In some Mario Bros games Mario and Luigi have the power to transform into a Japanese raccoon dog (tanuki) and a Japanese fox (kitsune) respectively. In Japanese folklore the two animals are deceivers with sometimes malevolent designs on hapless humans. So I drew a picture.

Here's a choice excerpt from Wikipedia: "Kitsunetsuki (狐憑き or 狐付き; also written kitsune-tsuki) literally means the state of being possessed by a fox. The victim is always a young woman, whom the fox enters beneath her fingernails or through her breasts. In some cases, the victims' facial expressions are said to change in such a way that they resemble those of a fox. Japanese tradition holds that fox possession can cause illiterate victims to temporarily gain the ability to read. Though foxes in folklore can possess a person of their own will, Kitsunetsuki is often attributed to the malign intents of hereditary fox employers, or tsukimono-suji.

Folklorist Lafcadio Hearn describes the condition in the first volume of his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan:

Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. Sometimes they run naked shouting through the streets. Sometimes they lie down and froth at the mouth, and yelp as a fox yelps. And on some part of the body of the possessed a moving lump appears under the skin, which seems to have a life of its own. Prick it with a needle, and it glides instantly to another place. By no grasp can it be so tightly compressed by a strong hand that it will not slip from under the fingers. Possessed folk are also said to speak and write languages of which they were totally ignorant prior to possession. They eat only what foxes are believed to like — tofu, aburagé, azukimeshi, etc. — and they eat a great deal, alleging that not they, but the possessing foxes, are hungry."

In one prefecture in Japan the tanuki is said to lead people to death by hanging. In the second Mario bros game released only in Japan there are sections you are lead into that can only be escaped by suicide.

So I drew a picture. The two deceiving animals leading folks into the mushroom kingdom growing on the other side of the outhouse pipe. Where else would plumbers be going? Note also that often in stories of Tanuki and Kitsune the decieved are rewarded with money that turns out to be a figment of their imagination. Mario Bros rewards players by collecting hundreds upon hundreds of coins that are absolutely worthless.

I heard a lot about the Nintendo Wii being sort of sluggish in the Hardware department compared to the other next-gen consoles but imagine my surprise when I booted up my first review copy of Super Mario Bros for the first time. I was in shock to say the least. The game looks like something that could have run on the 58 year old NES. Graphics like that are just not realistic enough in the modern world and I can see why the Wii catches so much flack now. I can't really feel like I'm there actually jumping on top of a living mushroom with eyes and vampire teeth if it isn't HD and there isn't at least one or two polygons.

The clouds had smiley faces on them and the main character got powers from touching mushrooms and flowers. I mean that's just never happened to me in real life before and I think I would be uncomfortable if I had to show this game to all the women I bring over to my house to have sex with. Which brings me to my second criticism of the game. There was no gun in it. I played through the whole campaign seven times I think and I hit every block I'm sure of it, but no gun. There must be a gun in there somewhere though so I really have to fault the designers for not making the gun easier to find.

The gun might have been easier to find if there were more tutorials though. I found that I was having a lot of problems knowing where to go. I went right and then when I tried to go back to the left again it wouldn't let me and it didn't tell me what button to push when I wanted to go back. An arrow or a tutorial character would have helped. One button made the character jump and the other button had no use as far as I could tell. A good opportunity was really lost I feel by not taking advantage of that second button. Maybe the second button could have been utilised to allow the player to skip over all the hard parts. I was having some real difficulties with certain sections of the game. It got so difficult at points that I threw my controller at the ground and sort of cried a little. A skip button would have solved this problem. I think that a game that's too challenging really deflates the player's self esteem and it's a widely known fact that women don't have sex with unmanly men. A button that skipped over challenges would allow the player to feel like a bad ass and make the sex a little easier to transition into.

All in all, those are really my three biggest criticisms of an otherwise decent game. If a sequel is made it would really benefit from more polygons for more realistic graphics and a gun that's a lot easier to find, add tutorials and a skip button. I suggest calling the game Super Mario Gun 2 so intelligent discriminating consumers know what they're getting instead of Super Mario Bros which did not have one bro in it as far as I could tell. Cheers!

P.S. There were no ads in the game so I wasn't sure what to buy when I wasn't playing it. That's not exactly a game mechanic criticism but I just thought it would be useful to warn you.

A man can claim it worthy of scorn and ridicule to believe that an all-powerful, all-wise God created man, woman, and every other living creature from the virgin earth; but then without a hint of irony, he can go on to say that what is more worthy of belief is that a lightning bolt in fact created all life on earth and it did it by forcing itself upon a dirty mud puddle.  One wonders if he would be so confident about the loving, friendly and creative nature of electricity if he were asked to engage it in close intimate friendship.  Or even the fertility of mud puddles for that matter.
 
In commemoration of that fantastical day I have drawn up a scientifically inclined recreation of what I imagined happened just at the moment before fire met earth for the first time. 
 

So I just read the book Super Mario by Jeff Ryan and something that stuck with me is his description of the callousness of one of the very higher ups at Nintendo in the early days even before Donkey Kong was created. He said that the man took his daughter to Geisha clubs. It gave me a new sinister view of Nintendo and this idea of devil Mario had been floating around in my head before then so I decided to draw it up. The book was very interesting too.