Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 413: Green Mario Gaiden

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Having explored the legacies and games of the rest of the primary Super Mario franchise cast, Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Stuart Gipp gather together to wrap it up by talking about, uhh, that one guy. The green one. Whatshisname. Edits by Greg Leahy; art by Amanda Pruitt. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. To hear more great shows or to learn how you could become part of our consortium of independently owned podcasts, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This week in Retronauts, it ain't easy being green. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronaut's episode. Wait for it, 413. This is an episode we're calling Green Mario Guidon. It's a story, side story about a green guy who kind of looks like Mario, but he's not. We've talked about every Mario character to this point. I'm pretty sure. Like, didn't we have an episode on Sniff it at some point? point. We've just gone into a great amount of depth in terms of Mario characters and their spin-offs and standalone projects and media appearances and so on and so forth. But there is one character we've overlooked, and I feel we're fully justified in that because, as we'll

see in this episode, the discussion will have, this character is often sort of, I mean, it kind of started out as an afterthought and often is overlooked by Nintendo and never really given, or rarely given the props that he is due, despite his omnipresence for more than 35 years of video games, almost 40 at this point. So we are talking, of course, about Green Mario. And here to discuss this fellow with me, the Mario, but on the opposite end of the color spectrum. Oh, wait, I'm Jeremy Parrish. Yes. And the people who are here with me on this episode, over in California. Hey, everybody. It's Bob Mackey. And I think most listeners would consider me the green Mario of this podcast because I'm taller and I was invented later. And Jeremy's the one who always wears a hat. And that's my evidence so far. This, yes, I was going to have this discussion during this episode. You were taller, leaner. Came in a little later. I was here before you. And also, I am sometimes drawn chubby and sometimes drawn spelt. So. And I'm in love with a woman named Daisy. Don't tell my wife. And also in California.

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert and Mario, where are you? It doesn't matter because we're talking about his brother this time. That's right. Car 54, where are you fans out there? And finally, across the ocean, some ocean or another. I'm Stuart Jip. I guess I would be the toad of the group if you're Luigi. I can't really reveal why that is, unfortunately.

In a very recent episode, you referred to yourself as Wario, so I'm actually very surprised by this. Oh, Wario and Toad have quite a lot in common, I think. We'll get into it at some point. We'll get into it. I actually, no, I think we need to have this conversation now. Well, you know, I mean, I could sit here all day and I could list off so many reasons, but we're here to talk about Luigi, so forget it. Oh, that's his name.

Yes, Luigi. Where did that guy come from? What's with that name? is Luigi short for Leguizamo? It's one of many questions that we're going to answer this episode as we discuss Green Mario. So let me ask you, gentlemen, where did you first encounter Green Mario? Was he even green when you first encountered him? Yeah, well, when I became a Mario super duper fan, it was in the Super Mario Brothers era.

And so I, you know, and I have a brother. So that's another reason I was, I think, drawn to the Brothers, Frank. other than just it's a really fun video game and once we got an N.S. in like, I think 87, then at the same, a little after that came the Deke cartoon and Luigi is such a central character in there that it's like if me and my brother would be play acting, I'd be Mario and he'd be Luigi because, you know, even though sometimes they're twins, sometimes they're not, I feel like Mario is the older brother's role to play in in childhood play acting.

But so I, yeah, he was always a key part of the Mario franchise to me, Luigi. I encountered Luigi in the original Mario Brothers arcade game, which was the first arcade game I was really super fascinated by, but I never played as him because I always played alone. And I didn't think I don't think I thought much about Luigi until a friend of mine had Mario Brothers 2 and I would just watch him play it a lot and then play it and fail miserably because I was just really bad at it. And he would always play as Luigi. could not believe someone could successfully play as Luigi because to me it was hard mode.

So at first, Luigi was an intimidating force in my life. But then I grew to appreciate him and love him. And now you identify with him. Stuart, how about you? I first encountered Luigi and Super Mario Bros. as well, I used to rent an NES from a library in my hometown. I had no real strong feelings towards Luigi, unfortunately. He was just the unusual one.

I suppose in that respect, I did root for him. him a little bit because he is kind of the underdog. His name's not on the packaging. I don't think he's mentioned on the packaging at all. He's just there. He's like a mystery, I suppose. So yeah, I do appreciate that about Luigi. Well, his name is, his name is emblazoned at the top of the screen when you play as him. And that was actually, come to think of it, I guess my first Super Mario Brothers experience was playing as Luigi because I had a friend who lived down the block who was one of the cool kids. Actually, he wasn't cool. He just was one of the lucky kids who got an NES very early, like

1986 and at that point there weren't that many games for it so mostly what we played when I came over to his place was Super Mario Brothers and he was always player one and I was always player two and because he owned the game and played it all the time he would play for a long period of time and then I would play as Luigi for like 30 seconds and die because I'd never played it before and didn't know what I was doing and it was weird because the controls were a cross pad like this just this cross what the hell was that all about where was the joystick it was so confusing so my first experiences

as Luigi were you know just rife with failure but I did I did encounter Luigi you know before that in Mario Brothers although I don't know that I ever got to play the arcade game co-op but I did play it from time to time but as it turns out most people you know mark Mario Brothers

as the origin of Luigi but in reading about this I went to places like the Mario Wiki and they claim that that's Mario Brothers for the arcade is not the first showing or the first appearance of Luigi apparently the game and watch

Mario Brothers which is a different game it's more like a I don't know kind of a back and forth managing multiple level sort of thing that was actually released about four months before the arcade game March 1983 versus July.

And therefore, that would be the first appearance of Luigi. And in that game, he was solid black because it was Game and Watch, and every character was a solid black silk screen. So he looked exactly like Mario, even more so than usual, because they were just, you know, silhouettes. But I would also argue that Luigi debuted before that because in 1982, you had the sequel to Mario's debut, Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario plays the role of the villain in that. But in the opening of the game, there is a brief cutscene where two marios appear at the top of the screen, hauling Donkey Kong to captivity.

And it's possible that Mario briefly cloned himself or created like a ninja shadow duplicate. But more likely is that he and Luigi were in cahoots together getting into the villainous endangered animal trade game, where they realize they should be heroes rather than villains. So I kind of see that as Luigi's debut, even though he's not called out as a character and is just a mirror image in every respect of Mario. But who else is that going to be? Who else I am? It's got to be him. I think this is it.

That's got to be him. Absolutely. I figured that it was just Nintendo feeling that every carpenter in New York looks the same. They all are. I was going to make the joke that Luigi made his first appearance on a pizza box, but I was reading the Luigi Wiki, and apparently that's partially true because this This sounds apocryphal, but there's a bit of trivia where there was a pizza pie restaurant by Nintendo's headquarters called Mario and Luigi's.

So that's how they got the two Italian, the only two Italian names they knew were from that restaurant. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's listed as a fact on a wiki that's cited. It's cited, so it has to be true. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And there's also the theory that Luigi comes from the Japanese word Ruriji, which means similar, because Luigi is just a palette swap of Mario. or sometimes just identical. But I feel like that might be one of those things, you know,

where they kind of backported some meaning into something. I don't know. Luigi is a legitimate Italian name, much like Mario. I agree with a... New Yorkers never mispronounce Luigi's name. I agree with a sentiment of print the legend. And so I say you go go with that. That it was about a pizza place across the street in Seattle

from Nintendo of America's home base. The same pizza place where Pac-Macon, was invented. Yeah. And this is where Mario and Luigi perfected their trade of ape child

enslavement and so forth. This is the origin of Pizza Gate. They really sort of buried that. They don't really want to talk about that now. Investigate the basement of Mario and Luigi's.

There are many toads down there. There are many toads down there. Anyway, I think most people became aware, I don't know, of a certain age, most people of a certain age became aware of Luigi, thanks to Atari, not Nintendo, because Atari licensed Mario Brothers for Atari 2,600, and published a pretty successful port, even though. though the American console marketing was in the process of cratering, it's not like people just said, oh, video games, I don't want those. And, you know, this was a popular arcade game, a sequel to Donkey Kong. It was well liked, well known, and, you know, it did pretty well for itself. But Atari published a commercial, which Henry was singing earlier, where it doesn't

show Mario. It presents the game as if you are on a quest to rescue Mario, as opposed to punch turtles and flies from beneath with your brother as your companion, your helpful assistant. And Luigi is like running around the pipes, panicking, singing Mario, where are you, to the tune of the Car 54 television theme, which is a really weird choice.

But, you know, it was the early 80s and there was a lot of cocaine happening, especially in the marketing industry. So I'm going to accept it. But, but yeah, like, that's kind of the first big showing of Luigi. And honestly, I have to wonder how much that commercial

kind of informed later characterizations of Luigi because the sort of timid, you know, like where the hell is Mario became pretty much canon with, especially with Luigi's mansion. But, you know, even in later appearances, he always, he often was presented as being kind of a little bit of a nebish, a little bit more timid than Mario, more easily startled, et cetera,

reliant on his big brother or shorter, older brother as the case may be. So, yeah, I feel like that by coincidence or, you know, by just stroke of fate, that commercial really did a lot to sort of cement the idea of Luigi in the mind of the American public. You know, I was thinking about this, too, that I'm not saying I've watched every vintage commercial for Mario products that was, you know, put out in Japan, but I have seen a few and most focus on Mario himself. It's like Luigi isn't part of the commercials for it or it's him and Donkey Kong.

But I definitely get the sense that for, you know, the American advertisers all the way back to that first Atari commercial, they see this Luigi character and like, well, who's he? What's his deal? You know, what's his story that he looks exactly like this other guy? Like it creates an interest that you want to. to dig into. And it's, you know, classic, uh, duo comedy like Abbott and Costello, uh, the Laurel and Hardy, all that stuff. It's got to be Monzaik comedy. I mean, it's, this is Osaka and Kyoto we're talking about. Oh, well, sure. I mean, that, that I think is definitely the, the Japanese interpretation,

but I just feel like the first people to make those jokes with Luigi would have been in these, uh, US ads in, in the 80s. Because like, well, this, he's a silly side. guy. Though then it's time, like in the Deke shows, for example, they just write him as, you know, like, he's just also Mario. There's not much difference between you write the two of them, other than that he is the second banana to Mario and Mario takes the lead in most adventures. Yeah, I would argue that Americans tend to have, you know, historically, a more developed view of what Luigi even is as a character due to Super Mario Brothers, due to those Atari commercials. I mean, if you look at the Japanese Super Mario Brothers, too,

that's kind of like where Luigi sort of becomes a primary playable character who is distinct from Mario, you know, with the higher jumps and the slippery friction and traction. But the American Super Mario Brothers too really did a lot more to define him, you know, giving him even more dramatically varied controls and skills than Mario, but also physically redefining him. And he's taller than Mario in Super Mario Brothers 2 because the character of whom he is a spright replacement, a rom hack, was the mother of the main character

and wore like a very tall sort of hat thing. So in order to fill up the space for that sprite, they were just like, oh, let's just stretch out Mario. And so that kind of defined, you know, Luigi's physical appearance in this rom hack of a non-Mario game. And then so much of the early Nintendo character marketing of the NES era was drawn specifically from Super Mario Bros. 2. There was so much Super Mario Brothers 2 paraphernalia. I mean, that's when Nintendo really got big. You know, they launched Nintendo Power Magazine with Super Mario Brothers 2 on the cover. And even though Luigi's not on that cover, there's just so much artwork from that area where they really started to license out their characters and properties. And obviously, Mario was the big one they, they licensed out. You didn't see a whole lot of like Mike Tyson's punch out or Star Tropic's bedsheets or something like that. But you saw a ton of, you know, just like every imaginable product with Mario. And the most prevalent and available artwork at the time was Super Mario Brothers too. So all the characters kind of got, you know, a lot of billing. But I really think that did a lot to cement the concept of the, the nature of Luigi for Americans and probably Europeans as well. I can't really speak to that, but maybe Stewart can. Much more so. in a more concrete and developed, you know, a way than kids in Japan would have seen.

I didn't really think of Luigi's having a personality until Luigi's mansion when it became clear that his personality was that he was scared of ghosts. But I can relate to that, to be honest. I find Luigi more relatable than Mario. You always have done. You're right, Jeremy. A lot of the defining Luigi in terms of what he looked like was because of dokey, dokey panic. Or Super Mario Brothers, too. Oh, wow.

A little bit of obscure trivia for you guys out there. Is that the prequel to dokey dokey literature club? I think so. I haven't played the latter, but I'm sure they're related. But, yeah, that's why as a weird little kid, I was frustrated when after Mario Brothers 2 for Mario 3 and Mario World, they went back to giving Luigi the same sprite as Mario. Where I was like, no, he's different. He's a different man.

Peaved me off to. Yeah, well, you know, you think about how the world of marketing and selling all of these tie-in toys was in the 80s, you know, that they, you can totally see the timeline of you, Nintendo had this big hit with Super Mario Brothers, but they weren't fully ready to capitalize on it, you know, in selling it and all the side content you can sell. So by the time they've got Mario 2, USA, ready, that they have to solidify all these things. They're like, okay, we've got all the characters in this game. Now these are the ones we put into.

to, you know, the character Bible that we send to Deke. These are the official drawings that we say, you can put this on a t-shirt or a sleeping bag or a video game box or a calendar or a cereal, all that stuff. You, these are the official one. So at least for American children caught up in Mario Mania in the late 80s, that was what you got of Mario content until Mario 3 reset the game of what the licensed art would look like. But even after Mario 3, like, you'd still see the official art, you know, from the two era still sticking around. And plus, the Deke show was so much more Mario 2 than Mario 1.

Like, there's, there's like three episodes maybe where they actually fight a Goomba or something. It's mainly even just the enemies are all Mario 2. And so, yeah, you've got Luigi front and center as the thinner one. I guess, too, you know, we talk about how. Mario 2 made Luigi taller and thinner, it also did make Mario fatter. Like he, he, he looks, he look at him in, uh, Miyamoto's drawing for the cover of one. You know, he's not, he's, I wouldn't call him, like fat or whatever, but his belly gets a lot more round in his character model for, for Super Mario Brothers 2.

Well, they were just referencing Captain Lou Albano. Yeah. In his actual body type. That's true. They were just making him more cuddly. Mm-hmm. You're right, though, Henry. You did see a lot of that artwork sticking around.

I would say until Super Mario World came out. And then they were like, hey, it's the dinosaur pal you can ride. You guys like Yoshi. Here's Yoshi everywhere. And that sort of replaced all the Mario 2 imagery. But up until that point, yeah, I think because Mario 2 did have that emphasis on other characters that weren't just bad guys, whereas Mario 3, you've got Mario, the princess, toad, and then, you know, all the Cupa kids.

I think having that additional friendly face on there, you know, having Luigi present really made a difference and was, you know, made, worked, worked to the benefit of marketing and to making things kid friendly. And all the toys I first got of Mario toys, like there were Luigi toys and the Mario toys. Like I, though Luigi got like one toy for every four Mario toys that there were, like, but I, you know, as a kid who also tried. his best to convince his mom like, well, I have to have all four turtles mom. The turtles all have to, it's not a complete adventure without all four turtles. Same deal with like, I have to have the Mario and Luigi toys, mom. It's not, I can't play with them accurately without Mario and Luigi. So let's talk about the games that Luigi has been in,

but has not actually been a character in to speak of. He's just been a presence. He's just been this green Mario. Going all the way back to Game and Watch Mario Brothers, have any of you actually played Game and Watch Mario Brothers? You know, I played a lot of cement factory, but Game and Watch Mario, let me, pull this up here real quick. I know. Gameplay-wise, Mario

Brothers, I haven't played it myself, but just looking at videos of it, it's pretty similar in concept of cement factory, where there's things kind of moving, but, you know, you have control over Mario and Luigi, I believe. Oh, yeah. In any of the galleries. It isn't one of the galleries. I think it might be gallery four, but don't quote me on that. I did play a bit of it in the

gallery version, but the game and watch is, I was lucky enough. to have, and this would be after, I didn't ask my parents for game and watches until after we had an N.S. And they were in the pre-game boy world, a thing to hand their overactive child to shut up on car rides. So, but I played more of cement factory than the other one. But yeah, principle the same. Both are just stick figures, like with a hat on them. And that if you look at the box art, you're like, yeah, that's Mario. I see him on the box. the art though is really cool on the outside of the box uh they'll retain this for the arcade version it's the little squat like flesher versions of the characters with really thick lines smart teeth yes uh i wish they would have kept that style i understand why they didn't but it's really really appealing i love their like crimp floppy hats too like uh you and me bought both on the the metacom toys of those those are my favorites uh and just how they make them look in 3D with those like dumpy bodies and puffy hats that like uh it how

they make it work in three-dimensional spaces. Complements to the Medicom folks. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so I have never played this before. I am slowly kind of over time accumulating some games and watch, game and watches, however you say that, how are you pluralize that? I don't have Mario Brothers, but it's one of my list.

But in researching this episode, I discovered that in Italy, they sold a Campari branded Mario Brothers game and watch. And now I need to track from that one down. It's probably very expensive. And I will finally find one and say, oh, I guess I'm not buying that. But just, I like the idea of Mario and Luigi branded with an Italian aperitif. That's what a great idea.

They should be doing more of that. But Nintendo doesn't have the guts to do ads with alcohol. I know, right? They got to get over that American puritanical. Give us Mario and Luigi promoting a love hotel. Get us back to Nintendo's roots. You can drink at Universal Studios whenever they open that Mario Land. Maybe they'll have like a Kupa IPA or something.

You can chug. That's going to end incredibly well. They're going to have to tell people like, no, go over to Jurassic Park if you want to drink. You can't. Or pay $14. Well, Luigi, all of his drinks are going to be made with Midori. That sounds tasty. Pay $14 for like a duff beer at Simpson's World.

Get out of here. Which they just even say it's like, yeah, it's a Sam Adams. Who cares? But we call it duff if you buy it in this place. all right so shortly after the game and watch maria brothers came out marie brothers came out in the arcades we've talked about this before but again luigi is only playable if you are player two in this this kind of starts off the thing where mario's player one

and then if another person plays they get to be luigi but you cannot play as luigi on your own i guess i guess in the arcade no i think i think in the arcade like if you are one person you have to hit one player you can't do like the thing where you put in one quarter then press the player two start button and it'll let you play on the second controls. I think you have to play on the left side. This is a worthwhile experiment.

That's too advanced for 1983. I have a I have a co-worker who has a Mario Brothers arcade machine. He keeps saying, come over and play video games with me and I really need to and I can test this myself. I'll report back. If you had told me before I went to Chicago, I could have tested it out at the Galloping Ghost,

but haven't yet. If only I had thought I had to the conversation, conversation that we're going to evolve organically during during this podcast. I wasn't thinking ahead. Galping Ghost was a lot of fun, but they're Donkey Kong 3 machine, you know. Get somebody in there to work on that, guys. It's not, it's not looking at its best days. Yeah, it's probably because it's Donkey Kong 3.

No, what was that game? It was your mistake for wanting to play it. I suppose so, yeah. But, yes, Mario and Luigi kind of got their first outing together in Mario Brothers. and I think that game really neatly and succinctly sums up what it is to be brothers in that they're supposedly cooperating and helping each other, but there is this game mechanic where you can basically kill the other player by punching them from beneath while they're close to an enemy

and causing them to like flop forward into a monster. Symbolically, blowing up the pal block is wasting your inheritance before your brother can take it. I think that power block in two players only there for griefing. There is no other purpose for it. You're just like, why are you conspicuously hovering around the power block? Are you sure you're not going to flip this spiny back over when I broke up to it? Like, of course not.

Go ahead. Go ahead and kick it. I wish, you know, I never played it in arcades until, you know, my adulthood. I never had access to it then. But once I finally got to experience the Mario 3 version of Mario Brothers, it was a lot of fun for my brother and me. like it's still stealing cards yeah oh man even better when you can steal a card from your brother like that's my tokey suit now sam my brother's name is sam that sounded like a very specific reference no honestly he beat me most of the time at it and it eats me up inside

well you know that's that's also part of brotherhood um so moving on to 1985 we have wrecking crew early 1985 although actually apparently versus wrecking crew showed up in arcades before wrecking crew and I've never played that one is that one is that on arcade archives it probably is and I've downloaded it and just never got it on playing it sounds likely I wouldn't be surprised although wrecking crew is more relevant than ever because I was just announced not too long ago that form and spike will be in the Mario movie hell yeah oh that's right he's like sexy form and spike right I don't know what they're doing with him but he will I don't know what their priorities are either but he's

going to be there. Didn't they announce the actor, though, and he's like a pretty good looking dude? Form and Spike was always sexy. I don't know what you guys are talking about, but Forman Spike was not sexy in the NES version, but then on the Super Famicom remake for Soteluvu, they were like, actually, he's like a bodybuilder now. He's tough and buff. He's being played by Sebastian Maniscalo. Menescalco. That just sounds, that's just a handsome name. It's a very serious, smooth name. And Jeremy, you are correct. First thing, he's Racking Crew is on arcade archives on Switch. Okay, so I have no excuse for not having played this aside from just the fact that I'm very

busy and I have not created a retrospective video on Versus Reck and Crew yet, so I'm allowed. But from what I understand, Form and Spike does not appear in versus Recking Crew and instead, it's either you play as a two-player game or else you play solo as Mario and Luigi kind of takes the role of Form and Spike and antagonizes you and tries to mess you up the way Forman Spike does. But in the NES version, you can play two players, but Luigi looks almost exactly like Mario. Like, he's even red. It's like a different shade of red than Mario, but they look very, very similar in terms of their sprites. They're kind of, it's a weird sort of version of Mario and Luigi because they don't quite look like their usual selves.

They've been re-drawn, and their overalls actually look like Leaderhosen. So I guess they were, you know, took a wrecking job in Germany for some reason. I guess the money was no good where they were, so they had to go abroad to get work. It's a sad story. Oh, wait, no, there is money in the mushroom kingdom. Actually, maybe that's why they moved to the mushroom kingdom. It's like single coins at a time.

It's just floating around. It's in bricks, whereas in, you know, in Mario Brothers, they had to get to the bonus round or else kill an enemy. And then they got one trifling coin. These two Brooklyn guys go to this simple kingdom where they don't understand money and it's worth. And you just take it all.

Sorry about killing all the denizens who had been turned into horsehair plants and bricks. Luigi did appear next in Super Mario Bros. as a player two only character. He's a little more distinct from Mario this time in that Mario normally wears a brown shirt and red suspenders, whereas Luigi wears a green shirt and white suspenders. This would be easier if I actually had images in front of me. So there's a little more visual distinction until they get fireflowers, in which case I think they both just turn red. Well, you know, the ADS isn't made of color palettes. They can only be so many colors.

I know, right? It was very limited. Only 52 colors. Come on. So it's worth noting that in the Game Boy Color remake of Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Luigi is not just a palette swap. I mean, visually he is, but he plays more like his Super Mario Brothers to Japan, lost levels version because they did add most of the lost levels into Super Mario Brothers

deluxe as an unlockable. So there is that little bit of synchronicity there. Although in the All-Stars version for Super NES, there's nothing changed. He is not different. You know, for his widespread as that Luigi look is in

Super Mario Brothers, it's kind of like a singular look. They never replicated. Once Mario 2 came out, they pretty much, you know, also it was the end of Mario having red overalls and a blue shirt in design. too, which I, but the Luigi look I just love is like white overalls with a green shirt and then

like he kind of has a green tint to his skin even. Like he's kind of like, it's like a sickly color to him. He's actually Vulcan, copper-based blood. I think that white overalls are a poor choice though because you're wearing overalls to, you know, you know, cover yourself up. A sewer. Yes, exactly. It's all going to show up. It's all going to show up on your white overalls. Mario was probably originally wearing white overalls free went down one of those pipes. Now it's red. I don't know. I don't want to know. It's rust. I mean, I guess if, you know, they're wearing overalls because they're painting a house white, it's fine. But otherwise, yes.

Questionable choice. But that's Luigi for you. Maybe they were cheaper to get white overalls and he's just, you know. Could be. Dye, you know, it's very expensive. All I know is if. Crush beetles and extract the dyes from their carapaces. All I'm saying is if Marion Luigi came up to me and I had to hire one of them, I would hire Luigi based on the dress sense. But, you know, I guess it depends on the job. I think he'd undercut his brother, too, on prices.

He'd be like, I can do it for less. Probably. Anyway, so we're going to skip over Mario Brothers 2 because that's actually a significant outing for Luigi. Super Mario Brothers 3 is not. Although, as mentioned, you can play as him in two-player mode. And it is possible to play simultaneously in the Mario Brothers

a like game, the bonus mode, which is kind of neat because otherwise it's just alternating play. So you never see Luigi if you're a kid who maybe has siblings

but they don't care about video games. So you always have to play by yourself. Yeah, that's why I don't want to other people anymore. And the art is the same for Luigi from two USA onwards.

I don't think there's any Super Mario Brothers one art where Luigi is taller and skinny or is there. I was trying to find some. No, I think it really, I mean, there's very rare to even see just Luigi art for Super Mario Brothers. I don't think I've seen any.

They didn't. I do recall, there's one bit in here that I forgot to add to the notes, but I just remembered that the Super Mario Brothers anime film or right from like 86. Luigi is drawn somewhat different from Mario, but it's not like he's a head taller or anything. And he's got weird colors, right? Very odd colors, yeah. The color palettes.

He's kind of wario-ish in the color palette. Yellow overalls in a dark blue outfit and they're underneath. But also, I mean, the canon of that film is that, like, Mario plays a game he stars in and then falls asleep and falls into the game that is his game that starts him and his brother. And they, like, own a grocery store or something. Right. Yeah, yeah. That's my dream. It's been a while since I've seen it.

But, yeah, I recall Luigi's slightly different than that. But other than that, I think they kind of had to just adapt to, like, to, like, Luigi, they're just like, look, in instruction manuals and in the Super Mario 3 cartoon show, Luigi's going to be how he looked in the Mario 2 cartoon show, but it won't be reflected in the video game because they're like not talking to each other, the Japanese and American sides. Yeah, he's a little taller in All-Stars, apparently. I've never really sat down to compare, but he actually can be made to play differently in Super Mario Advance 4, Super Mario Brothers 3. If you use e-cards, he does not.

not normally play differently, but you can use certain e-cards to activate switches or something that allows him to play differently than Mario. So if you use this horrible Kluji peripheral with paper cards that are really hard to find and weren't entirely released in the US just in Japan, then yes, you can make Luigi distinct from Mario. Otherwise, you're out of luck. It might be worth knowing. I think you can do it in the Wii U release of that game.

I think they ported all the card functionality into it. Just like, do by default, which was pretty cool. We used even harder to find it than a new reader, man. Not in my apartment. It still is hooked up. That's my dreamcast. So then on to Super Mario World, where again, he's just green Mario for player two only. But someone pointed out the GBA version makes him unique.

What is the note here? Well, so there's a couple bits with it. Yeah, so, well, first off, I just recall, too, in, yes, through the game as visually, Luigi looks just like Mario. It's the same deal as always. But if you get to that, the end screen, it is Mark. Mario Peach and Luigi, and Luigi actually is the pixel version of him is the taller, skinnier version of Luigi. It is the Mario 2-ish version of Luigi on the VN screen. So it's very interesting that they did it for that and not the others.

And then, you know, a year later, in Mario Kart, he is the taller Luigi. But maybe that was on their way to Mario Kart. They're like, I guess this is what Luigi looks like. And then when a little bit later for Super Mario All-Stars, when they redefined a lot of different sprites for the remake, some version of Mario All-Stars also came packaged with Super Mario World. And that version of Super Mario World does have a taller, different ish, Luigi, but not exactly the real different Luigi Sprite you're used to seeing. Are you guys familiar with the Weird Star Wars Theory bigger Luke? No. No, I've never heard of this.

Okay, there's a real rabbit hole to fall down here. But some people who have spent way too much time watching the original Star Wars have they, they have determined that Mark Hamill looks taller in some shots than in others. And there's a theory that like there were actually two actors, not just Mark Hamill. One of them is taller and one of them is not. And they call the taller one bigger Luke. So I think maybe this is time for us to kick off the bigger Luigi theory. Interesting. I mean, like, I don't know if people know how filmmaking is done,

but maybe it was just a stand-in for coverage or something like that, or maybe he was standing on an Apple box? I mean, Mark Hamel's 5-9. Man, he sat short. I've seen Mark Camel in person, but only sitting down, so I never knew this. Actually, it was taller than I thought he was. As Bob said, I mean, I would personally contend that there are many reasons why the actor may appear taller in some shots than others, but I'm sure these will be considered by the people

behind this theory. Of course, but I'm just saying that maybe there's something similar with Luigi. Either he's replaced by another actor or else, like, they just created the video games from a different perspective. He was standing on an apple crate. In universe, that would explain a lot of his personality changes, but maybe we'll get to that. He got recast. It's like, it's the other Darren theory, you know, just like a second.

and Darren showed up after once they settle into the Super NES, like the original Darren slash Luigi, you know, got cancer or something. It had to be replaced. Sorry. That's too much. That's too real. But yeah. Oh, for God's sake.

This episode's going places. Anyway, it's worth giving credit to the Game Boy Advance remake of Super Mario World, Super Mario Advance 2, because it does make Louis. somewhat unique. It lets you play, I believe, as Luigi anytime you want. And you can do the floaty thing and basically have a hard mode. I think it's great that one of the first games to, you know, say like, hey, you can play as Mario or Luigi in this classic adventure was when they took the series from consoles to the Game Boy Advance, which has smaller resolution and a horizontal resolution. So, of course, Luigi's great asset is his

verticality. He's taller, and he jumps really high. So of course, they put him on a system that is, you know, greatly truncated on the vertical axis. So he's even harder to play on Game Boy Advance than unlike NES or other platforms. So it's just, you know, poor guy. Was that game Super Mario Advance? Was that the first time that he was given his sort of nasally voiced that he kind of has now, or was he voiced in an N-64 game or something, I believe he was voiced in Super Mario, or Mario Kart 64. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, I think by that point Martinet was doing Luigi in that kind of voice, and definitely by the Mario Party games on the 64, he was getting up there in the higher range, you know, in the many, the man of a thousand voices, Charles Martinet, all his different ways of doing an Italian accent. Yeah, what does Luigi say in Mario Kart 64? I never play as any of the middleweight racers, so I don't. actually no. You know what? I can just pull it up on YouTube if you give me one second here.

You know, I don't think anyone has ever selected him. Nobody knows. I think goes, here we go. He's got a deeper voice than Mario. Yeah, you know what? Actually, maybe it is and is. All right, here, I'm going to play the video. Oh, ho.

Here we go. Bingo. Oh, ho. Mamma mia. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Yahoo. I'm Luigi, number one. There we go.

See, totally different. Bingo. That was like Luigi on cocaine. That guy needs to visit rehab. I'm a Luigi number one. Anyway, yeah. So I think that was kind of what defined his voice for the series. But certainly the original Super Mario Advance,

the remake of Super Mario Brothers 2, is the game in which you hear his voice the most because those people, those characters will not shut the hell. I love it so much. They toned it down with the sequels, with the other remakes. but they were, they were just drunk with power. They were like, wow, we can do voice clips in a portable game.

Let's do nothing but voice clips. That should just be the soundtrack. In July of 2001, it did really impress me in the first advance game. And then I think by August 2001, I would have preferred silence. I think I probably just turned the volume one down. I was, I was super annoyed from the moment it started. I was just like, wow, they, like a little of this would be okay. But, you know, like, like, Akronaeran of Time, where Link is like,

hop, hey, hop, a little bit, you know, when he takes interesting actions, you know, dramatic actions, but, but wow, it's just, yeah, it's overwhelming. So, didn't they, when they ported Link to the past to the GBA, I think they added that in to every source of it. They didn't, they were making mistakes. It worked with Mario Advance. I was too distracted by the size of that shy guy on the second room. It was massive.

I think for Link to the Past on GBA, they changed his hair color, uh, from pink to brown or whatever. I feel like they're messing. They're messing with our heads trying to lie to us. Like, no, it was never pink. What are you talking about? More gaslighting by Nintendo. Yeah.

I had Bill Trinand say to my face, his hair wasn't pink. And I was like, how dare you? Yeah, he's really, he's really adamant about that. Yeah, I can't trust him anymore. Anyway, so on to Super Mario 64, the game that dare to ask, is L real? Actually, no, it claimed L is real, but then it did not. not, it did not provide any evidence. There was no Luigi, no L in Mario 64. We at least got Yoshi, who is supposed to be writable in Mario 64 until they realized, wow, we can't really

figure this out in time for launch. So he just shows up at the top of the castle. He's like, wow, you got all the stars, you madman. I can't believe you did that clock stage. Well, thanks to the Nintendo leak, they found Luigi assets last year. And then we've heard from interviews and other sources that the game was designed originally or was intended originally to be a two-player game in which it would be. split screen and you would be exploring different parts of the castle, one person playing Mario, one person playing Luigi, but

they realize, like, let's just make a single player game first with this new technology and then we can figure out what a split screen game could be. And they never gave it to us. No. Thanks, Nintendo. Well, the DS version, let you do that a tiny little bit. Am I imagining that? I know if you get Luigi before Mario.

There's like a battle. There's a battle mode. Yeah. So Mario 64DS added three additional playable characters. You have to unlock in sequence. I think Yoshi is how you start the game. And then you can find Wario and Luigi and Mario and unlock all of them. And Luigi does

play somewhat differently than Mario and Mario 64 DS. But you don't really have the co-op split screen even so. There is a battle mode. No, I think that may have been in early trailers and things, but it didn't hit the final games. They replaced it with all those mini games or something.

Well, I am. Yes. Luigi does appear as a card dealer wearing a nice bow tie. It suits him, I think. I really think it suits him. I should have kept with that, you know, lean into the whole gambling thing. He's there and teaches the kids how to gamble. But in a classy Monte Cristo kind of way, Monte Carlo, not Monte Carlo. You know what I mean?

That, though, I mean, everybody plays different in Mario 64Ds because you don't have an analog stick, you know? It's true. Everyone just runs in the walls and plummet's off cliffs. I played it with that little piece of string that goes around your thumb. Did anyone have that? Was that a thing? I tried it a little bit.

It came with the system. Yeah. Oh, I did. Okay. Yeah. It was that. Let's use it with the Metroid Prime Hunter's demo. Yeah, they gave up on that exactly like a week after the system came out.

You never saw that again. All right, so for Mario 64DS, we go to New Super Mario Bros. a year and a half later, where Luigi is, once again, just green Mario. But apparently you can play as Luigi anytime you want. He's not just for player two. You hold down the L and R buttons as you select a stage, and you can play as Luigi. But the game doesn't tell you this until you finish the game as Mario. And then it's like, oh, yeah, at any time, you could have been you could have been luigi what are you doing uh that did make me grumbled then yeah that made me go like oh come on man like yeah i not that i would have played with him but like also i was you know that game's like six hours or something it was a good it was a good time but it uh we've we've talked about this before me and bob's feelings on the new super mario brothers original

yeah yeah i mean i i i'm right there with you and still have one of the lowest scores on record for the game, which is still a positive score, but I was like, come on, I know, I know Nintendo can do better than this. And lots of people were angry about that. I thought it was really good. I love it. I love that game.

Okay, that's fine. I think there are a better new Super Mario Brothers games. Actually, all of them. Is that the only one that had the versus mode? Because I had a lot of fun with the versus mode, the Mario versus Luigi. That was, that was a good time. I don't think they put that in any of the ones, though.

I think a lot, well, definitely those mini games that were Mario 6040s, that was like in most of the Mario DS game. Like here they are again, play it like, and it felt novel at the time of like, oh, I can do multiplayer on the DS with just one cart. And I can just tell my friends like,

no, no, you don't have to own this. Like, let's, I'll, you can download it through like the internet. Yeah, there was like a battle mode where you link up and there was like, I think you had to get five power stars on each stage.

And they were like looping unique stages. Yeah, I'm watching a video, but now, that's what you have to do in this versus mode. Yeah, so I don't think you saw the battle mode in the future New Super Mario Brothers games, because beginning with New Super Mario Bros. We, they just added cooperative multiplayer. So in the first New Super Mario Brothers Wii, where it's multiplayer, again, Luigi is just Green Mario because every character is, you know, green or blue or yellow Mario, because, you know, let's just be boring as possible. But Luigi is only for players two to four.

Player one is always Mario in that game. And the other players can choose, you know, whoever gets the interesting-looking character first, gets to be Luigi, and then everyone else has to pick a toad. And apparently Luigi also appears as the pity mode. I don't remember this, but reading about it, if you're terrible at the game, then Luigi will appear optionally

and automatically beat that stage for you through AI control. Yeah, that's something Nintendo was doing a bit at that time where that was also in Mario Galaxy 2 where it's like, let me do this for you. I know. The CPU stepping in and saying, yeah, you can't do this. Let me just step in here and finish this level.

I always understood Nintendo's reasoning for it, but it was like a spit, like the game was spitting in my face if that ever happened, like whenever. It meant that I wasn't good enough to finish it before the requisite number of turns before they go like, hey, you want some help, you know, and Luigi's right here, look, he'll just do it for you. And I was like, how dare you? How dare you? I'm not sure if it was this game, but it was one where the super guy had made everyone really upset,

because if it even, if it even triggered once, then your file would permanently not be able to get shiny stars on it or something like that. Like, even if it's, I don't think if it's if you choose it. I don't think, like, if it shows up as an option, because you could turn it down. And they would refine the super guide better. I think the one in Galaxy 2, the first thing would be like, look, we'll just show you a video of what you're supposed to do. And then you can still do it. And then after that, they're like, here, you keep dying.

Here's the invincibility feather or beef. Like, just do that. And as long as you don't fall down a hole, you'll beat this stupid. One thing, one slightly related thing I'm glad Nintendo has stopped doing that was kind of patronizing. With every 3DS game, it was like every app. hour, the game would be like, hey, come on, buddy, it's time to take a break. Now with Switch games, they're like, we don't care if you dive a blood clive. Just play until you fall asleep. It's fine. Just give your system to your younger sibling when you die so they can keep

buying games. Yeah, exactly. I look this sucks. I had to know, but apparently it's Mario 3D land. If you die more than five times in a stage, that's it. You cannot get those shiny stars. This may be apocryphal, but it's on the internet, and that means it's definitely true. Hmm. Hard to argue with that. Anyway, so New Super Mario Brothers 2, Green Mario is just Green Mario, and he's only for player 2. Although you can unlock him for player 1, if for some reason you want a different sprite when you play. New Super Mario Brothers You, again, it's just like New Super Mario's We, where he's just Green Mario. Although there is a glorious exception, which is not really part of the game, but it's like a re- working a remix of the game called New Super Luigi U, which is basically only Luigi and it's a, it kind of feels like the first time Luigi was really given, you know, his own his own justifiable props. Like they finally said, you know what?

This guy's different and playing with him is a different experience and let's make it really punishing by not only giving you floaty physics, but also giving you a strict 100 second time limit for every single stage in the game. That is, it's, I have not beaten that game. It's really, really hard. Well, of course that came out of the misbegotten year of Luigi 2013, which was like fiscally, perhaps the worst year Nintendo ever had. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, which I, not so good for them to go with the year of Luigi, but it was quite a fun year of Luigi content. And yeah, I, I love new Super Luigi you. Like, it's my favorite new. Mario game really like I I also got to interview Tesika about it in at the E3 in the year of Luigi and and I annoyed him with questions about Luigi history in general that eventually the translator was like let's move on to New Luigi you please I was

like all right but but yeah the what I like about New Luigi you was that it was them saying like okay you've complained that everything's too wide and open and you can you can play too long and it's made to fit up to four characters in the stage. Fine. Here is a dedicated levels that are way fast, much smaller. You got to go quick. They're going to be challenging and they're only made for one person. And you got to play as, but if you want that, you got to play as Luigi. No Mario for you. And yeah, it's great. If you have the Switch version, I haven't played the Switch version of it that packages them together, you and you and Luigi. but it's totally I would definitely say

check it out on your switch if you missed it on the Wii I do want to play it that was the same year we got Dr. Luigi I think that's right it did not teach Americans

to trust Italian doctors though we learned the hard lesson in 2020 the Wii you had been more successful maybe but you know

Dr. Fauci should have grown a ridiculous mustache I like the idea of Luigi talking like Dr. Fauci though vibe. I think it works.

Like elderly Luigi, I see it. I think Luigi had done a better job thrown out the first pitch. It's true. That's when Americans lost respect for that, man. Finally, one final game in which Luigi is just Green Mario. And this one is literal Super Mario Maker where he's literally

Green Mario because he is just an alternate sprite power up that you can get for Mario. He is not a character in his own right. He is a disguise that his brother dons. to masquerade as his sibling. There are some implications on that one. I like it.

So he was one of the many costume mushroom power-ups where they just gave you a wacky new sprite usually based on something in real life. Yeah, you could be like that's seen in me or like a car. Yeah, yeah. Or the best. Skinny Mario. Baby metal. The best.

I believe he was called Weird Mario. Weird Mario. Skinny Mario. I'm a fan of that guy too. But that's just while. Luigi. And, you know, which that's a whole other podcast. Yeah. I'm going to do that one. Yeah. I didn't even put Waluigi in the notes, but that's, yeah. We want to do a Waui episode at some point. You're just like Sama. The people will demand a full of a Waluigi episode. You're just like Sakurai leaving out Waluigi. I can make a two hour Wauigi episode. I know who to call. Stay tuned.

Is it the guy who did the comic? No, but I'm sure we'll reference that. Is it Waluigi himself? I have connections. We could get him. He'll do Joe Rogan first, though. You just got to deal with that. Yeah. Hey, Lassie, what are you doing here? Timmy's in a well. Sequelcast 2 and Friends is a podcast looking at movies in a franchise,

one film at a time, like Harry Potter, Hellraiser, and The Hobbit. And sometimes the host talk about video games and TV as well. And now it's part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. Oh, Lassie, we don't need to rescue Kimmy. He likes the well. Well enough, I guess. North Vader is Luke's father. Lassie, I told you to play off the spoilers.

Video Deathloop is a podcast where we watch a short video clip on Loop until we just can't take it anymore. Along the way, we'll try our best to make each other laugh and to hold out longer than the other guy. You can jump in on any episode, no need to worry about continuity. Check out Video Death Loop on the Greenlit Podcast Network with new episodes every Friday. All right, so we've talked about really kind of at length about the games in which Luigi is not a character in his own right, he is just, you know, there as the alternate form of Mari. but it's worth talking about all the games that made the world love Luigi where he got to be distinct.

We talked about Super Mario Brothers 2 for the Famicom Disc System and Super Mario Brothers 2 for the NES. They are different games. You may have heard about that. But both of those games are linked by the common fact that they both turn Luigi

into a playable character and gave him distinct physics and controls from Mario. And as Bob said, he's kind of hard mode. Oh, yeah. Well, it already in a hard enough game for lost levels

than make it even harder. Yeah, so his defining trait is that he has a high, floaty jump and he has slippery traction, which means you spend more time in the air. You have a little more control, you know, over kind of your hang time than Mario does. But it's just trickier to kind of judge your landings as a result. And when you do land,

And you may not, you know, stick to the ground the way you want to and slide off the edge of a platform. So, you know, he has more mobility in a sense, but it requires a lot more control and precision. So it becomes pretty challenging. And that's pretty common, you know, pretty much the way he can be defined in Super Mario. There's two also. It's interesting because you think of Princess Peach as having the best jump range, you know, because she hovers for like three or four seconds. And that gives her a lot of distance on her jumps. But she has a very kind of low jump arc.

And it turns out that, you know, from like from a running start that Luigi actually travels a lot further than Princess Peach. So, you know, the difference is that Princess Peach can move through areas with low clearance, whereas Luigi can't really get full distance unless there's nothing overhead. So it has to be kind of an open area. But there is that potential. And then, of course, you know, you do the hold down for a few seconds. seconds and do the flash jump, and he's got amazing vertical range, basically the height of the screen. And that definitely gives him some utility in certain stages where, especially the ones where

you're kind of ascending, you can really kind of clear those stages pretty easily with him. Stages that are about, you know, sort of horizontal platforming and precision jumps kind of suck. I, I've always wondered if one of the reasons they, you know, I don't want to say effemini, make him a feminine. Bimbo fight, Henry. Bimbo fight. No, but one of the reasons they, like, lighten his character a bit is, like, his floaty jump with his wiggling legs. Like, it's a little light in the loafers, some might say.

I think of it as kind of an aspect of him being almost a kind of a goofy sidekick, because that does remind me of the whole kind of what's called Coyote Time kind of concept when his legs are kicking as if he's like, there's no ground, there's no ground, there's no ground. I find that quite fun. It makes him more appealing to me, personally. His move is straight out of like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon like Scooby and Shaggy jumping in the air and their feet wiggling and then they run off kind of thing. I know as kids we tried to do that jump and kick our feet, but we really do it like a pool underwater, basically. Yeah.

You can't do it when no one's watching. It sucks. I've double jump before, but it was before cell phone cameras. Yeah. But then Yoshi stole this whole bit. I know, right? And Yoshi can eat stuff and breathe fire, which Luigi cannot. Not. So, you know, Super Mario Brothers 2 came out in the U.S. for N.S. in 1980, and Luigi wouldn't get his own distinct play mode, playstyle separate from Mario, again, until Super Mario 64DS, which came out 16 years later.

That is a long-ass time for Luigi to play a second fiddle. That's a rough existence. Would it be too stupid to bring up the entertainment games at this point where you do play as Louisville? that's more of a different style because you're basically just walking around asking people about monuments and things oh you see those don't exist in my world because I'm sorry it's not like it's not you know that I deny their existence

it's just like those never occur to me because you know I was far too old to play those games or need them by the time they came out well for me I was just kind of like well you know what I love Mario but what I love even more is learning so they were right there for me you know yeah I played it because

to me it was a new Mario game. I learned it wasn't when I started playing it, but Mario was missing. It was the Luigi game, even though he had Mario Sprite in that game. Yeah, it was a guy. Yeah, as I started it up, I realized it was educational and bounced right off it. I think it was a rental, not a, not a purchase for our family. Yeah, I mean, the cover makes you think it's a real Mario game because it's like drawn in real Mario style. it doesn't look, you know, like fake, like how Hotel Mario by comparison looks. The cover's really cool and exciting as well.

You've got, like, Luigi, looking around for Mario being dragged off by Bowser. It's awesome. Yeah, and like a dungeon. Yeah, and you're like, this is going to be great. And then you play it, and it's just like, Hey, the Lening Tower of Reza, what's constructed. The box warns you, it's a geography learning adventure. That's way cool is what the box says.

No geography learning is an adventure or cool. Yeah. So you're really good. You're like, oh, a geography learning adventure. Then again, it does say it's way cool. I'm in. Here's $70. And, you know, after all that, we still don't know where the Bean Bean Kingdom is relative to the Mushroom Kingdom. Well, it's just like over there off screen. They never talk about it. Oh, that one. Okay. They were wiped out by the Mushroom Kingdom. Yes. Yeah. It's a lot. So I kind of feel like Super Mario 64 DS was Luigi's Renaissance. The, the, the awakening of Nintendo's internal development teams to say, oh, right,

we've got this other character who is technically distinct from Mario. And so three years later, you get Super Mario Galaxy. More than 20 years after Luigi was first playable as a distinct character in the loss levels, Nintendo finally said, maybe we should just make this guy his own character that you can play

as regularly and will do his own thing, except in the new Super Mario Brothers game is because screw those. But they really kind of kind of started to have fun with it during Super Mario Galaxy. And I remember the embargo on this game for the reviews where you could not talk about Mr. L. Mr. L

was off limits. Was that this game or was it Mario Galaxy 2, actually? I think it was Bo. He's in this one and when you get all 120 stars, I think. Right. So the thing about this game is that as you play as Mario and complete the game, you know, work your way through the game. Luigi is

also there kind of having his own adventure in parallel to you that you never really see. It's kind of like if, you know, they made the Lord of the Rings films and the fellowship of the ring actually occasionally saw evidence of the characters having the adventure that they did and that EA developed Lord of the Rings RPG RPG that was just like Final Fantasy 10. If occasionally the film acknowledged that, that's kind of what this was.

Like Luigi was having his own off-brand adventure that wasn't a as good as Mario's. But he was still there. That happened in... Sorry, go ahead, Stuart. I was going to say, I think, the same thing. They did actually use that device before in Paper Mario, too. That's what I was going to say, yeah.

Yeah, as you're playing through it, you can check him with Luigi, and he'll be talking about this crazy other adventures having in this crazy other fantastical world. It was quite a fun little gimmick. And when I used it again in Galaxy, I kind of thought maybe this is going to be his thing from now. When all the U.S. sidekicks made fun of him of he just like, hey, I saved the day. and they'd go like, you've had, you ran away. Isn't it sort of ambiguous whether or not he's making the whole thing up? I can't remember.

I think it's pretty clear that he is. His companions, none of them seem to like him. Yeah. I think there's one of them that's just like hanging around because Luigi owes him money. And they basically all say like, oh yeah, he's, he didn't do any of this. What is he talking about? Yeah, I'm going to replay that game.

Luigi was taking all the credit. I think they're a little too mean to Luigi in that one. It's a great game, but, but, uh, I like the way Mario Galaxy handles it a little better because you do get the impression that Luigi is out there with the Toad Explorers doing his own thing. You don't see his adventure. But then, you know, you beat the game

and you can replay through all of Mario Galaxy as Luigi in order to truly complete the game. And you're like going through, it's the same levels, right? It's not just, it's not remixes. It's like 242 stars. It's the same game again. But they're all like punch you in the balls hard because you're playing with Luigi.

I mean, I really. wanted to unlock this, but I can't really deal with the motion control stages in this game, especially riding that Manta Ray, so I never unlocked Luigi. But a friend of the show, Chris Daniel, who's been on the show, he has, I believe he's gotten all the stars as Luigi.

Oh, wow. Or shines, or whatever that happened. You can try the Switch version where it doesn't have motion controls, maybe. It's a little better. I mean, the Switch version still kind of has motion controls. Like, you still got to have a little bit. I mean, like, when you do the balance on the thing, there's when you got to point at the screen, you

still have to point at the screen a little bit. But the, yeah, that I could not have been more excited that Luigi, uh, once the news got out that he was in Galaxy, because, and I got a Wii in 2008, so I couldn't even play. I like, you couldn't freaking find one anywhere. So it wasn't for lack of wanting to play the game. But once I finally could, I was so excited because, you know, I always, I felt he got a raw deal by Mario 64. You never got to play

as him in the real games. They put him off to the side in his mansion. He's not in really in Mario Sunshine, certainly not playable in Mario Sunshine. And so I thought just the deal was oh, 3D Mario games, you don't play as Luigi. That's just how it's going to be. And to finally like

get him, and they have still some jokes about how scared he is of ghosts. Like you find him in the boo stage. You find him in the haunted house and save him in Galaxy. It's really fun. that they put that in there. You know, the EAD jokes about Luigi.

They're a little nicer than the R&D2 or intelligent systems or Alpha Dreams jokes at Luigi's expense, but they still have some fun with it too. I wonder how much of the Paper Mario kind of meanness to Luigi is in the Japanese games and how much of it is an invention of the localization teams because the localization teams take a lot of liberties with those games, which, you know, I fully applaud their localizations. on those games are great. Yeah. And there is a lot of text.

Yeah, there is a lot of text to translate and localize and they have fun with it. But I do kind of wonder, like, just how pathetic is Luigi actually in the Japanese versions of the games? How much of that is, you know, an invention of localization? I, you know, I would bet Nate Bildworth's localization has some, definitely embellishes some stuff. But if you just look at like sprite animations of Luigi, even in the first paper Mario, and really in the Mario and Luigi games

from Alpha Dream. The comedy is there. Like, Bill Dwarf isn't just inventing it out of nowhere. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. I'm just wondering like how much, you know, of the sort of the more extreme parts of it where Luigi, you know, owes money and

none of his companions like him. And writes in his diary and writes in his diary about how he's so much more of a coward than Mario and he never want to go on any adventures. I don't know. That game, not to go on too long about Paper Mario too, which is amazing and it should be re-released, but that game was

pretty, pretty rowdy and body. They censored a lot of things in it. Like, I remember there used to be, like, chalk outlines of Toads and, like, the little mafia part of the opening town. Right, right. And they censored those out. I guess Toads don't die. Nope, not the localized version. Isn't there a gallows

in the middle of the first town as well? I think so, yeah. Like, the joke about the first town is, like, it's a real shithole. It sucks. You don't want to be there. It should be called, that. They should just call it shit hole. Yeah. All right. Anyway, so on to Mario Galaxy 2, which is more or less a redux of how Luigi works in Mario Galaxy,

except he becomes playable as an alternate character really pretty early on in the game. So you don't have to complete the entire game. But instead of kind of having his own separate adventure, you can just tackle the stages as Luigi. And if you beat the stage as Luigi, I've never done this, but apparently you can unlock staff ghosts to race against in that level. so it kind of opens up another layer of competitiveness or a new challenge I guess beyond and above playing as Luigi I think there are some

in that game there are some in the post game all the green stars appear sort of in the existing stars that you have to find and if I recall correctly some of them are like much much easy to get with Luigi because of his kind of hang time but that might actually be completely untrue I'm not sure I just recall that the fact that he could kind of do a slightly

higher kind of jump from static is useful to some of those. Yeah, I could definitely see that. I think, you know, Luigi's character makeup is his skill makeup is such that there are some situations where you approach them with Luigi and it's just like, this is so hard. But there are others where, you know, it becomes much easier because it trivializes things that might be outside of Mario's capabilities. So, you know, that's the appeal of all these kind of multi-character select games all the way back to Super Mario Brothers, too, is that, you know, you almost kind of have a difficulty select based on which character you take into a stage. You know, there are some stages where you really want Luigi's height, his jumping height,

and you don't care about how slowly he pulls up coins. You just want to get through the stage and jump as high as possible. Whereas other stages, you know, are easier with like Mario or Toad. But, you know, if you're trying to jump onto those, the pidgeots with the flying carpets or, like, hop across albatrosses that can be a lot easier with luigi i uh super mario galaxy two is still like my favorite we game i love that game so much it only only because i love odyssey even more did it stop being my favorite 3d mario game but uh like galaxy two i really like that they took the note of people don't want to wait a very long time to play as louisie just they know that

Luigi's playable now, just give him if somebody can get five hours into the game, give them Luigi and give them that option. Yeah, he appears on the Starship quite early on and for me that circumvents the major issue I had with Galaxy 1, which is when I finished it 100%. And it's like, you can play

as Luigi now. I was like, cool, I don't want to play this game ever again. Always, as good as it is. But yeah, that really got over that problem. Yeah, I like the approach they take with Luigi and Super Mario 3D land where again, he uses his loss level style physics. He's floaterer. He jumps higher. But basically, you rescue him very early in the

game or you have the opportunity to. And once you do that, you can choose to play him at any, you know, the start of any stage. And again, you know, especially since this is more of a 2D style game, it's not quite, but less of an open world platformer, there are some situations where you're like, yeah, this is definitely where I want Luigi. And then there are some places where you need absolute precision and maybe Mario is better to take into the games. In 3-Land, I think you have to finish it with Luigi to see the final level. It's true.

Yeah. That's what I played a lot as Luigi in that game just to get like the, oh, I see the M on my clear screen there, but I don't see the L. Gotta do it again. Got to hit that goalpost with him. Do you have to beat all the

stages as Luigi or just some of them? All of them. And you also have to get the top of the flagpole at least once with every stage and then you unlock the final stage which is so hard it's not even fun yep man i don't remember that at all and i remember like i remember going through like the second half in the game so like that makes it even that makes even longer because you have to do the whole sort of alternate game as well you have to do every stage with both of them i believe i loved every second of it i would never complain oh i love that game to death yeah it's fantastic i also i

really like that you know for the longest time mario and him have the same costumes and everything but in 3D land, he becomes Kitsunei Luigi, not Tanuki Luigi. Tanukis are now just Mario's costume, and Luigi becomes, you know, the fox, rascally fox spirit instead of the rascally raccoon dog spirit, the Kizanay. I believe Kizanay Luigi is the real, like, official name for it, not just what webes call it. It is, yeah. Yeah, he's not Fox Luigi, he's Kittunae. I mean, you know, they, they embraced Tanuki from Super Mario Brothers.

three. They said, Americans, that's what you're going to call it. We're not going to spell it right, but we won't tell you what the statue of Buddha is, but you'll learn later. And also, you don't get to see the testicles. No, but it's all good. So, yeah, the, the, I didn't realize that about the, the need to clear every stage in Mario 3D land as Mario and Luigi to get the I'm 95% sure. That's true. And if wrong, then, you know, email me with insults. That's interesting because that's a requirement to get the, you know, like to truly complete the game in dokey dokey panic, you have to beat all the stages as all the characters. So it's interesting if that's the case that they kind of went back to that concept.

But then, you know, the next game in that sort of series, Super Mario 3D World, really embraces the dokey, dokey panic Mario 2 element by giving you the same four characters you could control in Super Mario Brothers 2 and allowing you now to play cooperative four-player action, which it's so good. It's such a good game. I really need to sit down. play the Switch remake and the new content of that because I hear it's really cool

I've not had time but that might be Bousas Fury might be my game of the year I don't know it's close to it I love that it rules so hard every Mario game the next Mario game should just be that like they need to expand from there

but yeah I I hope that the 3D world re-release on Switch finally got a lot of people to play like maybe the most underrated Mario platformer ever like so few people played it on the Wii you like yeah there was there was a lot of Mario burnout at the time that came out and also it was on Wii you and it's really a shame because you know I remember reviewing that and thinking wow this game is so good I can't believe how

fantastic this game is from start to finish but it seemed like there was just a lot of sort of cynicism around it and I thought you know am I just like losing my mind or losing my touch do I do am I not able to be objective here? But no, it's actually a really great game. It's the distinction of going from Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, which people took as the kind of, I guess, not open world, but you know what I mean, like the open-planish sort of Mario exploration games to something that is a lot more kind of course-based,

which, I mean, I personally prefer, and I love Mario Galaxy, don't get me wrong, but Mario 3D land, I thought was just, like, 100% pure, like, joy the whole time. There's even some fun Year of Luigi stuff in that game as well, like if you manage to get into really obtuse places that aren't really they seem like you're not supposed to get there but then you get there and you'll find the tiny Luigi Sprite like sprayed on one of the walls I love you'll be like they knew they knew I love the anytime you spot a random Luigi Sprite just sprinkled through that game I'm like oh ah like yeah it's it's

great so wonderful yeah and yeah also like his I like his cat design again different from marios he has, like, leopard spots on him. Like, it's a really cool cat suit design. And, yeah, Ouija's, Ouija's just a fun guy with his other, like, also was finally the, the ladies got to have some fun in those games, you know?

Like, we got to finally see what fireball-powered Princess Peach would look like outside of, of course, the deep cartoon that had her look pretty similar to how she looks in the 3D world game. And then does anyone want to talk about Super Mario run? Because I don't. No, no. But, but.

Well, that's what I came to do, Benajian. I will add in Super Mario Odyssey, he's not playable, but he is, I like his little balloon guy design as the, as the guy who appears to give, like, extra challenges to you. Because he has a little, it's his normal outfit, then he has a balloon backpack on, and then a bow tie. He has that asynchronous multiplayer game where you hide a balloon somewhere. Right, right. I know that we're running short on time, but I do want to. I want to jump to one thing so we can cover it, if that's okay. I want to talk about Smash Brothers, because in my opinion, this is where Luigi had a defined

personality within the game. This is when they started making Luigi a weak weirdo. Then two years later, we had Luigi's Mansion, but Smash Brothers, the first one, where he was a hidden character, he is like a joke character. And I think that's where they started thinking, like, why don't we make Luigi different personality-wise within a game, not just ability-wise? So, question for all of you, because I don't remember the chronology of the these trailers. But was Luigi the first Nintendo character to be murdered in a Smash Brothers trailer

when death shows up to announce Castledania and just like straight up murders Luigi? Because now you see that a lot. Like, Hey, Hachi just dropping everyone off a cliff and killing them. But at the time, everyone was like, oh my God, I can't believe like this is a Nintendo promo. And they just completely like literally just on camera, undeniably murdered one of their main characters. This predated the Ridley trailer, right? Because I would have said that if not. Okay, it did. Sorry.

Sorry. Yeah, I think, you know, Sakurai had the characters doing pratfalls and stuff. We're like, oh, they fell to their death kind of thing or whatever. But, yeah, I guess the death continued to grow from Luigi, uh, finally becoming the ghosts. He fears so much. Yeah, he is the first, he is the first one murdered on screen in this trail, the Simon Belmont trailer, but rules.

Uh, yeah, the, I, I mean, that Luigi, once we unlock. Lock Luigi in the Smash Brothers game. Me and my bros played Smash Bros. quite a lot original on N64. And when we unlocked the Luigi, he was like everybody's new favorite because he had these wacky moves. He would have his little

like fists that we go like and his like his weird like self missile launch forward. And of course like he had the extra his up be, if you hit it just right would be really powerful. But other times it would be like way weaker

the Mario's and it was this fun he was the Dan Hibiki of the game in his original version I just loved whenever I had a spare moment pressing right on the D-pad and he'd do that weird planking taunt that he does where he just goes completely rigid and like rocks back and forth

almost and I'd love to know what that is because it's got to be surely it's got to be a reference or something cultural I'm not familiar with I don't know it just seems too specific and weird to not be a thing it's a great joke I mean too Sakurai has a real you know a special sense of humor

which I love how it always comes through in smash games and definitely I think he has you know he puts in stuff that other previous Nintendo games would have left out because they're like ah that's too Japanese or whatever

but he just kind of keeps it in there you know and yeah Luigi he becomes he's still pretty funny in you know melee but he's less of a joke joke character he's more playable he's more viable as like a fighter you could play with in future games

And then the trailers just all became like, Sakurai, one of his favorite things, even when he would, you know, as they were first announcing smash four, most like, even just screenshots that he would release of like, here's a new screen. Look at this action. It would be like a beam sword slashing Luigi or something horrible happening to him. Yeah, there's a lot of escalation going on with the smash trailers. And I feel like that's why Sakurai has to step away because at some point, you just can't murder. anymore. You've got so much blood on your hands. You're just done. He killed the whole universe except for Kirby and why. The most powerful character. Once you've gone that far, he was right. He was right to do it.

So, yeah, Smash Brothers is one of many kind of side games, non-platforming games that have featured Luigi. And we really don't have to go into much detail about this, which is good because we don't really have time. But, I mean, you look at all the sports games. The first sports game to feature Mario characters was the sequel to golf, NES Open Tournament Golf, which kind of evolved from the actual original golf through some Famicom Disc System releases, the Japan course, USA course, and then you just got the American release for NES.

And you can play as Mario or Luigi, but even on the course, Luigi is just Green Mario. That was also the... Oh, go ahead. So in the interstitial screens for that game, Luigi is, like, remarkably verbose and, like, challenging towards Mario,

which I find quite funny. He's just like, so you think you can tackle me, do you, brother? You know, very liquid snake of you. Also, that game absolutely rules. I just want to throw that out there. That's like a 10 out of 10 that game. I love it. An important aspect, starting with tournament golf also is for the Mario online fan community.

It did create a ship of Daisy and Luigi. Like, Daisy is Luigi's caddy in that game. And it kind of continues from there. Like, they're often partnering together in, you know, official screenshots for the sports games or for parties. The movie is about Luigi and Daisy. Yeah, yeah. And, oh, and on, I believe it was on Daisy's, on one of Daisy's later Mario Kart game courses, it's like a golden statue of Luigi and Daisy dancing together. And so I think that's sense it as far as I'm concerned.

That's canon. The Luigi, you know, I don't think Luigi wants to be tied down with just one lady, but. I have to, if I have to fantasize about him as one true pairing, I guess him and Daisy, I'll go with that. Though he's much more into Prince Peasley and Mario and Luigi games. I actually, that's my A number one pairing for Luigi. Yeah. To be fair, he is dazzling. So the first Mario branded sports game was Mario Tennis for Virtual Boy. And there wasn't really much differentiation between the characters and that.

But in later Mario Tennis games, he didn't. be a little faster than Mario and has a better net game, I guess, because he's taller than Mario, so he can more easily defend the net. And basically, that's, that style of play carries over to all the Mario sports games. So we don't really have to go in a lot of, a lot of detail to those. Maybe someday we'll do a Mario sports game episode with people who care about sports. Just because it's pertinent to the subject, I want to mention really quickly that in Mario, I think power tennis, the GameCube won, if you beat the game with Luigi, uh, Mario comes to congratulate him, shakes his hand, and, like, fully steps on his foot as hard as he can

on purpose. Wow. And it's, like, implied that he's bitter towards Luigi for winning over him. And I think it's the only time that Mario has ever done anything that could be considered malicious in any way. And I find that fascinating. It raises questions, I think, about their relationship. Camelot had a lot, you know, we talk about all the other developers of the fun they had.

Camelot had their own version of, yeah, his, the brotherly conflict between them that they'd put into the golf and tennis games, yeah, especially the RPG elements ones. Also worth noting is Mario and Wario where Luigi is not playable, he waits at the goal and when the character you're playing

as reaches the goal, Luigi removes the bucket from that character's head because it's a really weird game. It's such a weird game. He's waiting with a big can of solvent. Yoshi's Island, he's not playable in any of those games, but he is the kidnapping victim. He is the princess in distress, which I guess

when I sat down to think about it, it makes sense because he and Mario are like six years older than Princess Peach or something. So if they're babies, then clearly Princess Peach has not been conceived and does not exist in the universe yet. So someone's got to be kidnapped and it can't be Princess Peach, although you can play as Baby Princess Peach in Mario or in Yoshi's Island DS. I reject The canonicity of the Artoon, Yoshi Island. Yeah. If Artoon made a Yoshi's Island, it don't count in canon. Yoshis Island is the only one that counts in canon because it's EAD.

That's if you ask me, Mr. Mario fans. Are we to believe that baby Donkey Kong and baby Peach and baby Luigi, baby Mario all just happen to exist at the same time? I don't think so. Born like three months apart at best. Baby Wario, I think, is there too. Yeah, with his little magnet coin thing. No, that was a dumb game. It was. Awful. It's not great.

And finally, the other significant entry in the Luigi Canon, outside the games that are specifically about Luigi, like things like, you know, Luigi's mansion, we've had an episode on that. Mario and Luigi, there's an episode coming up on that that I believe Bob is putting together. I'd love to do a paper Mario series episode someday. But there's Mario Kart, where Luigi has been playable from the beginning. and in the beginning he pretty much was Green Mario. In the first game, they were both medium weight racers and there wasn't a lot of differentiation

between characters in the original Super NES game besides just their weight class. But as the series has evolved, there has been more differentiation between how the individual characters work. You also have the customization of their special

like they each have specific vehicles or can specialize in specific parts. And so a result, you do get a lot more differentiation and it kind of varies from game to game. But again, I always find middleweight racers just kind of boring.

So I don't ever play as Mario or Luigi. It's more of, you know, Toad or like Rose Gold baby Peach or I don't know, whatever the hell is the character in the new games. I love that they decided Rose Gold is the metallic version of Peach. That was

I like Rose Gold things in general. On the 64, you know, there was one more I wanted to clip I wanted to play I Luigi in Mario Golf drove me crazy on the N64 and I wanted to play his voice clips here just for everybody. It's just about 20 seconds

of it. Excellent. Fine. Good shot. Here I am. Here me go. Oh, hurry up already, eh? I'm giving myself a five. Pretty good. Luigi is number one. He does not sound excited at all.

Like, I'm not going to play the golf. Wow, they really need to give him on Zoloff or something. I'm going to give him myself a vibe. Luigi is a tops. Mamma Mia. Nice a shot. Oh, no. Charles Martinet hung over that day, voicing Luigi.

Do people say tops in America? That's wild to me. I thought that was a British thing. This is tops. You know, I don't know. I think I'm not against the... British and Italian immigrants both use that. Maybe.

I don't know. I could see Luigi being a little bit of a tibu. I could see. Though also, if you're like in the 1930s, you know, you're like, I'm the top, sir, the king of the world, whatever. Yeah, he's the Gatsby of the Mario universe. The green light, the green light at the end of the pier, that's actually Luigi. Just shining, dazzling, brilliant. All right, well, I just got literate, so I think that's time to end the podcast.

You've alienated everyone. Yeah, I really apologize for that. Oh, wait. I had one last one I wanted to bring up. Just the Mario and Rabbits games, they, the first, I can't wait for the sequel. And the first one, when it relates to Luigi, what I like about Luigi in that game is you can feel the rules on Mario and Peach and all these other characters who's like, oh, they can't have silly underpants fun with the rabbits. The rabbits, like Mario

must be kept pure, but they can do silly crap with Luigi in that game. Like Luigi actually gets to do funny jokes or at least like madcap silliness with the rabbits, which, I like that shows the fluidity of the Luigi character. Like, even Nintendo's like, oh, sure, Luigi can, like, fall down and the rabbits can goof on him. Go, go right ahead. Mario, he can only make this one face. Mario can only stare on disapprovingly at the rabbit's wacky antics. My final statement on this podcast before the plugs is RIP to Luigi Stripy Sox from the first Mario and Luigi RPG.

Yeah. Alpha Dream put their own stamp on the character, Nintendo said that is not happening in the future. You draw Luigi the way he is made to be drawn. So only one game we saw them, but they were beautiful, the end. And that's, and that is why Alpha Dream is no longer around. Yep, they broke too many rules. Because the first game, you're a loose canon, Alpha Dream. And they made it open with Luigi seeing Mario with the nude.

And that was it. The writing was on the wall. That's right. What a great game. RIP, Alvadre. It really, really, really is. All right. Thanks, everyone for listening to this episode, as we've talked about Green Mario.

And thanks everyone who has, on this podcast for talking about Green Mario. I'm glad that Luigi got us due, and I'm looking forward to, you know, covering his career with great interest, as Chance of Palpatine would say, in some of the spinoff games like Mario and Luigi and so on and so forth. Anyway, this has been a fine, fine episode of Retronauts, and you have enjoyed it, and because you enjoyed it,

while I have some great news for you, you can listen to more episodes of Retronauts, hundreds more episodes of Retronauts. If you are new to this show, by going to any pod catcher that you love, except Spotify, and just looking for Retronauts. We have many, many episodes up there. And if you decide, man, this is a show that I can really get behind. If only the audio quality were better and there weren't any cross-promotional reads,

well, I have really great news for you because you can go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And you can have precisely that, a higher bitrate audio version of the podcast with no commercials and promos and so forth delivered to you a week ahead of the public feed that's $3 a month and for $5 a month you get all that

plus you get two patron exclusive episodes a month plus every weekend you get a patron exclusive column and mini podcast by Diamond Fight and you get Discord access really like it's kind of an embarrassment

of riches compared to the standard level so I would just say skip on past $3 level go to five it's worth it I promise we talk about so many old video games, you would not believe it. You can hear two hours of chat about Garfield video games for the princy sum of $5. Good Lord.

And we just recently did a Metroid episode. Lots of great stuff there. The great thing about old video games is the time and entropy march forward. And there will always be more old video games for us to talk about. So this podcast is never going away. And you can enjoy so much of it starting now. jump on at patreon.com slash retro knots. Wow, that was my sales pitch. Gentlemen, please, tell us about your your existences and the things you do for interest and for monetization. Stuart.

Hi. I do lots of things, so I'll keep it brief. You can find me on Twitter at Stupacabra, and that way you can find all my podcasts. Ani Mani chat where we review every episode of Animaniacs, which I dislike. That's the look. Dillcast where we review every single Dilbert comic strip ever. which is the dumbest and worst idea I've ever had, but we're having a lot of fun doing it because it's so boring and bad. But the podcast doesn't. You should definitely listen to that.

We do Arsholvania, which is about coming up with one of the worst takes imaginable and then tweeting the take and laughing at everyone who thinks it's real, but less smug than it sounds. And there's another one which I've forgotten, and they're going to hate me for it. It might be too many podcasts. I think if you start forgetting the podcast

exists and so I think what I'm getting from this is that I should start more podcasts I'll do it Jeremy Godspeed Henry how about you Hey I'm Henry Gilbert Follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G

I'm known to tweet about Mario from time to time One of my most viral tweets ever was about Mario's nipples in the history of them as appears in canonical content But when I'm not talking about Mario's aerial

I'm talking about the TV show The Simpsons on Talking Simpsons, a podcast I do every week with Bob Mackie. And we also do twice a month our What a Cartoon podcast, where we cover super in-depth animated series through the history of animation all over the world. Both of those you can find What a Cartoon and Talking Simpsons, wherever you find podcasts. And we do so many exclusive podcasts on our Patreon because we are Patreon funding. at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons right now or soon. I don't know when this goes like, but probably around four days. Oh, well. There are four days left.

The next month, me and Bob, are going to be blabbing about to Batman. No, this month. In four days from this podcast going live, Henry. Oh, okay. That's when we're blabbing about Batman. Bob, why don't you tell them about that? Yes, we'll be talking about Batman the animated series and an exclusive 10 episode miniseries on Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons at the $5 level along with all of our other

past miniseries. So check it out there. And as for me, I am on Twitter as at Bob Servo. Henry did all of our plug, so I will plug something that I did not do. I will say if you have a child or are a child at heart, perhaps, please pre-order my wife's new graphic novel coming out. Sparks Future Perfect. That's P-U-R-R-F-E-C-T, available coming out in March of 2022 by Scholastic.

It's a great series, and she does great work on it. So, again, that's Sparks Future Perfect. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, at GameSpite. on Twitter, although I'm not really that spiteful. As I've said before, I'm a jovial follow. You can also find me doing stuff with limited run games. Perhaps if you buy a game from limited run games, you will find an essay or even an entire book by me inside.

You can also find me on YouTube as Jeremy Parrish, just look for my name. I post a weekly video episode that is a chronology of classic video games, generally Nintendo-oriented, but I also venture onto side projects from time to time, actually a lot of the time. And let's see, what else? Oh, yeah, I have some books related to those videos.

Virtual Boy Works and Super NES Works, Volume 1, just came out pretty recently from Limited Run Games, the publisher, and they pretty much sold out, but they're going to be reprinted. So look forward to those reprints, and please buy them because they're great. Anyway, that's it for this episode of Retronauts. please go play a game featuring Luigi and it'll be a great time. You'll love it.

And listen to more Retronauts because it's a great time and you'll love it. All right. Good night. You know what I'm going to do.