of Consolidated it to a lot of the basic things everybody knows is in Mario instead of getting too weird with you know like pretty much everything Mario was from like 2009 to like 2017 it was all about stuff you remember from Mario 1 Mario 3 Mario World they were relying so much on Nostalgia and the classic Mario rigma roll back then uh you know it just kind of felt like every game that would come out you barely get any new music any new level themes any new characters anything like that it would just be the basic Mario fluff case in point a damn I actually like this game Super Mario 3D Land you know like this saved the 3DS and it's a phenomenal game in its own right when was the last time you played it and gave a [ __ ] about it and what do you remember about this game wa it brought back the Tanuki Leaf from Mario 3 that's it to be fair this game's crowning achievement was uh pretty much making sure that stereoscopic 3D gaming uh actually had like a a use in game play you know when you you crank that 3D slider up on the 3DS like hey jumping in 3D makes a hell of a lot more sense you can really make sure like you are falling where you want to fall and elements of this game are very noteworthy the fact that they truly uh kind of mesh together 2D and 3D Mario the fact that this is a a 3D Mario game that is structured and plays like a 2d Mario game I I think it was kind of a special moment for the franchise considering that that was what they probably wanted to do with Mario 64 but they couldn't due to limitations you know you can't have like hundreds of individual levels back on the N64 so they had to make the most out of what they had that's why we have like a dozen larger worlds with multiple objectives within it in that game whereas with Mario 3D Land you know like we have like hundreds of levels but outside of that Mario 3D Land is like one of the most derivative Mario games style-wise one of there's really only a handful of like new songs in this game you know you have the main theme and some remixes of that theme but for many of the songs they're ripped right from Mario Galaxy and even a lot of the level Concepts like the beat boxes uh yeah those are those are from Mario Galaxy Cosmic Mario yep from Mario Galaxy it just feels like a new Super Mario Brothers version of Mario Galaxy uh with far less crazy like level gimmicks and and all of that it's a very it's a very simple 3D Mario game and you know what that's okay I think Mario 3D Land does what it does very well the problem is it doesn't really push the franchise forward there's not really a ton that this game introduced that really became like a main stay in the franchise other than maybe like you know the Tanuki Leaf but it didn't even introduce that I guess like the modern rendition of the Tanuki Leaf sure cuz it was this game that like Nintendo was like oh damn we got to put this and everything Mario Kart 7 why at the time this game did tremendous things for the 3DS but not really a lot for the Mario franchise this is kind of like a a pretty skippable entry especially these days it just kind of feels like a much simpler and more sanitized version of Mario Galaxy 2 which released about a year and a half earlier which that was a problem considering Mario Galaxy 2 was already a simplified more sanitized version of Galaxy 1 in many ways in other ways the level design goes Bonkers in this game and then they take it to like new heights so you know don't think that's my full opinion of Mario Galaxy 2 but you know what I mean by that they definitely streamlined a lot when it came to Galaxy 2 not even when it comes to just story because that that was the main thing that got ax in Galaxy 2 but you know the level design was far more concise far more linear Galaxy 1 was already linear but Galaxy 2 was very much like we're going to make a level where like this is what you're doing in it buddy and then 3D Land took that even further and simplified things uh much much more but thankfully that wasn't entirely the case for the spin-offs know you have Mario Sports Mix uh which was developed by Square Enix and yeah this is fairly like generic Mario stuff but at the same time they have like goddamn Final Fantasy characters in this that's pretty out there that's just strange but at the same time they did that with Mario Hoops 3on three and in many ways Mario Sports Mix is like the successor to Mario Hoops 3 on3 on the D yes and even then Hoops 3 on3 has like the funkiest ass art style out there and it kind of got replaced for like generic 3D Mario model stuff you know this game still looks quite nice but you know it's it's also like you can kind of see the dfic uh kind of happen when you compare this to its direct predecessor but hey strangely enough in the same year we got Mario Sports Mix uh we got another Square Enix collaboration with Fortune Street I never really realized these came out the same year it never really dawned upon me that like we got like two crossovers with Mario and Square Enix characters at least with Fortune Street this is more uh themed around Dragon Quest there's still some Dragon Quest stuff in Mario Sports Mix but this is all about it Fortune Street is like a really long running Japanese game series and like this is pretty much one of the only times that it came over in North America and it's pretty much entirely because like you know like the Wii was kind of struggling in 201 11 so I think they just thought fck it let's try it out I love that they don't even really refer to Dragon Quest a lot here strike gold on Fortune Street play the market with Mario and friends they're pretty much just advertising this as like a a Mario a Mario Party equivalent I guess you know they do mention Dragon Quest here but it's just kind of strange it's almost like they're trying to hide the fact that this is like Dragon Quest they're just trying to make it be like hey this is this is a Mario game with some weird bastards in here but in 2011 we were still kind of getting that weird Mario funk you know I mean but it was mostly in the form of just like hey like Square Enix was developing these games so yeah that that was just kind of weird we we get some weird crossovers here but then we move into 2012 and I think Mario Party 9 is pretty indicative of when things started to really change because this game is entirely themed around the kind of stuff you'd see in the new Super Mario Brothers games you look back at the previous Mario parties and they got some weird stuff in that like what the is this and that was just Mario Party 8 like that that was right before this and then Mario Party 9 releases and like you know we look at this cover and it's still like you know look at all these things going on here Bowsers in the clown car uh Stars Greenery there's nothing very specific about this it's very much like the Mario characters doing what you would expect them to do in the uh locations you'd expect them to be in and then when you play the game itself like yeah everything looks really nice it's a very polished game but at the same time like the board designs the mini games all of this is the kind of stuff you'd see in a basic new Super Mario Brothers game which hey in 2012 we got basic new Super Mario Brothers games new Super Mario Brothers 2 I do like but my God I don't want to act like there's like nothing interesting or unique or new in New Super Mario 3s 2 but it's a lot of stuff you really have to dig for and even then you know barely any new enemies in fact I don't even think any new enemies it's mostly just like variants of enemies it's like it's a glomba but it's gold now that's that's the new stuff new Super Mario Brothers 2 does it's a really easy game its main gimmick is just oh a lot of coins coins coins coins and they don't really do anything with it however it is fun it is addicting to get the coins but I digress we're talking about Bland Mario ERA this is as Bland as a GS [ __ ] the main thing this introduces is like gold like a gold theme that's it and then we have new Super Mario Brothers U that released uh the same year like like two months later like I guess it introduces more but like barely like it has a new power up you have the acorn suit but like I don't care we got Mario Tennis Open that Year in 2012 and and that was definitely like a little more unique it had some cool courts based on different games like Mario Galaxy and whatnot so you know like that that one was okay uh but yeah 2012 was definitely a year of bland Mario Shenanigans but you know there was still there's still some hope there with something like a Mario Tennis Open never mind Yep this is what solidified it Paper Mario sticker star taking you know a Mario RPG series and stripping uh story and character from you know an RPG and replacing it all with elements you'd see in New Super Mario Brothers like you know oh Bowser Jr in his clown car standard fing toads this was where I think a lot of people started to realize like what was going on with the Mario franchise that was so much of it really did feel like so we can do stuff like Paper Mario Paper Mario Thousand-Year Door Super Paper Mario anymore it's pretty much all like basic ass Mario stuff get get away you wouldn't like this the only thing Paper Mario sticker star is good at as being something for a cat to lean on also the music isn't bad this game has a lot of problems uh specifically when it comes to the game design itself it doesn't care about your time and it doesn't it it it how about this it just doesn't care the game play seems fun at first but then like you realize like uh wow this was not fleshed out enough to really like uh you know hold up a multi-d dozen hour Adventure uh and then like you start to see the cracks of just like well this isn't very intuitive oh this doesn't make a lot of sense and it just wastes your goddamn time with an inventory based battle system there that scared him off but here's the thing Paper Mario sticker star outside of the gameplay problems when comes to the style like graphically it looks fantastic it sounds great too but then you look at the art where it's just like this is just like basic Mario enemies and basic Mario characters just the the same stuff you can always expect from a new Super Mario Brothers game and then you look at something like Paper Mario on the N64 Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door even the weird [ __ ] from Super Paper Mario with its likeing geometry C characters it's still all like new characters that are like specifically for Paper Mario and Thousand-Year Door and all these games like it helped these games stand out it gave these games a unique Vibe character just memorability there's nothing memorable about anything Paper Mario sticker star does character-wise story-wise any of that other than Nintendo allowed the developers to give Mario a helper character Kirsty and she's sucks and later down the line the Paper Mario developers disclosed that like yeah there are mandates from Nintendo of like what they can and can't do in Paper Mario now which is like yeah you got to stick to the basic Mario stuff and I feel like they do allow like hey Mario needs a helper character and like that helper character can only really be in this game and like that's that's what all the Paper Mario games from sticker star onwards for a while did there where it's just like oh Mario gets a helper character and everything resets afterwards like that helper character isn't in the next game like that was sticker star they did that with color splash they did that with the origami King and I just think it's so weird that like Paper Mario is like oh it's Mario but like an an adventure RPG kind of thing with a story but then you you decide like no we can't have major story elements here because that's not what regular Mario's about just like mother this isn't regular Mario this is Paper Mario I don't know I mean you could look past the new Super Mario Brothers ification of like the Mario Party series or the Mario Sports series but Paper Mario is where like this became like super apparent but when we moved into 2013 like it showed that there was still like some hope I guess Luigi's Manion Dark Moon you know bringing back the Luigi's Mansion series you know well series it was one game before and then Dark Moon made it a series and that was really awesome and dark moon it's a it's a fine game you know at the time I I think it was seen as like like wow this is like an amazing like return for Luigi's Mansion but yeah the whole vibe with like oh you have to go to multiple mansions and it's Mission based you know it kind of uh kind of takes away a lot of the charm of Luigi's Mansion to begin with um it makes sense because you know it's a portable game but you know I digress the art style of Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon was very different from the first game you know they go for the super angular style like a retro Halloween aesthetic and that's all fine and good you know I I do think that art style is pretty controversial overall but I I do appreciate that it gives Luigi's Mansion very much its own Vibe compared to the traditional Mario series you know it helps it stand apart and you know Luigi's Mansion is like one of the most popular Mario spin-offs it's crazy to actually think that but like yeah like Luigi's mentioned three sold like nuts so I think the art style changed like hey if you love it or hate it I think it was you know I I think it makes sense it gives it its own Vibe you can prefer the original I think I do prefer the original in many ways but you know I I do respect the art style change but then you look at like the ghost designs in Dark Moon and like that's where the first one had so much personality you had so many different characters in there and now like they're just all like basic ass ghosts so it's like what the hell are we doing here like you can't have have like like unique ghost designs like like what's what the hell thankfully Mario and Luigi Dream Team released in 2013 and that felt like a very typical Mario Luigi game you know you had different characters in that you had a unique story all that stuff it just so happened that I think a lot of people were were kind of burnt out by Dream Team because uh it was very talkative um you know so so you have you have two sides of the coin here you know you have not talkative enough with with like garbage like who gives a [ __ ] story and Mario Luigi Dream Team that just won't won't shut the hell up but then for Mainline Mario we got new Super Luigi U which that who cares and Super Mario 3D World and this is what I think Mario 3D Land should have been in terms of personality and whatnot this is still fairly Bland as far as Mario personality goes but you know it it actually kind of like push things a little forward Bowser has a car I think just seeing like little goofy elements like that uh definitely made this game feel like a light in a in a dark era of of Mario it's still pretty bland All Things Considered you know you compare Mario 3D World to like Mario Galaxy or Mario Odyssey and yeah this is this is very sterile but I think that should show like how starved we were at the time for like unique Mario content the fact that like we were like oh yeah it's aing dinosaur I've never seen that before Mario Kart 8 was phenomenal in 2014 but it largely did like its own thing uh and even then like it it doesn't really have like unique stuff like the award ceremony like they cut that probably because like they were you know they they had to cut something to get the game out in time you know they just have like a little highlight reel instead the menus in Mario Kart 8 are just pretty pretty like basic ass Mario Kart style like Mario Kart 8 is not the focus here but you know I'm just kind of going through all the Mario games from this era Mario Golf World Tour was was pretty all right in terms of like personality still very like basic but you know could have been a lot worse but then I think this is kind of where things started to like slowly get back to where they should be you know Captain Toad treasure Tracker release that was really cool cuz you know that that was just a Flatout prequel to Mario 3D World uh and uh you know they they introduce a lot of cool elements the fact that toad got his own game and it was so cool and interesting hell yeah but then we go right back where we started with stuff like Mario Party 10 just more Mario Party 9 nonsense Bland as hell and then Mario Tennis Ultra smash that game was the product of just not having anything to put out that holiday season on Wii U so Nintendo just rushed out Mario Tennis Ultra smash didn't give a damn about that like yeah that has absolutely nothing you look at Mario's Power Tennis look even Mario Tennis Open on the 3DS a few years prior like it's night and day and then Paper Mario Color Splash so like this released in 2016 right when it was like all right everybody knew this was a problem with with Mario at the time so it was like right front and center how that game just has like all all the NPCs are pretty much just toads not even toads with like unique shirts on like when there's a toad with like glasses on in that game it's like holy [ __ ] I do really enjoy Paper Mario Color Splash but like yeah that that's a big problem in that game but I think by the next year in 2017 when we got Mario odyy and now even like Mario plus rabids Kingdom battle things start to kind of come back back a bit even then you know it was a work in progress Mario plus rabbit's Kingdom battle was just a weird thing that happened but at the same time you know like it it was very based around new Super Mario Brothers but then eventually when we got to like Super Mario Brothers wonder and then the remake of Paper Mario the Thousand-Year Door Super Mario RPG bringing back Mario Strikers even though it was dog [ __ ] when they brought it back you know hey at least you're bringing back Mario Strikers and doing new stuff like Princess Peach Showtime focusing more on the warrior Weare series that was something that kind of went away for a little bit there during this era and even with something like Paper Mario the origami King the problems still were in that game but like you could tell like they were really pushing to like make more unique things go on in that game I think you know we're not completely out of this era but you can see that things are moving in the right direction I think Nintendo has fully acknowledged that Mario in this era was a bit tooo stagnant even in terms of the main series like it wasn't like Mario was really pushing the video game industry as a whole forward like you know he was with Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy or whatever you know keeping Mario in a box enforcing like this super Bland like status quo for every game like it was hurting the series it was something that I felt was born out of the idea that like hey it'll be easier to like sell merchandise or whatever if like all Mario games whether they're spin-offs or main series kind of followed a basic status quo so that way like we can sell aing backpack with a oneup mushroom on it and like if they've played Mario Kart or Mario Party or Paper Mario they know what the a oneup mushroom looks like I don't know but it's like in this era like it was hard to convince people to give a [ __ ] about half of these games also because like a lot of these games weren't very good Mario Sports superstars I'm looking at you but it's good to see I think Nintendo does value kind of being more flexible with the Mario brand doing more new things just having some fun with it because in this era it really felt like not only were the fans not having as much fun with the games but Nintendo themselves they weren't having as much fun making them you know what thankfully these days I think we're safe from the dfic of Mario

Channel: Scott's Stash

Views: 293,282

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Id: 6MAYUPmoROM

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024