SUPER MARIO RPG: The Lost Legacy of the Legend | GEEK CRITIQUE

so picture this one day you see this box setting on the shelf at blockbuster video the year is 1996 and you're eight years old you have absolutely no concept of what this is because rpgs are incredibly knit outside of japan but you sure as heck know who this is [Music] now you're young enough that you have no personal memory of the nes and while mario games may be fun you don't really see them with the reverence that the older kids do still the dude's so synonymous with gaming that even your parents know who he is so there's no way you're not gonna play a game with him in it the stage is set and you know how these mario games go by now yes bowser's kidnapped the princess yes mario's gotta go rescue her and you're already there the game gives you control for the first time just as mario sets foot on bowser's doorstep huh but you don't really even get to process how odd it is to be starting here with the castle level before you encounter some bad guys try to jump on one because you know that's kind of how it works in every game you've ever played and what you jumped on an enemy and it didn't die it wiped to a completely different screen and now there are three of them and they're all just just standing there hanging out walking in place what's this what's this what is wait you know what that is aha jump jump i mean that's what you were trying to do in the first place but yeah but now you can't move ah your number went down okay so they make your numbers go down and you make theirs go down each face button always corresponds to an action the interface only displays information when it's relevant it doesn't confuse or overwhelm you with like an abundance of numbers basically it's so intuitive that even if you're eight years old and have never experienced turn-based combat before you can still figure it out after a single hallway of guards and a straight walk over a lava lake you come to a chandelier room this awesome remix of the final battle theme from mario 3 kicks up and it's time to clean bowser's clock but toadstool fills you in you're actually aiming for his chain ah yes of course mario can just hang in mid-air over the chasm and throw a punch like seven feet away to damage the chain uh also the game just taught you that you can target different things in battle and you probably didn't even notice that well the combat presented a bit of a learning curve but hey bowser's been foiled again the princess is saved and i gotta say that vacation came a lot easier than the last one as well at insville right [Music] the discordant image of an impossibly enormous sword sheathed into a castle is everything to this game it represents both the inciting incident and the goal you're working toward it's the symbol of everything that went wrong and everything that you need to set right it dominates at the top of the world map appears all over the game's packaging and marketing and even permanently scars the title screen super mario rpg is not a very serious game but it presents this moment and the threat that it implies with absolute sincerity hours from now when mario's tasting a madman of a mountain and hopping over barrels it's still there looming over the horizon don't forget what happened don't forget what you're fighting for and that's the tone in a nutshell the epic air of a more traditional rpg always hangs in the periphery but it's juxtaposed against the light-hearted whimsy of a mario game a case in point the sword freaking talks well of course its name is exor and it says that this episode of the geek critique is sponsored by you guys back tgc at patreon.com geek critique to get early access to videos hang out with me in an exclusive discord chat and get behind the scenes content thank you to all my supporters i literally couldn't do any of this without you okay xor actually explains via slightly clunky slightly very obviously translated from japanese exposition that this represents the first conquest of the smithy gang an invading race of sentient weaponry then xor collapses the bridge to bowser's keep and not even mario can jump that far so if we can't go this away yeah we'll have to go that away this game doesn't feature a contiguous world map like many square games of its era instead areas are segmented into points on a world map it's kind of like stages in a platformer and how about that it is the same concept be the level unlock the next one progress onward but while some areas are built like mario action stages with goombas and koopa troopers and light platforming an rpg also needs its traditional towns rest stops and yes kingdoms for as many castles as mario had taken down to this point this is the first time the games had ever depicted the central hub of the mushroom kingdom we'd never actually seen where princess toadstool and her subjects live when bowser's not like turning everyone into bricks there's a couple who are going off to get married soon a shopkeep who's hilariously particular about following rpg conventions and a little kid who just hero works mario for his bravery his fortitude and no it's just his jumping ability as was the style of the time mario is a silent protagonist through and through but he's not just an empty vessel for the player the game sort of centers his jumping ability as his calling card over and over awestruck citizens will demand to know if you really are mario and how do you prove it the games you've played the battles mario's waged those events are canon to this game and that kind of legacy isn't something that a pure platformer would really have room to show mario's reputation precedes him he's already a renowned hero in this world but there's also something kind of like endearingly outdated about the way mario is portrayed here like there's the sequence where mario sneaks into a villain's palace by disguising himself as a statue a piece called a plumber's lament observe the thick mustache covering the sad innocent smile of a simple fool yeah i don't know if nintendo would describe their mascot that way these days mario is simple sure but he's always portrayed first and foremost as this determined but jubilant ultimate icon of video games but back in the before times nintendo tended to emphasize their mascot as more of a blue collar every man this is a subtle difference i know but like he's not even a plumber anymore but in any era mario is still a flat character he's a steadfast determined hero but it's not like he's gonna have an arc rather his actions affect the characters he interacts with and nobody has more of an arc than mallow when you first meet malo he's almost the inverse of mario he claims to be a frog but he literally can't jump when a chunky purple-free wagon named croco steals his money mallow's not strong enough or courageous enough or good at jumping enough to get it back oh he wants to be brave but when putch comes to shove he just bursts into tears and when mallow cries so too do the clouds mallow can control the weather you know like frogs do but mario is everything he's not strong brave good at jumping and so mario takes this very definitely absolutely a tadpole under his wing and this says something it might have seemed obvious to have someone we know as mario's first partner the series even then had no shortage of characters to pull from but we put a ton of spotlight this early in the game on someone new and in fact the first two party members we get are unique to this game having broken the mario formula to start square front loaded the game this way to help it stand out and to ensure that it would have its own identity in combat mario and malo are complementary in their contrast mario's usual role in an ensemble is the jack of all trades master of none but here he's more of a direct damage specialist and an absolute master of that trade his attacks are powerful his specials are deadly he's always useful always solid always super andy better be because he is the one character that you can never take out of the party his one sort of weakness is an inability to damage multiple enemies at once until late in the game mello then starts as a little weak sauce crybaby whose fists are made out of cotton balls and constantly needs healing and pick-me-ups but he's also a weather-controlling demigod who can strike down the entire enemy team in a single flash of lightning nalo has a niche gimmicky special moves with unique but extremely useful functions those specials by the way run on flower points which function as a shared pool between all your party members but you don't get more fp by leveling up you get more fp by exploring the world talking to people and most importantly playing the hero it's a great way to incentivize the player to role play as mario however mallow doesn't jump mario doesn't summon a giant snowman mallow doesn't blast fireballs what might be customizable in another game are exclusive character powers in this one aside from choosing a level up bonus these three slots are all the customization you get and you know that was more than enough for someone who'd never played an rpg before customizable equipment was and is a hallmark of the genre but it wasn't exactly common in games outside of it but the first action area has a mini boss a pair of hammer brothers and when you beat them mario rpg shines an enormous spotlight on the fact that one of their hammers got left behind it gives context to a weapon upgrade at this point the more thoughtful player might open up the menu and see what they can do with that hammer huh mario can use this and now his attack's completely different and way stronger and don't worry if you're like me and you're not more thoughtful mario rpg still clues you in later with a couple of exceptions both weapons and armor become more powerful in a linear fashion there's not much in the way of trade-offs to consider our strategy to employ mario's punch glove is a straight upgrade from the knock knock shell nallow's mega pants are for bigger boys than the thick pants i get why you'd want to keep things simple but armor upgrades in particular wind up feeling a little bit arbitrary you find a new shop buy slightly better stuff for everyone swap the equipment around and sell all the old stuff it works sure it's just very you know standard i do have to commend the interface for being so well designed though you can manage your equipment without ever leaving the shop menu but that third slot accessories that's a different story while some can be bought they're much more often rewards for optional challenges and exploration some of them are your standard charms to prevent status effects but you've also got accessories that double your coins or experience shoes that let mario jump on any enemy and one that'll make a noise when you're on a screen with a hidden chest accessories aren't that deep or anything but they do give you a wider range of options to consider without overwhelming you with choice and this may well be the game's modus operandi to streamline the complexity of an rpg into the accessibility of an action platformer balancing the depth of one with the wider appeal of the other the approach to status effects is another good example no matter what else yeah whether it's poison sleep or being turned into a scarecrow a single item called able juice is always the cure and considering you've got limited inventory space and items do not stack that's a relief this also means there's a layer of strategy in considering what items to keep and when to use them but only a layer status effects are cured at the end of battle yeah even this one woo he's not dead once you belt croco and get malo's money back it's time to head back to the mushroom kingdom uh-oh this once again is a case of mario rpg framing its antagonists as a threat what was this bouncy happy beacon of toadstool's sovereignty is now under siege by the smithy gang the quirky charming townsfolk now cower in their homes terrorized by these creepy bouncing shysters are sometimes not so terrorized come on kid i thought i was your hero all this doom and gloom has been robbed by one of smithy's lieutenants a sentient knife called mack who has of course taken the throne room if the symbol of everything you're fighting against is a giant sword then it's kind of funny that the first smithy ganger you fight is a comparatively speaking teeny tiny knife although back in 96 i thought this was that i mean look he crashed down the same way and everything i guess he just got smaller i was a dumb kid the knife is sent to the afterlife and he left behind a star oh let me just pick it up here i'll hmm [Music] if i didn't know better i'd say this thing was important even though we have no idea what these stars are or why they're significant the game sure goes out of its way to make it clear that they are it'll be quite a while before we find out why but first we've gotta head to tadpole pond and find out that mallow is not a tadpole well no doy sorry do people not say that anymore we said it a lot in 96. mellow floated down the river in a basket when he was a baby and an old man turtle kermit named frogfuchs took him in really this game is overflowing with japanese pop culture references that no american kid back then would have caught but now the only frogther figure malu has ever known tells him it's time to go out into the world and find his real family and nalo puts on a brave face attaboy a little way down the road at the rosetown inn mario walks in on a kid named gazz playing mario with his toys jazz wants you as mario to play mario while playing mario but he's gonna play as his favorite toy a doll named chino as a kid myself at the time i found this scene so relatable gaz's excitement his mom's dumb grown-up concerns the nostalgic music that's oh hang on i've got something in my eye this never fails to make me smile gino's gonna finish the fight with a shooting star shot and uh whoa mario who let's remember can get diced charged and crushed and keep on fighting just got koed by a toy add doll packs a wallop that night an otherworldly presence visits the end light shines down from the heavens and geno is real hmm and the scene plays over a remix of the star piece collection theme from earlier what could it mean the doll stumbles walking around on two legs for the first time and slams headfirst into the stairs then leaves without a word the next morning gaz tells his mom that he saw geno going into the forest she reacts like the cynical boring adult with no imagination that she is but he swears it's true could gaza's favorite toy have really come to life and run off into the woods yeah we just saw it happen pay attention fortunately though exiting the forest is super simple super mario rpg was composed by yoko shimamura who considers this game to be a turning point in what would become an exceptionally distinguished career to say the least it's easy to see why her score lives up to square's pedigree it remixes several of koti kondo's iconic classics it incorporates those classics into its own light motifs expanding on mario's world it uses repetition to set the scene the first time you hear this song the mushroom kingdom is under siege the second time arrows are raining down on rosetown the third time nothing is outwardly wrong but this song has been so effectively linked with trouble in paradise that just stepping foot in seaside town is unsettling the fact that everyone's pretending nothing's wrong makes it even worse here's this guy standing on the desk questioning the integrity of the artificial world in which he's trapped but of course beware the forest's mushrooms is the most famous piece of music in the game this song flips the usual tone on its head mario rpg is mostly whimsical fun with an air of mystery that you never quite put away but the forest maze music is more thoughtful more spiraling more introspective but it's still grounded in mario's world the epic tone is backed by this buoyant bass line so reminiscent of the one that plays back in the mushroom kingdom the whole soundtrack is excellent but this is a masterpiece among masterpieces and it hasn't aged a day since 96. unfortunately the same probably can't be said for these and i quote excellent 3d graphics the characters look like balloon animals the environments look like dithered plastic everything's built out of grainy images with the pixels just indecipherably melding into each other did anyone really think this looked good okay yeah i thought this game looked good because it freaking did here's the thing this is not what old school video games looked like it's how they're remembered it's how they look if you play them now it's even how new retro throwback games look but it's not what they look like at the time no they looked more like this the signal degradation inherent to video standards of the time combined with the scan lines of a crt television to hide pixels to blend gradients to make fake transparency look real you can actually see every single pixel which means it looks nothing like it did uh back in the 90s those those hash patterns are actually on on the televisions of the day would have blurred together into very nice gradients when you see an old-school game on a modern tv you can count every individual pixel but really this razor-sharp quality isn't such an issue for pixel art i mean it's become the accepted default look of old school games for a reason it might not be what they were quote unquote supposed to look like but it's got a lot of charm however if you put a game that was pre-rendered on an acm workstation in the mid-90s on a modern display it just doesn't work anymore these assets look like low resolution pictures because that's literally what they are and being able to see every pixel exposes all their imperfections critics at the time might have chided yoshi's island for not being modern enough but in the long run these cutting-edge vehicles emblematic of the mid-90s haven't held up as well and this is a big reason why i don't normally care for scanline filters but with a game like this it really does make a difference now mario looks like a rounded 3d character instead of a mass of messy colored blocks now the environment blends together so much more believably now the game looks like it's supposed to but i'm not going to keep it like this kind of afraid of what youtube's encoder would do to a scamline filter but hey give it a try the next time you play a pre-rendered game geno whose real name is this is a guardian from the heavens you kind of get the feeling there's a lot he can't tell you but he's not malicious about it that first scene where we see him learning to walk is a great indication of what makes him so charming kino might be a benevolent vessel of the gods but the vessel he's inhabiting is a wooden doll the style and timing of gino's attacks are unique to him and as we saw earlier that doll packs a punch with perfect timing geno world can one hit ko anything that's not a boss geno boost massively buffs both attack and defense geno flash sees him backflip turn into a cannon and just he is the fastest flashiest and hardest hitting member of the team but that marionette he calls a body can't take a lot of hits he's a glass cannon square really broke the mold when they made this character there's no one else quite like him no better icon of mario rpg itself and no one left for smash brothers that would mean quite as much to me but heck even if it never happens i'll just be happy somebody remembers a mega smilex as much as this game builds on mario's lore it's the way square blends those iconic elements with brand new characters and concepts that defines this game's legacy gino meanwhile defines the game's overarching narrative he explains that far above the sky there exists a place called the star road where wishes are granted but when that sword pierced the heavens the star road was shattered and witches can no longer be fulfilled so now the goal is clear collect the seven stars repel smithy's invasion restore the star road what gino reveals here is the actual legend of the seven stars and it's not revealed until you're a third of the way into the game the plot keeps you in the dark for hours building a sense of mystery and suspense but just as importantly this decision keeps the game's pacing from getting bogged down with exposition the embodiment of this legend is star hill a place caught between hope and melancholy bizarre star-shaped flowers dot the landscape enormous celestial doors cut out of the ground at unnatural angles the terrain itself is otherworldly littered with fallen stars each one representing a wish that has gone unfulfilled you can even eavesdrop on some of these wishes highlighting the innermost desires of even the most obscure characters seriously though it's wild how based on a single line you'll know who it came from it's another one of those things that reminds you of what's gone wrong with this world and the familiarity you have with the people living there pushes you forward to fix it one which even comes from a member of the party and that's a cute little character beat [Music] but it turns out to be a disarming one because in the very next area oh this is so well done mallow holds back his tears he's always trying to do the right thing but he still struggles with himself but this time when push comes to shove he puts on a brave face he grows as a person and eventually the star road doesn't make his wish come true he makes it come true and when he finally meets his parents it rains in a city above the clouds i'm not saying this is some kind of landmark story but standards become standards for a reason as a kid playing this for the first time i had never seen a game with such a strong narrative focus mallow's struggle growth and redemption made him so much more compelling now i know the fact that i was so young has a lot to do with why i see him this way but that doesn't make it sting any less that this was the only game he ever appeared in [Music] bowser is junked from his role as the main villain and left with no koopa troop to command you run into him trying to rebuild his army early on but those numbers dwindle until mario finds his arch enemy completely alone and in literal tears over how much he misses his castle how much he misses his crew and how much he misses the good old days and so for the first time in the series bowser teams up with the good guys that sort of in his mind he didn't join mario's party mario joined his just like mario's the established hero bowser is the abominable villain everyone's terrified of him on principle however bowser's brutish bossy attitude is written as a front for his insecurities which is not only hilarious it's endearing he revels in brute force but writes a literal haiku about how misunderstood he feels in his own internal monologue it's no coincidence that this blustering wannabe tough guy portrayal of the character would stick in future mario rpgs and even in the main series and it's a good thing bowser is characterized so well because when it comes to his actual in-game utility bowser kinda sucks on paper he's a tank he's got great physical strength and a deep pool of hp he also has a propensity for throwing his subordinates around but his other stats leave a lot to be desired and his high hp only does so much to offset his meddling defense he might be able to hit hard but he's so slow he also only gets four special moves and while a few of them can invoke status effects the game is easy enough that strategy like that isn't really necessary super mario brothers was barely a decade old but the fact that every single game seemed to share that game's plot was already becoming a joke so mario rpg turns it into a running gag like bowser has kidnapped toadstool so many times at this point that it's become routine there are lots of fun jokes about this but my favorite one is more subtle mario's house is literally at the foot of bowser's keep positioned squarely between it and the mushroom kingdom guess he figured he could save some time on his commute but after she's rescued at the midpoint of the game toad still insists that she's coming along to help and she sneaks out of the castle it's cool to see the princess get out of that damsel in distress role and carry some agency but it is only some agency she doesn't really have much of a role to play from here in fact by the time she joins the party she only actually has seven unique lines of dialogue left in the whole game but you know that actually kind of mirrors our protagonists doesn't it her personality isn't nearly as well defined as bowser's but it doesn't have to be while everyone else has an intrinsic motivation and some degree of an arc mario and toadstool are helping because they're the good guys and does she ever help she helps a lot too much while her defensive stats may leave something to be desired it's simple enough to buff that with armor and accessories and they're not so lacking that she'd ever become a liability but she is exceptional at one thing toadstool is what i gleam rpg fans would call a white mage and her healing comes with absolutely no drawbacks her two healing spells will both pretty much always max out your hp cure all status ailments cost next to nothing to use oh and she starts with both of them this basically means that from the moment you get toadstool you should have a chance to heal your entire party to full health on every turn she quite frankly breaks what little balance there was in the battle system alright dusty look there's a tremendous difference in the way you approach a game you know from one that you don't especially especially if it's something you've been playing since you were very young and as someone who values replayability so much i've never really gotten that experience of coming back to an old favorite after a long time i replay my favorite game so much they never fade to memory but that amount of familiarity with the game is inevitably going to skew my perspective on it speaking of which the isometric viewpoint was disorienting to players even in 96 but i've played this game for so many decades it doesn't bother me oh and i would definitely have some pointed criticism at how easy it is to get lost in places like the kiro sewers if i didn't know this labyrinth like the back of my hand like a lot of rpgs of this era combat can be slow paced especially late in the game when you just have to wait while hordes of enemies throw flashy specials at you but like i always go into it expecting that so this probably isn't as easy of a game as i think it is trying to see it from a new player's perspective especially at kids i gotta think that toadstool is the way she is for a reason mario rpg gets a lot more challenging after you find the princess that difficulty curve is going to fly higher and higher and i know for a fact that as a kid with no rpg experience having toadstool to lean on was the only reason i was able to break through a lot of that challenge my first time playing i mean she still didn't stop me from getting stuck because it's not like i know where to find 60 flower points by the time i get to her the way i do now so is a slightly more seasoned gamer now of course toadstool was opie as heck to me but he's also sort of an optional easy mode i got no problem putting her on the bench come to think of it i guess bowser might be the same thing his strong physical stats make him a safer alternative to geno i mean it makes sense this was the party that i gravitated toward when i was a kid [Music] mario rpg might streamline the genre's conventions but it always does this with a thoughtful approach that doesn't overly diminish their depth or appeal but so far removed from the context of the time it may not be obvious why mario rpg took this approach like i said at the top of the episode to put it mildly rpgs were niche in 1996. today squares games are thought of as these paragons of the super nintendo's legacy but platformers and fighting games ruled the mid 90s with an iron fist nintendo power's review of the game even tried to downplay the term rpg they knew it was a tough sell and i guess it was in mario rpg's first month on the us market it sold 200 000 copies and even that was worth bragging about and that's why the game is designed the way it is it assumes players will be familiar with this but not necessarily that and i'm living proof that it worked while this may be baby's first rpg i was baby and it was my first key despite that i could not only wrap my head around it i fell head over heels for it mario is inherently an action game so that's what his physics and controls are modeled on tap b to jump hold wider run and that makes this a lot faster than your standard role-playing protagonist in an era where it seemed like platformers were the default genre of gaming this made mario rpg so much more familiar and approachable to me than yeah that would have been to this day it feels a little weird if a game doesn't have a jump button but running and jumping is hardly the only thing to do outside of battle mario rpt is absolutely bursting with mini-games breaking up the traditional rpg game loop with a breath of variety most of the minigames are tied in nicely to the overarching plot but not only can they be replayed they even offer incentive to do so for instance the first time you climb booster hill you're just pursuing the ticular madman but on a replay you can catch beetles and trade them in for prizes oh and then there's this weird optional area called the pipe vault it's really strange you can skip it entirely and go onto the next screen but hang on the freaking map is teasing there's something beneath it so if we venture down here we find a traditional side-scrolling platformer level built-in mario rpg's 3d isometric perspective this feels really experimental like something the team might have prototyped during development just to see how the engine would handle it pushing through the pipe vault gets us to yoster isle actually this is endemic of the game's localization what we call yochi's island has a more colorful name in japan but we weren't so concerned with maintaining brand consistency back in the 90s which means that in this game a number of mario staples get more direct translations or even brand new names super mario rpg was localized by the legendary ted woolsey and in fact it would be his last game script to date i use that term with intention just as much as i bring him up with affection this script wasn't translated it was localized typical of woozy's style the dialogue has so much personality and color i wouldn't want to change a thing i mean i learned a lot of colloquialisms from it but typical of this era the context when it comes to game mechanics can be a little bit off for more on that let's get back to yoaster isle when you first arrive talking to any of the yoshi's just makes them go but there's one guy who goes like it turns out that boshie here has become a dominant dictator of the island races everyone wants to race together but he insists it's gotta be one-on-one against him so you've gotta beat him in a race by tapping a and b in time with the rhythm however there are no on-screen prompts whatsoever and the game commits quite a localization hiccup while conveying what you're actually supposed to do press a and b alternately along with the rhythm the tighter the rhythm the faster you go i always read this as you the player will need to tap the buttons faster when the rhythm speeds up but the u isn't referring to you it's referring to your character and i never understood that until i was writing the script actually a better translation might be something like this press a and b alternatively in time with the rhythm the better your timing the faster yoshi will go maybe i'd read it differently if i was playing it for the first time now but i just couldn't wrap my head around this one i basically won just by spamming cookies bookie is the best part of this whole thing he is to yoshi what wario is to mario i mean literally his japanese name is watching his design is so over the top and he's not really a bad guy but he's a competitive brash tryhard who even after he's defeated tells you to raise someone slow so you can win basing an entire arc of the story on yochi's island would have been so cool unfortunately yoster isle turns out to just be a very flavorful side quest but you know it's alright it gave us some more fun characters and importantly for the legacy of the internet it also gave us disguise i'm glad yot's made it into this game also i love how even a race of dinosaurs on a secluded island still receives spam mail alright one more mini game to talk about if you backtrack to the mushroom kingdom late in the game you can buy this kid's game boy off of him for 500 coins it doesn't tie into the plot there's no incentive to play it it's just a bonus for looking around the game does this a lot it's sort of endearingly experimental it goes on weird little tangents in a way that the meticulously designed docked industry of today usually can't get away with as enjoyable as the game is outside of battle how can mario rpg maintain the feel of an action game through something as indirect as turn-based combat well you better watch out because i'm talking about time tips every move in your arsenal can be substantially improved with a well-timed press of the attack button so check out this dopey little punch but now once more with timing just the visuals the sharp sound effect everything just snaps it's so simple and yet it's so freaking satisfying and defense works the same way you can time blocks to reduce damage there's even a surprising amount of nuance to this you can partially whiff a hit and still improve an attack still reduce some damage or you can get it frame perfect nail a mucked harder or even cut off damage entirely mario rpg appealed to my action-oriented tastes on such a fundamental level the fact that this taught me what an rpg was supposed to be kind of ruined the way i would approach the rest of the genre in something like this i'm just selecting moves from a list and watching them play out but with this it's like i'm actually involved i'm actually doing something my skill is making a difference and you know how important that is to me it's not like it's hard it's not like it shouldn't matter but it's just enough to trick my dumb brain into thinking i'm actually doing something so can you imagine what it was like to be taught that an rpg was supposed to present its battles like this and then to play something more traditional and have this keep happening over and over and over again mario rpg features no random battles you touch an enemy on the overworld you start a battle the game never just yanks you out of what you're doing and puts you in combat i think random battles can have a place and a function but for my tastes the lack of them makes this game so much less tedious and importantly more replayable mario rpg accommodates lower level runs jumping and weaving your way between enemies and smashing through bosses on the back of your own skill and also how insanely op mario's jump can get but there is one case where you can defeat enemies without actually fighting them item boxes very occasionally contain star men which function exactly like they do in mario's mainline games but you're not just knocking these enemies off the map you're one-hit ko-ing mobs you'd normally have to fight in turn-based combat and banking the same experience for it mario and pals can level up off of invincibility which is another nice way to marry action platformers with rpgs to that end it is notable that the game starts out throwing you in the deep end putting you in turn-based battles without bothering to explain how they work and trusting the game design itself will be enough for you to at least get your bearings but once you get to more complex concepts the game steps in and has toad explained things item usage hit points inventory management and this sets a precedent toad will always be there to shed some light on a new concept however he always does this and i can't stress this enough optionally maybe you've played the game a dozen times before maybe you're familiar with how rpgs work and don't need it explained maybe you just want to figure it out for yourself whatever the case may be mario rpg always gives you the option to skip the tutorial future games would not always abide by these ideals this also goes for progression i mean let's not overstate this the map screen is linear so it's not usually a mystery where you could go next but still when you see a trio of snippets talking about someone named booster who's taken a hostage described as the princess who fell from the sky mallow doesn't pop out of your party here and go hey mario do you think maybe that princess could possibly maybe be toadstool we better go back to the map screen and check it out huh no the tutorializing is over the game trusts you you know what to do spend literally all your money on fireworks then immediately trade them all to a little girl for a shiny rock yeah also you can always get a hint from frog food just if you do get lost it's good it's good the game actually spins an entire arc on booster the character's most obvious analog is wario but where wario is greedy lazy and obsessed with becoming rich booster was born rich the seventh generation of his family line he spent his whole life here in this tower playing games with his snippets and a lady type falling from the sky is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him yet despite his opulence and despite his antagonistic role he's not exactly a villain he's not really bad on purpose booster is just incredibly ignorant incredibly lacking in social graces and incredibly unhinged he's another great character who was only ever in one game you know mario rpg gave me so many weirdly specific but like extremely formative memories like at one point you're supposed to use clues to decode a password unfortunately these clues were all fairly obtuse and i was eight so how did nintendo want me to figure out this impossible puzzle call the nintendo tips hotline for only 199 per minute and they say microtransactions are recent but how did i learn the password was pearls for the first time i used the so-called information super highway to beat a game and that's why you don't have tips hotlines anymore i'd also never seen a game be so self-aware it plays with the conventions of its platform its series its genre and even the medium of video games themselves you know how your party members and rpgs will just like disappear into your player character other rpgs do this as a matter of convenience and while i'm sure that's why this game does it too it seems to be the case in universe that mario's friends are in his pockets who are okay there's an optional sequence where you can stay in a luxury resort hotel but if you stay too long and can't pay off your room mario is forced to work to pay off his tab and now you're the one showing the room you're the one hoping for a tip but moreover the game isn't afraid to lock you here you can't leave you can't take a break you can't escape you're at work a couple might come in argue talk to the receptionist bicker at each other go look at the room come back down bicker again leave the hotel gala that right back into the hotel and you just have to stand there walking in place with a smile on your face like the disposable unimportant non-player character you are capitalism sometimes mario rpg even makes references outside of gaming here's what happens when you find the sixth star piece now remember a player will have seen this sequence five times by this point the star twinkles and spins that triumphant music sweeps in and the axem rangers freaking steal it to see a video game so directly so unabashedly parody something that i actually knew something that i was obsessed with something every kid i knew was obsessed with was one of those things that caused me to rush out of the house run down the street and tell my friends no really dude you have to come over they're making fun of power rangers in a mario game of course i didn't know it at the time the developers were probably referring to their own childhood not mine it might have been new in the west but super sentai the show that saban adapted into power rangers had been running in japan since 1975 and i noticed this time the bass line in the axon rangers theme sounds a whole lot like an early sentai theme but if i want to talk about formative memories this room is kind of the epitome of it it's just two ledges and a curtain but when mario goes behind it this happens [Music] you can run around this room all you like but as soon as you try to leave [Music] it's a cool little easter egg right it was so much more to me for some reason i loved this i had a specific safe slot just for this just so i could come see it again why i was too little for the nes my mario one didn't even look like this it looked like this and yet something about the low fidelity music the flat 2d art that even on a crt looked like something from a bygone age the fact that i knew the game was referencing some ancient version of itself just fascinated me 25 years later i think i know why i loved it so much i can be positively obsessive about charting analyzing and understanding the ebbs and flows the iterations and the chronology of the things that i love i love the way settings and character designs change the way the tone and timbre of a long-running franchise evolves over time evolves with the times i love legacy i think that's why a lot of things that some others despise as like nostalgia pandering will hit different for me i mean i love being pandered too as much as the next guy don't get me wrong but i'll find this stuff fascinating for things i'm not even a fan of and video games by the grace of their interactivity the persistence of long-running franchises and the progression of the technology that powers them tend to evolve change grow iterate and reflect back like nothing else can the player is always perched atop the fourth wall and for the most part that's more compelling than fiction to me i was a little tiny baby child who'd come in at the tail end of 16 bit i'd completely missed the initial mario phenomenon of the 80s so to me this was all that mario was and i liked it but it always seemed a little bit vanilla a little bit fundamental a little bit basic compared to my favorite games i know now how revolutionary these titles really were but i lacked the context back then to see them that way but when mario went behind that curtain it was the first time i had ever seen a game break through the fourth wall and celebrate its own legacy as a video game this was mario's final appearance on the super nintendo it was one of the last games i played before the next generation hit and it has always felt to me like an epilogue for the 16-bit era and speaking of epilogues mario and his friends do liberate bowser's keep they do confront exor and ultimately here come the spoilers they repel smithy and find all seven stars with his mission fulfilled the entity we've been calling geno leaves gaza's favorite toy behind and invokes the power of the seven stars to restore the star road and with that [Music] so and then we get to see what becomes of everyone bowser rebuilding his castle mallow taking his place in the kingdom characters major and minor finding their peace 25 years later there's something simultaneously heartwarming and kind of heartbreaking about all this in too many cases this would be the final glimpse we'd ever have of these characters i feel like there's so much more i wanted to say the truth is for so many reasons this script has been one of the most challenging i've ever written it's been a tough year and i don't need to tell you why with everything going on it hasn't always been easy to find the motivation to keep pushing forward and i have at times struggled with whether i even had it in me to talk about a game like this gameplay skill mastery and all that stuff is always paramount for me and i worried i might not be able to convey why i love a game like this i still don't know if i've done a good enough job but i do know that at 4 30 in the morning i finished this game and saw this ending for the first time in at least a decade i remember childhood best friends who i haven't seen in twice as long i remember playing this with them how much we loved this game how many times i'd replay the last boss just so i could see the ending again i loved it so much i even recorded it on a video this game and this experience was important to me before this mario was just another game i enjoyed playing but in one fell swoop i had characters i could invest in a deeper world to obsess over a legacy to learn about and before that i didn't know that was something a video game could do by itself mario rpg is the reason i became a fan of this series i finally understood the pedigree of nintendo's mascot why he was so beloved why he was so important and what his world was all about this was my mario this was my favorite mario game for about four months mario rpg came out in may but in september mario changed forever suddenly princess toadstool had a first name suddenly this wasn't her castle this was suddenly mario was not a blue-collar hero from brooklyn he was a whimsical screaming italian i can't imagine it any other way now super mario 64 might have presented a different vision of mario's world but it was a billion times more influential this was a last minute release in a niche genre on a dying console but this was the standard against which we would judge every 3d game over the course of the next generation less than a year later square and nintendo went their separate ways and all of a sudden rpgs weren't so niche anymore all of a sudden an upstart console that nobody expected to seriously compete with sega and nintendo wasn't just competing the playstation was winning this marked an era of revolution after revolution after revolution landmark titles would redefine genres redefine the boundaries of what a game could be by the end of that generation everyone knew games could tell compelling stories could feature rich world building could be about more than just gameplay platformers changed forever rpgs changed forever adventure games changed forever horror games changed forever video games changed forever but this one stayed the same so what's become of this collaboration between two of gaming's super powers what is the legacy of the game that taught me about legacy while it would be a bridge much too far to it he was a mario game of all things of falling into obscurity the evolution of the industry in the years since its release makes it very much a product of its specific moment in time there's no other year that mario rpg could have come out being what it was games weren't like this before in 1996 and they would never be like this again and that's not always easy to reconcile nostalgia will make you love the games that you grew up with on a deeper level than anyone else could but you'll love them in a way that no one else will and that's okay be aware of your biases and embrace the positives that this nostalgic perspective brings you just don't be surprised if later entries in the series don't live up to your childhood memories or when people a little younger or a little older don't see them the way that you do i'm glad i get to have the perspective that i do and i'll always be thankful that i got to experience mario rpg the way i did at the time i did i think its most ardent fans carry that torch all these years later specifically because so much of what made it special the tone it struck the world it presented the characters introduced were one game wonders absence makes the heart grow fonder outside of a few cameos references and delusional wishful thinking on my part they've never returned there never was a direct sequel and more than likely there never will be but it sure did look like it was gonna happen the very next year i remember seeing this i played the first game when i was eight i just turned to nine and already super mario rpg two was on its way and you can see that episode right now a week early over the tgc patreon thank you all so much for watching and until next time you keep geeking i'll keep cru taken you

Channel: The Geek Critique

Views: 156,485

Keywords: The Geek Critique, TGC, Geek Critique, Josh Wallen, mario rpg, mario, super mario rpg, legend of the seven stars, geno, mallow, super nintendo, snes, review, analysis

Id: -X9bHursFE4

Length: 50min 15sec (3015 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ukulelej]

TGC really outdid himself for this episode. SMRPG is truly special, I finally got a chance to play it when it came to VC on the Wii, and it definitely lived up to the hype.

[u/Thoraxekicksazz]

I have wanted a sequel to Mario RPG for years.

[u/AStoryInTheEnd]

Good on you, more people needs to watch his content!! Can’t wait for next episode.