Mario is the most successful video game franchise
of all time. I mean, unless you count success outside of
games, then it’s Pokémon, but if all you’re considering is game sales, then nothing beats
Mario. as such, the Mario franchise needs no introduction. the internet contains a plethora of analyses
of this franchise, from Donkey Kong to Luigi’s Mansion 3. there are countless video essays explaining
Mario’s iconic design, the elegance of World 1-1, the unforgettable music of composers
like Koji Kondo and Mahito Yokota. there is a bottomless pit of speculation on
the series lore, fruitless attempts to piece together a coherent timeline, and really bad
jokes about how mushrooms are drugs. it would make sense to assume that there is
no brick block left unturned when it comes to the Mario games. we appear to be living in a golden age for
video game analysis, so surely, for a franchise as popular as Mario, every game worth analyzing
has already been thoroughly analyzed. there is, however, one game, which, on paper,
should be considered one of the most important games in the franchise. after all, it was the debut of one of the
main characters of the series! its title is at the heart of the word salad “New Super
Mario Bros. U Deluxe”. and yet, most gamers seem to be unaware that it even exists, and
even people who know of it generally don’t know anything about it or why it’s important. I am talking, of course, about Mario Bros.
no, not that one. I’m jan Misali, and this is an analysis
of the original Mario Bros. part one: who is Mario? if you know what game I’m talking about
already, you might see the length of this video and wonder exactly how I’m going to
be able to spend that long discussing it. the answer is that I want to provide an appropriate
amount of context for the game before getting into the analysis itself. in order to fully appreciate the game’s
story (and, yes, the original Mario Bros. does have a story) it will be necessary to
first understand its main protagonists, starting with Mario. Mario is often described as a “blank slate”
protagonist. he has very few defining personality traits. Mario is happy all the time, and he is vaguely
implied to be brave and heroic. that’s it. Mario isn’t really a character, but rather
an empty vessel for players to control. this is far from a bad thing. while Mario games often tell stories, the
story is never the point. even explicitly story-driven games like The
Thousand Year Door are orders of magnitude more interested in providing fun and engaging
gameplay than they are with exploring Mario’s psyche. let’s try to get an understanding of who
he is anyway though, just for fun. at the very least, it will be useful to see who Mario
was as a character in 1983 at the point the original Mario Bros. was released. while today Mario has appeared in hundreds
of games, at that time, Mario had only appeared in five games, by my count. part two: Donkey Kong on July 9th, 1981, a game called Donkey Kong
was released in Japanese arcades, kicking off the Mario franchise. we all know the story. Nintendo made a game called Radar Scope, which
didn’t sell as well as they expected, so they had a bunch of extra arcade cabinets,
so Shigeru Miyamoto was tasked with designing a more appealing game that they could put
in all those cabinets instead. he wanted to make a Popeye game, but couldn’t
get the rights, so Popeye and Olive Oyl were replaced with new characters named Jumpman
and Lady, who were later renamed to Mario and Pauline. in the game, the lady Pauline is captured
by a gorilla named Donkey Kong, who takes her to the top of a construction site, and
it’s up to Jumpman to rescue her. the question I’m interested in asking here
is this: who is Mario in this game? the answer is pretty clear: he is a hero. Mario, entirely on his own, overcomes great
obstacles to rescue someone who is in danger. I get how that description of the events of
Donkey Kong might come across as overly dramatic, but consider this: is there a way of interpreting
the phrase “overcoming great obstacles” any more literal than a person jumping over
a large object that’s in their way? Mario’s motivations are just as easy to
figure out. if a heart means anything, this is a game
about love. this theme fits the game’s narrative extremely
well. there are few actions someone can take that
are more loving than prioritizing someone else’s safety above your own. however, it is also necessary to consider
the role Pauline has in this story. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you
that this is the first of many times where a Mario game has had a plot revolving around
the “damsel in distress” trope. a beast takes a beautiful defenseless maiden
to the top of a tower, and it’s up to a strong brave man to fell the beast and rescue
her, and they all live happily ever after. it’s the same generic story that Shrek is
a parody of. I have no intentions of arguing against the
claim that Pauline’s lack of agency in Donkey Kong is a form of objectification. that much is clear. but, in defense of the game, it does at the
very least make some effort to subvert the tired cliche. first, Pauline does not fall in love with
Mario after he saves her. supplementary material makes it clear that
Pauline was already Mario’s girlfriend before she was captured by Donkey Kong. the romantic happy ending to the tale is not
Mario’s deserved award for his brave actions, but a scene of two lovers reuniting after
having been separated and put into peril. second, Mario is not a prince or knight in
shining armor. Mario is an empty slate. he could be anyone, and, in fact, anyone could
be Mario. that’s why he wears overalls: not just because
the limited resolution and color pallette necessitated that his arms be clearly distinct
from the rest of his torso in order for his walking animations to be readable, but because
Mario represents the common man, and as such he is dressed the part of a working class
hero. Donkey Kong was an arcade game first, but
it made its way to countless other platforms. these different versions of Donkey Kong were
just that, versions of the same game. while the personal computers and home consoles
of the early 80s couldn’t quite match the arcade original, they all were intended to
more or less emulate the original game. there was, however, one platform which had
no chance of even coming close to anything you could see in arcades: a line of LCD handhelds
known as the Game & Watch. part three: the Game & Watch there are plenty of other videos on the internet
that thoroughly explain the history of the Game & Watch, so I’ll be brief. invented in 1980 by the late Gunpei Yokoi,
Game & Watches were handheld devices that used the display technology of four-function
calculators for games, while also functioning as digital clocks. each Game & Watch handheld could play a single
game, usually with two difficulty settings. due to the limitations of the liquid crystal
display, it was completely impossible for these games to have anywhere near the variety
or complexity of arcade games. in fact, it’s debated weather or not they
can even be considered “video games” at all, as the term “video game” pretty clearly
implies a video display, which a Game & Watch’s LCD screen is not. I’m mentioning all of this not because it’s
important to understand the technology that made these old games work. instead, I’d like to clear up this idea
that some people have that leads to a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of some Game & Watch
games. see, Nintendo would occasionally release Game
& Watch units with the same titles as existing arcade games, or, later, NES games. and people often talk about these games as
though they’re the “Game & Watch versions” of the games, or even “Game & Watch ports”. this is, I believe, complete nonsense. Game & Watches were completely incapable of
playing arcade or NES games, but not in the way where the Atari 2600 couldn’t play arcade
games where you needed to sacrifice the graphics and cut enough content for it to fit on a
single cartridge. I mean that fundamentally, a Game & Watch
screen cannot come close to anything that resembles a character moving around an environment. let me put it this way. if the original arcade version of Donkey Kong
is the original theatrical release of A New Hope, then the Atari 2600 version is the VHS
release of the special edition. it’s been transferred into a different format,
and there are several changes that make it a significantly different experience, but
it’s ultimately still fair to call it a different version of the same thing. the Game & Watch game called Donkey Kong is
the novelization. the story is the same, but it’s been adapted
into a completely different medium, and so many of the most important aspects of the
work had to be removed by necessity. and it doesn’t make sense to call these differences
“changes”, because it’s understood to be a separate work that tells the same story,
and not a new version of the same work. so, all that said, the second game Mario appeared
in was the Game & Watch adaptation of Donkey Kong, released June 3rd, 1982. I do think it’s important to acknowledge
it as a game with its own identity separate from the arcade game, but it’s also not
the game this video is about, and the fact that the story is the same means there’s
not really any reason to analyze it here, so I’ll move on. part four: Donkey Kong Jr. in August 1982, Donkey Kong Jr. was released,
a direct sequel to Donkey Kong. after the events of Donkey Kong, Mario captured
the gorilla and put him in a cage, for some reason. in Donkey Kong Jr., the titular character
rescues his father from Mario, telling a very similar story to the first game, but from
a different perspective. this is a really interesting direction to
take the series in. Donkey Kong Jr. is only the third game featuring
Mario, and only the second with an original story, and it’s clearly focused on making
players question Mario’s morality. I mean, Mario is the villain in this game!
he’s literally attacking a baby ape! what does that say about who Mario is as a character? an easy route would be to say that Mario’s
behavior in Donkey Kong Jr. is fully consistent with how he acts in later games in the franchise. “why should you be surprised that he attacks
a baby ape,” one might say, “when this is far from the only time Mario has shown
that he is fine with fighting baby animals? Donkey Kong Jr. is no different to Mario than,
say, Dino Piranha.” to that, I will say that Donkey Kong Jr. is
clearly different from Mario’s other underaged adversaries. Donkey Kong Jr. isn’t just blindly attacking
Mario; he is clearly a being capable of logical reasoning, as established in Donkey Kong Jr.
Math, and on top of that he is in no way a threat to Mario. in fact, Donkey Kong Jr. is literally incapable
of attacking Mario. so, why would Mario attack a baby ape who
poses no threat to him? his only real motivation is that he wants
to prevent Donkey Kong from escaping. Donkey Kong clearly is a threat, so that’s
probably enough of a motivation, but what exactly is Mario’s plan? to be entirely honest, I don’t know what
to make of this game. Jr. is one of the very few times Mario has
appeared in a game as a non-playable character. this is one of the only entries in the Mario
canon where Mario exclusively performs actions that are outside of a player’s control. Mario isn’t a blank slate in this game. you are not Mario. there’s only two conclusions I’m able
to come up with, and I don’t really like either of them. the first more obvious one is that it’s
supposed to make Mario into a morally gray character. Jr. recontextualizes Donkey Kong, as well
as every later game in the franchise, by showing that Mario, the character you unthinkingly
stepped into the shoes of, had a dark side all along. the problem with that interpretation is that
the way Mario acts in Jr. is like, completely different to how he acts in Donkey Kong? and
I don’t mean “oh, he’s a bad guy now instead of a good guy” or whatever. I mean just like, look at the way he attacks
in this game. if this is supposed to be Jumpman, why is
he so still? this isn’t recontextualizing his actions in Donkey Kong, it just feels
like he’s acting out of character. the other possible conclusion is that Donkey
Kong Jr. is an unreliable narrator. the game is told from the perspective of a
baby ape who doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, so he interprets Mario’s actions
as being more cruel than they actually are. this would also explain why there’s seemingly
two Marios in the opening cutscene. this reading helps preserve Mario’s integrity
as a character, but it also requires me to say “Donkey Kong Jr. is an unreliable narrator”
out loud, which is the second hardest claim to take seriously that I’ve made about Donkey
Kong Jr. in this video so far. like Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. was adapted
for the Game & Watch. except for this game it happened twice! the
first Game & Watch adaptation was called Donkey Kong Jr., released October 26th, 1982, and
the other one was called Donkey Kong II, or possibly “Donkey Kong the Second”, which
released March 7th, 1983. once again, these adaptations dramatically altered gameplay,
but not story, and I’ve spent way too long analyzing Donkey Kong Jr. in this video already
so I will not be analyzing these games separately. so, in 1983, there were these two stories
told across five games that had two separate versions of Mario. Donkey Kong, both in the arcade and on the
Game & Watch, featured Mario the hero, but Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong II featured
Mario the villain. as we now know, only one of these versions of the character would continue
to appear in games. yet, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t room
in the industry for a second Mario. part five: who is Luigi? Mario is a blank slate. he could be anyone, and he was only created
because Miyamoto wasn’t able to license Popeye. what then is there to say about a character
who was created to be like Mario without actually being Mario? Luigi is Mario’s brother, and for an embarrassingly
long time he had no personality traits distinguishing him from his brother. Luigi is like Mario, but he wears green. that’s it. his name is literally Japanese for “similar”. however, as time went on, Luigi would eventually
develop a personality, something that can’t really be said about Mario. Luigi’s role in the Mario franchise is to
be a stand-in for Mario. he serves as the second playable character
in multiplayer games. you can’t just have two Marios on screen
(they learned that lesson after Donkey Kong Jr.), so one of them can be Luigi. as a result,
Luigi appears in fewer games than his brother. this has been contextualized as what is now
Luigi’s defining personality trait. Luigi goes on fewer adventures than Mario,
so therefore he must not be as brave as Mario. Luigi is often described as a “coward”,
which I think isn’t giving him enough credit. there’s a really good post from tumblr user
prokopetz that refers to Luigi as, quote, “a coward with no sense of scale”. Luigi is characterized as being a little afraid
of everything, but he’s afraid of everything the same amount. but before any of that, Luigi was just as
much of a blank slate as Mario. in fact, he was even more of a blank slate
than Mario, because the game I’ll be analyzing for the rest of this video was Luigi’s very
first appearance. part six: Mario Bros. Mario Bros. was released on March 14th, 1983.
at the time, it wasn’t quite standard yet for games to credit their developers, so it’s
unclear exactly who was involved in its creation. if I had to guess, and I do, I’d assume
that it was largely created by Shigeru Miyamoto and/or Gunpei Yokoi. now, I know what some of you are probably
thinking, and yes, the game you’re looking at now really is the original Mario Bros.!
the arcade game with the same title wasn’t released until July 14th that same year. what’s fascinating about Mario Bros. in
particular is that unlike other Game & Watches that share titles with arcade games, the two
games called Mario Bros. have almost nothing in common. so, not only can you not call Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) a “port” of Mario Bros.
(arcade), you can’t even really call it an adaptation either. these are just two completely different games
with the same title made by the same company in the same year. and the fact that it’s a completely different
game from the other game called Mario Bros. is precisely what makes it a game worth analyzing
on its own. if its anonymous developers had attempted
to emulate the gameplay of the arcade game that was surely in development at the same
time, it would’ve felt like a cheap imitation of the “real thing”. but instead, Mario
Bros. (Game & Watch) plays to the limitations of
its hardware, providing a truly unique experience. okay, finally, I think that’s enough context
to begin actually discussing this game. part seven: gameplay Mario Bros. was part of the Multi Screen series
of Game & Watches, just like Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong II before it. however, unlike those games, which had their
two screens one above the other vertically, the two screens for Mario Bros. were next
to each other horizontally, with the handheld itself opening like a Japanese book. the player controls Mario and his brother
Luigi simultaneously. Mario, on the right screen, is controlled
with the right hand, and Luigi, on the left screen, is controlled with the left hand. as can be expected for a Game & Watch game,
the actual gameplay is rather simple. the only movement options are to move the
brothers up and down between a total of three positions each can be in. the core gameplay loop goes like this: an
empty package moves along a conveyer belt towards Mario in the bottom corner of the
right screen. Mario, provided that he’s in the proper
position, grabs the package and places it on another conveyor belt, where it moves towards
the seam between the two screens. while it’s between screens, an unseen machine
places a couple of bottles in the package, which continues along the conveyor belt towards
Luigi. Luigi grabs the package and moves it to another
conveyor belt, and this process repeats a few times until the package is eventually
filled with bottles and sealed, so Luigi grabs the package from the final conveyor belt and
loads it onto a truck. while all of this is happening, more packages
are constantly being added into the system, and so the gameplay always involves juggling
multiple packages at once between the two brothers, with only an occasional break whenever
the truck is fully loaded, which causes a short cutscene to play with the truck driving
off and the brothers sitting down for a moment before the cycle starts over again. if a package reaches the end of a conveyor
belt and nobody is there to grab it, it falls to the floor and the player gets a miss, with
Mario and Luigi’s boss showing up and yelling at whoever was responsible. if the player gets three misses, the game
ends. and, in terms of gameplay alone, that’s
almost all there is to the game. like I said, it’s rather simple. there’s only a couple of other little gameplay
features worth mentioning. first, score. each time either brother successfully moves
a package from one conveyor belt to another, and each time Luigi loads a package onto a
truck, the player receives a single point. when a truck is fully loaded with eight packages,
that’s worth ten points. if the player reaches three hundred points,
all “misses” they had gotten from dropping packages are cleared. if they manage to get three hundred points
without getting any misses, they are awarded with a score multiplier, doubling the value
of all actions until they get a miss. since there isn’t an actual end to the game,
the motivation a player has to keep playing is to get a high score, which the portable
nature of the Game & Watch makes easy to show off to friends. another minor wrinkle is difficulty. as is typical of Game & Watch games, Mario
Bros. gets harder as you keep playing. both the number of packages on screen at once
and the speed of the conveyor belts increase over time. additionally, there are two difficulty settings
available from the start, with Game A as “easy mode” and Game B as “hard mode”. another other thing is that Mario Bros. can
technically be played with two players. I mean, technically, it is physically possible
for two people to play it. see, one person holds the right side and controls
Mario, and the other person holds the left side and controls Luigi! I don’t really think that should count as
a multiplayer mode, but it is technically a way that you could play the game. oh, and on top of all of that, it’s also
a digital alarm clock! technology is really something. part eight: story what is Mario Bros. about? I know, that sounds like a silly question. it’s just a Game & Watch game. it’s not really “about” anything. but why shouldn’t we expect it to be about
something? Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. both told
stories about putting yourself in danger to rescue somebody else, and the Game & Watch
adaptations of those games kept their stories nearly fully intact. Mario Bros. is a different kind of story from
previous Mario games. its protagonists, Mario and Luigi, aren’t
risking their lives save anyone. all they are doing is their job. they move packages between conveyor belts
and onto trucks, and that’s all that happens. nonetheless, there is still a story here. it’s a very simple story, just like how
Donkey Kong is a simple story about a man rescuing a woman who’s been taken to the
top of a construction site. but what is Mario Bros. about? we know nothing about Luigi, but we know that
Mario is a man who is willing to go to great lengths to do what he believes needs to be
done. and here, in this game, he is shown working alongside his brother in a factory,
moving packages between conveyor belts. this is their sole responsibility. this task is not difficult for them. we know this not just because of what Mario
accomplished in Donkey Kong and indeed the feats both brothers would go on to do in later
games, but because of what inputs are actually necessary from the player. there are no button presses necessary to grab
a package or to transfer it to another conveyor belt or to load it onto a truck. simply by standing in the right place when
a package reaches the end of a belt, they are able to do these things automatically,
requiring exactly as much conscious effort as breathing. even the fact that each brother is expected
to be standing in three places at once is hardly an issue for them. they are so good at climbing ladders that
as soon as they’ve decided that they want to be on a different level they’re already
there instantly. however, as they continue working, their workload
increases. their boss begins to expect more from them,
increasing the speed of the machines they’re working with. what was simply waiting patiently to catch
a box so it doesn’t fall off the end of a conveyor belt, breaking its fragile contents,
turns into something that requires split-second reflexes. this labor never stops, and the workload never
slows back down once it’s sped up. Mario and Luigi are periodically offered a
break long enough to sit down and visibly exhale, only to get right back to work even
harder than before. while Mario Bros. doesn’t have an ending,
the game does end. it is impossible for a human player to keep
playing the game forever. eventually, no matter how good you are at
the game, you will fail. the player eventually becomes overwhelmed
by the increasing workload, or exhausted from how long they’ve been at it. in either case, the result is the same. eventually, Mario and Luigi fail to catch
three packages, and the Game & Watch goes back to digital clock mode. the fact that there is no other way for the
game to end implies that this is the canon ending to the story. Mario Bros. is a game where two brothers work
at a factory, doing a repetitive task that gets more laborious over time as their boss
increases their expected output. they continue to do this job until the increased
workload becomes overwhelming, and then they’re fired. to be entirely clear, this isn’t a fan theory
or a headcanon. this is a very straightforward reading of
the text. nothing I’ve said in this plot summary actually
counts as analysis. so here’s my analysis. Mario Bros. for the Game & Watch is a game
about the exploitation of the working class under capitalism. part nine: analysis I know what this looks like. it looks like I wanted to make a video that
makes a shocking clickbaity claim about a game nobody really cares about, and then I
went looking for evidence to support that claim. that’s not what happened. when I first decided to analyze Mario Bros.
for the Game & Watch a couple of months ago, that conclusion surprised me just as much
as it’s surprising you. but I don’t want this to seem like some
far-fetched speculation. I genuinely believe that this is the interpretation
of the game that makes the most sense, and I’d like to defend my analysis while also
anticipating and responding to as many hypothetical counterarguments as I can. but first, I’d like to defend the act of
analyzing Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) in the first place. my intuition is that most people’s gut reaction
will be that I’m overthinking things, and that there’s obviously no way that Nintendo
wanted Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) to make any type of statement
about society. it’s just a Game & Watch game, it’s not
that deep. but the goal of literary analysis is not to
find authorial intent. games, like any artform, are open to interpretation,
and as such it’s not only possible but expected for there to be meaning beyond what a game’s
creator originally intended. additionally, a story being simple does not
make it unreasonable to search for said deeper unintentional meaning. indeed, there are countless works, especially
ones made for children, which tell extremely simple stories that explicitly communicate
ideas about the real world. so then, if we go into Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) with only the initial assumption
that its story is about anything at all, I believe it is fair and logical to conclude
that it’s a game about the exploitation of the working class under capitalism. my first point is that a simple surface level
reading of the game’s story, which I’ve already covered extensively, makes it clear
that this game depicts the Mario brothers, blank slate characters who are representations
of the working class, being overworked. that is what literally happens in the game. this is obvious enough from the text that
I probably could just take it as a given, but for the sake of robustness I will acknowledge
one key assumption I made to reach that conclusion. I assumed that, because the only way for the
game to end is for the player to lose, that a game over is the canonical ending to the
story. while I don’t think this is an unreasonable
assumption to make, there is a decent counterargument someone could make against it. “oh, jan Misali,” you might say, “you’ve
conveniently ignored the fact that Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. are also impossible
to win! they repeat their few levels on an endless loop, and just like Mario Bros. (Game & Watch), they keep escalating in difficulty
until the player loses, or until an integer overflow error ends the game prematurely.
is Donkey Kong a game where Mario repeatedly rescues Pauline from the same situation over
and over until eventually he fails and dies?” and in response I’d say that the reason
Donkey Kong and Jr. can be said to have actual good endings is that there is nothing in the
games to suggest that the story looping is itself part of the story. the loop points have the games’ endings
followed directly by their beginnings with nothing connecting them. in Mario Bros., the loop point is whenever
they fully load a truck, and the cutscene that plays doesn’t suggest an ending, but
a momentary break. okay, so if we accept that that is what the
story depicts at a surface level, then my second point is that since there isn’t an
ending to the game, the primary thing motivating the player to continue playing the game is
the potential to get a high score. there is a very direct parallel between an
increasing score and the accumulation of wealth, the primary motivation for workers to continue
to do labor under capitalism. I will admit that this analogy doesn’t quite
work. the faster the brothers work, the more points
the player gets, while under capitalism doing work faster would result in being paid less,
if anything, since wages are tied to the amount of time spent working, and not productivity. if the score does represent wages, then the
implication would be that the Mario brothers are being fairly compensated for their labor,
and as such they are being overworked, but not exploited. so I’m going to say that the score doesn’t
directly represent wealth. after all, points appear in the previous games
in the franchise, and I don’t think Donkey Kong Jr. is being paid to use a key. points are abstract disconnected numbers which
serve to motivate the player to play the game a certain way, and not a representation of
a literal thing within the narrative. however, that isn’t to say that a parallel
does not exist. the player, by playing the game, performs
the labor of two men at once, and is motivated to continue working harder with the promise
of a number getting bigger. regardless, you could make the argument that
the player’s actual motivation to continue playing is that it’s a game, and the game
is fun to play. the implication of that would be that being
pushed to work harder is fun for Mario and Luigi, and they like it. this argument doesn’t really hold water
though. first, a game mechanic being fun doesn’t
rule out the possibility that the game is critical of the real world concept the mechanic
represents. a perfect example of this is Papers, Please. that game is fun, and I don’t think anyone
would argue that the message of Papers, Please is that being an immigration officer working
for an authoritarian regime is a good fun time. second, even if the fun the player has is
shared by the brothers they play as, that could be read as Mario and Luigi making the
most of a bad situation. Mario in particular is consistently portrayed
as being perpetually upbeat, so it’s not unreasonable for a character like him to continue
to be cheerful in these circumstances. so, given the evidence, I believe that my
interpretation of the game’s theme is a valid and completely justifiable reading of
the text. if it can be said to have any central theme at all, I legitimately cannot think
of another reading that makes sense. I will reiterate that I am not claiming that
that is what Nintendo intended for the game to be about. while game designers are artists who have
intentions separate from corporations that publish their games, Nintendo, as a company
that itself profits from the labor of factory workers, would most likely not be willing
to distribute a game with that central theme, something that becomes more clear when examining
the game’s remakes. part ten: remakes in the late 90s, Nintendo started a series
called Game & Watch Gallery, also known as Game Boy Gallery in some regions. each entry in the series contains a selection
of Game & Watch games, both emulated in their original forms and remade with what was at
the time “modern” graphics for a handheld game. the remakes, in addition to altering graphics,
add new mechanics, and replace all characters with Mario characters. of course, since Mario Bros. was already a
Mario game to begin with, it wasn’t necessary for it to be Mario-fied, and yet it still
was. a remake of Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) appeared in Game & Watch Gallery
3, first released August 4th, 1999 for the Game Boy Color. there are some significant differences. perhaps most significant is the change in
setting. Mario and Luigi are not in a factory working
with packages of bottles. they’re outdoors, making cakes with some
sort of outdoor cake making machine. they are still loading these cakes onto a
truck, which is driven by Wario now instead of a nameless coworker, and also Bowser is
there. we’ll get to that. you can still kinda say that this remake is
still about factory work. I mean, it’s just not a bottling plant anymore,
it’s a Mario-universe cake factory. but what would be the reason for changing
this? one idea is that it could be to avoid people speculating that the bottles contain
some sort of alcoholic beverage, and that cake is a more wholesome E-rated alternative. but then, barrels also are often used as containers
for alcoholic beverages, and the remake of Donkey Kong doesn’t replace them with cakes. what I think is that this was intended to
make it look less like an actual factory, thereby weakening the unintended implications
of the original. this is further supported by the fact that
the Mario brothers’ boss is completely absent in this version. when they make a mistake, nobody is there
to yell at them; they’re just disappointed in themselves. this remake, by the way, itself has a remake,
which was featured in Game & Watch Gallery 4, which first released on October 25th, 2002
for the Game Boy Advance. I’m bringing this up now not just so I can
switch the gameplay footage I’m talking over to something that looks nicer, but also
so I can point out that this remake of the remake actually takes place indoors, making
the Game Boy Advance version look more like a real factory than the Game Boy Color version. from what I can tell, there are no other significant
differences between the two remakes outside of their aesthetics. anyway, the absence of a boss overseeing their
work means that it’s entirely plausible that in this game, they’re pushing themselves
to work harder completely voluntarily, which on its own removes the central theme from
the Game & Watch original. okay, now we can address the two new characters. I’m about six thousand words into this script
and we’re well past the part where I made the point I wanted to make, so forgive me
for not taking the time to individually explain who Wario and Bowser are at the same level
of depth as I have for the Mario brothers. in short, Wario is Mario’s greedy narrative
foil, and Bowser is a spiky fire-breathing turtle monster and the main antagonist of
the franchise. Wario’s presence in these remakes is more
interesting narratively, while Bowser’s presence is more interesting mechanically. I’ll start with Bowser. Bowser is in these remakes to generally cause
trouble. he periodically stomps, causing the machinery
to start working backwards, which can be fixed by pulling one of two levers. it’s a very
“Lex Luthor stole forty cakes” type of cartoonish villainy which is perfect for Bowser,
the exact type of villain who’d take time out of his day to inconvenience someone who’s
making a bunch of cake. but what is Wario doing here? in the original,
the truck driver was Mario and Luigi’s coworker. they’re all in the same boat, working for
the same boss. that’s not the Mario brothers’ relationship
with Wario. while they have been shown to be willing to
work together, he’s more often a rival, especially at the time these remakes were
released. Wario’s defining personality trait is that
he’s greedy. so what are the implications of him being
the one trusted to distribute these cakes to wherever it is they need to be distributed?
it could be that Wario was the one who wanted the Mario brothers to create all these cakes
to begin with. given that he’s a CEO in the later WarioWare
series, it would make sense for him to have a similar role in these remakes. however, I don’t think speculating this
much about character motivations is worth it just to claim that the remakes could have
the same theme as the original. it’s clear that the modern remakes in the
Game & Watch Gallery series were “sanitized” to avoid any implications whatsoever. except! Donkey Kong Jr. (Game & Watch) was also remade for this series,
and guess what, Mario’s still the villain in the remakes! so like, was Nintendo circa
1999 still okay with their company mascot fighting a baby gorilla but not okay with
him being yelled at by an angry boss? is that what they’re really trying to say with this? [sigh] I gotta wrap this up. conclusion nobody cares about Mario Bros. (Game & Watch). it’s remembered, by those who do, as part
of a weird early period in Mario’s history before they’d quite figured out what Mario
games are supposed to be like. it’s grouped in with games like Mario’s
Cement Factory and Wrecking Crew as “you know, one of those games from the early 80s
where Mario’s doing a job that isn’t plumbing”. it hasn’t been completely discarded. it’s been officially remade, as you saw,
and of course there’s plenty of unlicensed ports. and just like practically every Game
& Watch game it’s given a nod or two in the Super Smash Bros. series. but most people don’t remember it, or know
that it exists. partially because it’s a Game & Watch game,
and partially because it shares its title with another more popular game. but Mario Bros. is a game worth talking about. it’s an important game, and beneath its
surface it truly does say something, provided that you take it seriously enough to listen. thanks for watching. I’ve been jan Misali, and please don’t
expect me to do anything like this ever again.
Beat me to it. I love jan Misali's channel, it's the most esoteric thing ever.
comrade conlang critic
I thought heh their name sounds like a toki pona name, then it actually was :)
When I subbed to this channel for their bizarre 20 minute analysis of hangman, I wasn't expecting to receive a class analysis of an ancient Mario game I had never heard of.
Sometimes your gut just points you to the right people.
I just watched this, and tbh, I was not expecting that. Like I don't want to call Breadtube's victory in the youtube wars too early, but the number of people I found independently and watch for reasons other than leftist politics who later suddenly post bready videos or leftist content on their twitter accounts seems awfully high.