wonder flower trip
SMW looks like lots of fun. Can’t wait:
SMW looks like lots of fun. Can’t wait:
Power-ups aren’t the only way players can transform. Super Mario Bros. Wonder also introduces eponymous plants that make things a little … trippy. A Wonder Flower might make Mario really, really big, or it might transform him into a Goomba. Sometimes they shift the very world itself, making pipes bend and slinky along. Mouri says that with so many Mario games behind them, they realized creating new things that surprise players was a challenge. They first played with the idea of items that warped you into different areas, until Tezuka offered some poignant criticism: “If you’re still just going to warp to a different area, it’s still the same. Why don’t you just change where you are right now?”
With the morning's news that Charles Martinet is retiring / being retired from the voice of Mario, I can't shake a sense of deja vu with James Earl Jones selling the rights to his Vader voice so it can be created via AI. Prediction: because Nintendo has 30 years worth of Martinet's voice recordings, the next Mario will be an AI Martinet.
They’re taking the Mario tripiness to a whole new level and I’m so very, very in:
The forced wedding is stopped; the bunny wedding planners are crushed; Bowser is, like The Joker after battle after battle, unconscious, somewhere; Cappy and Mario are, at present, hunting for Princess Peach who has once again gone missing from the just-unlocked Mushroom Kingdom – though it seems of her own volition this time; and my first completion of a MARIO game in over 30 years (SUPER MARIO WORLD is still the best) is in the bag.
Why that long? Other than ignoring most of the post MARIO WORLD games on the SNES – CASTLEVANIA and LINK TO THE PAST were my jams – I had a seizure while playing MARIO 64 on the Nintendo 64 (right combo of lights and images at the right time, I guess) and, rightly or wrongly (seems to be the latter) avoided the series out of fear of it happening again until the gateway drug of MARIO KART 8 and the desire to end my niece's reign of terror (read: beating me every race) but the longer version of that particular saga – the seizure, not my niece's reign of MARIO KART terror – is another story for another time.
But ODYSSEY itself.
One of the things that's been asked in the accolades for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM is how did Nintendo make that game – as in "how did they fit all of that and do all of that in a system that came out in 2017?": the answer's simple: Nintendo knows how to make great games without requiring a bevy of onerous cutscenes and/or shallow open worlds with no point beyond window-dressing – narrative or otherwise. They focus solely on simple stories (rescue the Princess / save the kingdom / stop the aliens) delivered in strange, surreal celebrations of the medium – the "flatland" 2D, pixel sidescrolling sections in ODYSSEY being the most wonderful celebration of video games and video game history in recent memory; I cheered every time I got to stuff myself into a pipe and go 8-bit – with an unfiltered creativity and passion devoid of irony and apology; they are and remain the Disney-under-Walt / early Pixar of games.
While I did miss the block-smashing power-up mushrooms – how long have they been gone? – and, though I loved Cappy and his Black-Lodge / Man From Another Place speaking style, found myself rescuing him from that bird only to shut him up (and get on with the game) there's not a lot I can add other than ODYSSEY is pure, unfiltered fun and that I question your humanity if you don't find yourself charmed by it more than once a gaming session. A must-play.
Very cool; if they follow the pace and restraint of the original (and utterly brilliant) film, this should make a fantastic series: Eddie Redmayne To Lead ‘The Day Of The Jackal’ Series For Peacock & Sky | Deadline
Beethoven’s DNA decoded from locks of hair saved by his fans | WaPo
Off to a good start: Tech guru Jaron Lanier: ‘The danger isn’t that AI destroys us. It’s that it drives us insane’ | The Guardian
Recently picked up an issue of the original at an antique mall. Count me in on this: Gold Key Comics is back with Boris Karloff’s Gold Key Mysteries | The Beat
"This deck was drawn by artist, designer and architect Boris Kobe (1905--1981) in 1945 while at the Allach concentration lager, a sub-camp of Dachau in a suburb of Munich... After surviving the Holocaust, he continued his architectural career and created no other known artistic works related to his time in the camps." The Daily Heller: Cards From Hell | PRINT Magazine
Mesmerized: Meticulous Flat Lays of Vintage Toys and Miniatures Celebrate the History of Play and Design | Colossal
This needs to be canon: Horrific Mario Manga Shows 1-UP Mushroom Growing Out Of Plumber | Kotaku
And a hearty 🖕 to you too, Funko: Funko Lays Off Most of Mondo Staff, Poster Business in Limbo | The Wrap
My watch otaku-ness continues. But I couldn’t resist this SUPER MARIO BROS / G-Shock collaboration:
K and I have a tacit agreement in our marriage: she can buy plants, I can buy fascinating timepieces: the secret to any successful marriage, I think.
SUPER MARIO BROS reimagined in Unreal Engine with Chris Pratt. AI voiceover is genius.