Game Theory - The Big LIE Of Mario Odyssey...

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he explains the specifics of Power Moons! *Credits:* Writers: Matthew Patrick and Adam Bressler Editors: Marc Schneider, Tyler Mascola and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: AlyssaBeCrazy Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

internet, welcome to game theory. Now, you might have caught wind of this, but Mario's height is kind of a big thing around here. And so when Nintendo revealed the first trailer to Mario Odyssey and showed him super assassin brozing his way through Crisis City, next to literal 10 feet tall giants, it was a try not to cringe challenge that I failed hardcore. And you guys lit me up on Twitter, so I knew that you felt my pain. And while at first I figured I'd ignored it until it went away, or we had just some in-game explanation, that just felt like giving up and I hate giving up. So before E3 announcements about this game start explaining things away, I wanted to take a crack at this mystery. Throw my hand to the ring, literally, since that seems to be a main mechanic of this game,

to actually pick apart what's going on in this world. And let me assure you Nintendo has not lost their minds. There is an actual explanation here. One that has existed for decades without any of us suspecting it. So buckle up your overalls and Look out for creepy games of Double Dutch, it is time to legitimize Shigero Miyamoto's latest fever dream. From the information in the trailer, Super Mario Odyssey, the much-anticipated sequel to Super Mario Iliad, will feature Mario traveling around the world in the most aerodynamically inefficient ship ever. Now if the title Odyssey didn't give that away for ya, which in and of itself is a reference to the Greek epic poem by the same name all about Odysseus' journey home after the fall of Troy, a story literally about a trip around the world, well, you can tell based on the

globe logo and the mission locations shown off in the trailer. I mean we have a land themed around Dia de Les Moertos and Aztec Pyramids, Cogwold, a land that appears to be an African rainforest with Mediton performing sprinkler duty, and then of course, New York City. I'm assuming the New York level is a set of introductory missions rather than a connecting hub world like Peaches Castle, based on the checkpoint flag that we see right meh. Right via. It's also worth noting that we can tell that these are all discrete levels because the purple currency in each one varies. There are a triangles in Mexico land, mechanical nuts in the forest world, fruits in the kitchen kingdom, and purple coins in the city.

So, if the game is true to its namesake, this will be a story about Mario traveling to foreign lands in a quest to return home to the mushroom kingdom. But if we're not in the mushroom kingdom anymore, Toto, then where are we? Well, for the theory today, I'm most interested in the city. And you can immediately see that the name of the New York level is New Dong City, as a New Donkey Kong city. And if having that spelled out in poster form behind Mario's head in the opening seconds of the trailer was a bit too subtle for you to convince you of the connection, you can also tell from the humongous number of references to the Donkey Kong series throughout this thing. There's Diddy Mart, that one's pretty obvious, but if you look closer at the street signs, there's also Dixie Theater and Dixie Street, referring of course to Dixie Kong from Donkey Kong Country 2,

Cranky Avenue, the name of the OG Kong, and Kruel Place, the main villain from the Donkey Kong franchise. And if you really know your DKC lore, you'll even recognize the name Squawks, Expresso and Ramby, your helper animals from Donkey Kong Country One. But it doesn't stop there. Even the pink scaffolding from the original Donkey Kong arcade game can be seen peppering the city. And the taxi that pulls up at the opening of the trailer has the number 1981 on its license plate. A reference to the arcade game being released in the year, 1989.

So very clearly, new Dong City is somehow connected. with Donkey Kong lore. But how? And what's any of that got to do with 10 feet tall human beings? Creatures that are literally twice the size of Mario. One word... Everything. Because we've been overlooking a huge fact since the beginning.

Gigantism in the Donkey Kong canon has always existed. We just never stopped to notice it before. Flashback to Pauline. When Mario stands next to his lady love in his very first game, they aren't exactly eye to eye. It's more like, a waistline? And while we all assume that this was a creative decision due to technological limitations of the time or that Mario was without his mushroom, it's actually a size difference that

Nintendo has continued to keep Canon to this day without us realizing it. Just take one look at the Mario versus Donkey Kong franchise where Pauline makes a reappearance and she's still towering over her mustachioed manicotti. But that's actually a small example. Fast forward to the first Donkey Kong country game for the Super Nintendo. An incredible groundbreaking game that paved the way for Rare to dominate platformers for the next two console generations. And visually, it is stunning! The use of 3D sprites was something unheard of at that time. But for as visually beautiful as it is, it's also worth noting that this is a world that makes sense. The proportions all feel in the range of what would be natural.

Relative to Donkey Kong and the Kremlings, the trees aren't excessively bigger tall, the snakes and birds that you fight against are all fairly average in size, the rock formations and caves feel natural. And yet, at the end of each world, you come up against a boss. A boss, mind you, that just so happens to be a gigasized version of one of the normal enemies from the surrounding region. There's Master Necky Senior, really naughty, the giant bumblebee, to name three. They're absolute giants relative to the size of everyone else. So that prompts the question, how did they get so big? Well, they all have one thing in common, the Banana Horde.

You see, the whole game revolves around the theft of Donkey Kong's banana. And it's worth noting that these aren't just any bananas. There are plenty of those lying around each world. Now, these are Donkey Kong's special bananas, the one stolen from him at the beginning of the game. Bananas that, as luck would have it, just so happened to be supersized. And when you fight bosses in the game, you battle them in an arena composed of Donkey Kong's stolen bananas.

So you have gigantic oversized bosses that happen to be the ones who also happen to steal the gigantic oversized bananas. I mean, don't get me wrong, who doesn't want a large banana after all, but seriously, it seems to me that there could be a connection between the enormous size of the bosses and Donkey Kong's enormous bananas. It's also worth noting that in the sequel's DKC 2 and 3, they don't have bosses at the scale that we see in DKC 1. I mean, there's a handful of slightly larger ones, but nothing like we see with Master Necky, and in both of those games, the banana hoard isn't actually in the enemy's possession. So the fact that there are no oversized gigantic bosses makes sense. But there's even more because the coincidences just get weirder when you actually stop to ask. Why is everyone interested in stealing Donkey Kong's bananas in the first place?

King K. Ruhl starts off the series by ordering his minions to steal the banana hoard, then kidnaps Donkey Kong in the second country game holding him a ransom until he gets payment of the Kong banana stash. And he's just an alligator, so it's not like he's interested in them to eat them or anything. and it's not just him. In Donkey Kong Country Returns, the Tiki-Tack tribe also tries to get their hands on Donkey's Banana. And I don't mean in a game theory gone sexual kind of way either. Again, there is no real explanation for why they want them.

And you might think that this is all just limited to the Donkey Kong universe, but it's not. The Banana Horde even appears in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Story Mode, the subspace emissary, where Bowser, Bowser of all people, sends out a Hammer Bro and a Gumba to steal DK's bananas, Bowser, the turtle sorcerer king, a literal king, a guy who claimed galaxies for himself, what's he won with a bunch of fruits? So clearly, clearly there's more to this fruit than meets the eye. And in fact, we do know that these bananas possess magical properties. As seen in Donkey Kong Country returns factory level, a Tiki can come to life when a mashed-up banana is

incorporated into its body. This is further demonstrated with the final battle against Tiki Tong where he turns the banana into banana juice and uses it to transform his hands, making him stronger for the battle against the Kongs. So it is definitely possible that these bananas possess all sorts of properties, even to the extent of being the DKC universe's equivalent of Mario's super mushrooms, making things grow to enormous sizes. In fact, there's even a scientific basis to all of this. Theoretically, if you look at how the biology works, it is possible for bananas to supercharge the height of humans.

You see, bananas have a lot of nutrients in them. They have a lot of the stuff we need, but they also have stuff that we just don't need that much of. Some of the stuff in bananas like vitamins and fiber, great, keep me regular, keep the bowels happy and healthy. But there are some other things in bananas that we only need a little bit of. Take our buddy tyrosine, an essential amino acid, but one that your body usually makes enough of on its own. It's only a little molecule, but it packs a huge punch, because it controls massive processes that take place in your brain's hormonal regulatory center, the pituitary gland. This one tiny part of your brain controls everything about you

from whether you feel depressed to how big you grow. People take tyrosine supplements for a lot of different reasons but the one I'm gonna focus on today is bodybuilding because tyrosine can adjust your body's production of growth hormone. Bodybuilders want to be massive and get their swall on bro and they believe that tyrosine is the gateway to becoming bigger, buffer, and becoming the ultimate gorilla juice head. Which in the context of donkey

is very ironic. But as you can imagine, you can have too much of a good thing. Too much human growth hormone relative to the other stuff in your body can lead to your pituitary gland getting way out of whack, producing too much growth that leads to disorders like acromegaly. Which is what Andre the giant, famous wrestler, and classic actor from the Princess Bride had, and why he was so much bigger and taller than everyone around him. All this is possible when you supercharge your pituitary with too much tyrosine. Or, in our case, have a popular that's eating supercharged tyrazine-infused bananas. That's right, the thing that's giving the Donkey Kong bosses their enormous stature is also making the citizens of New Dong City super massive next to little old banana-less Mario. Whomp, womp, wamp, Mario's got a tiny banana. So what about the humans in New Dong? Why would the bananas affect them, of all people? Well, in the literal opening second of the trailer, we're able to make out three additional signs, peppering the streets, of New Dong. References to three restaurants feeding the population of the city, Candy's Cafe, Tiny's Poroshki, and Banana Bagel. More references as Candy is Donkey Kong's girlfriend

in the country series, and Tiny is from DK64. And for those who are wondering, a Poroshki is a Russian mini pie that's either fried or baked and can be filled with different sweet, savory, sour fix-ins. Regardless, we have two restaurants that are themed around the Kong family, maybe even run by the Kong family, as well as one that outright says that it serves banana bagels. To me, it's definitely possible, if not probable, that these places are serving up dishes using the secret ingredient. And no, I don't mean love. I mean Donkey Kong's special bananas with the power to make things grow to enormous sizes. Hence, why the Donkey Kong country universe humans are so much bigger than the

Mushroom Kingdom residents like Mario. It's all parts of a balanced diet. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.