thewaether
@thewaether

when I said the world wasn't ready for a mario movie I was being half-serious because what mario is... what it ACTUALLY is... is an extremely surreal story told mostly through game mechanics. a story where characters like "mario" and "baby mario" are treated as two different people. a story that is unabashedly abstract


thewaether
@thewaether

mario's surrealism is not often commented on because, as it was one of the earliest video games, it codified a lot of (in themselves surreal) mechanics that would appaer in other video games, and this also lead to a lot of people outside games seeing all games as mario; to outsiders, all video games were about running and jumping and headbutting blocks and coins coming out. that wasn't "video games". that was just mario


zaratustra
@zaratustra

pretty much everything in mario is some kind of shorthand; it was placed there not to make sense in a story, but to communicate its function as quickly and cleanly as possible

so mario wears overalls and a mustache because that's what looks good in a sideways 16x16 3-color character

and he's a plumber because the game has pipes, and the game has pipes because it's a useful place for enemies to come out of

and the powerup that makes you big is a mushroom because of alice in wonderland


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