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.
