jan Misali made another video about Super Mario and specifically the question of what constitutes the “mainline” Super Mario series.
The whole video is an exercise in linguistic and mathematical pedantry (I do not say this as a criticism; as a former student linguist, I can pretty confidently say that the pedantry is the point), and part of that pedantry is picking apart people’s definitions of “mainline Super Mario game,” and how one seemingly sensible definition happens to include some Famicom Disk System software called I am a teacher: Super Mario Sweater. jan Misali relied upon a particular definition of the term “video game” in order to facilitate that inclusion, and I had some thoughts about that definition, which I posted to my Tumblr because I know jan Misali is active on that site and I sure as hell wasn’t about to post an essay in the youtube comments.
Anyway, I’m reposting those thoughts here because I want to know what you all think of them. Did I fall for an elaborate trick by responding to this proposition in seriousness? Maybe. But as we established earlier, the pedantry is the point, and I quite enjoyed being pedantic over this silly little question.