Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 69: Mario Series Listener Mail

Episode Date: September 8, 2017

With the recent release of Mario + Raving Rabbids, and with Super Mario Odyssey's launch lurking just a few months away, we're currently undergoing a sort of Mario Madnessmuch like the same outbreak that attacked several million children back in '88. To celebrate this resurgence in all things Mario, join Retronauts' own Bob Mackey and special guest/Mushroom Kingdom expert Henry Gilbert as the two field questions and comments from Retronauts listeners about games involving Nintendo's mustachioed mascot. Let's-a go!

Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts Micro. I am your host, Bob Mackey, and the topic for today, we're doing a listener mail. We're doing a listener mail. episode about the Mario series. I happen to know one of the biggest Mario fans on the planet, and introduce yourself, please. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. That's AT&E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. That's right. Getting that in early, but yeah, actually, you're recording this in my apartment, surrounded by thousands of dollars of Mario stuff that is now boxed up. They're all boxed up, from what? Your future job at future, right?

Yeah, back when I worked at Games Radar, I had the Mario desk, and I had just the Mario section of toys on the in my desk and it started with like 10 that I kind of just brought with me and then I just kept buying stuff on eBay or when I went to Japan I bought more stuff and and but it's also it's not that I'm just a collector of Mario things but it is that I am a huge Mario fan that I'd say it is my favorite favorite franchise is the Mario franchise I am a huge Mario fan and I was actually surprised you didn't bring any of your Mario stuff to the job we both used to work at because everyone's the desk there was so boring and it made me mad I'm like

We're all the nerd website. Why do you have a picture of your family on your desk? There should be action figures and statuettes and weird things that creep me out. I was that guy. I had to bring all my stuff in. You did that. I felt a certain, you know, unspoken pressure. Yeah.

If you have a favorite sports team, you can have a photograph of them or some penant. Yeah. You, when you started, you gave me more bravery to add stuff, but it was, it was slow and it was only new things. I also didn't want to bring. It was partially too, because when I left games, radar and I had to box up my desk it was it was eight boxes of stuff and I had to like get a lift all the way back and they probably mailed some stuff to you too uh no I just box off I was like I'm not leaving this for any of you guys I was thinking like oh I'll sell these on

eBay I haven't sold them I'm the same way I don't have just Mario stuff but I have just giant tubs of things that used to be at my desk at one up and other places I have no real desk now no real space so uh that'll be going to someone else's grandchildren because I don't have any. I mean, it's not, I mean, it's not just, yeah, it's not just Mario stuff. I owned lots of other toys there. Or also, Bob, if he looks to, is left there. You can see a giant set of pins that are framed of every WrestleMania for WrestleMania 1 through 20. This is like a museum in here. Yeah, except it's all in crates. It's more like the end of Indian Jones. Yeah. The Raiders of the Lost Dark, not Indiana Jones. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. So, yes, so this is not an unpacking your

desk and getting fired podcast. I can't be fired from Retronauts. As much as people have tried to do that. It won't happen. Mr. Retronauts. Bob Serva. Is this the way Bob should really be acting? Yes, it is, and I won't stop. But yes, I asked a lot of you on Twitter with very short notice to please ask us

your Mario questions and Mario comments. I usually do a listener mail episode every year. That is still happening, but I needed an episode idea and I needed to get it recorded quickly, and luckily Henry lives like 15 minutes away from me. So this is all happening in the satellite talking Simpson's studio. So let's get started with some of our questions here. And the first one is from

Francisco Javier Juarez Cerrio, and I apologize if I mangled your name, Francisco. And he wants to say, do you think that the Mario series will become more and more easy, more forgiving with each iteration? Henry, what do you think about this? You know, they've kind of gone up and down on that, really. This reminds me of Super Meat Boy when that came out, the developers of that actually did a really cool chart on difficulty in classic Mario games and how it kind of changed and how they wanted to scale Super Meat Boy's difficulty kind of differently based on that. And they showed how it was really difficult than Super Mario Brothers won, and it kept scaling up.

And they continued that scaling up of difficulty, you know, through each stage. But they were much more, as the series went on, they were much more giving with one-ups. They were much more forgiving with, like, damage and telling you where problems were. And then, I think I mentioned this a lot on the Super Mario 64 episode, but you can tell Nintendo felt a real problem when they went to 3D that they're like, we have to go to 3D, but we lost all these people who think 3D is too hard just to navigate. And so to offset that, they invented all these things to make it easier or to choose to make it easier, like having a character pop up and say, hey, you know, you want this to be easier? I can do that for you. And then that kind of transitioned into In 3D land

They basically just give you a million lives You'll never run out of lives That game is way too easy And someone yelled at me on Twitter for disliking it But I was just too bored to make it to the better path of the game One day I will make it It's unfair that they hold the better game In the second half after that

When I reviewed that they actually had a note in there That was like, don't tell everybody about the real game That's after this. I was like, well this really makes it hard to review Don't tell anyone it gets better Yeah, I mean, so, sorry, just to have been, and 3D World did that as well. And now I actually like where Odyssey is going, because Odyssey is just like, you lose coins when you die,

but you'll never run out of coins. Let's not even pretend there are lives anymore. I'm so glad they got rid of lives. I mean, to answer this question in my own interpretation, I agree with you, Henry, but I feel like difficulty depends on the Mario variants. Like, I feel like the Galaxy ones were moderate to highly difficult. In fact, Galaxy 2 was basically, just like you know what you're doing and we're going to give you some really hard levels and

there are some really bastard levels in that game. I have not gotten. I have not gotten all the shines in galaxy mainly because that Manta ray level sucks. I hate it. But Galaxy 2 is even more difficult and those games are great but I feel like 3D land was too easy. 3D world was a little too easy but it was a little more challenging and I hope Odyssey does follow the path that Mario 64 took and maybe maybe not Mario Sunshine. We've come a long way since then but I hope there's a good balance between, you know, letting you explore and also, you know, trying to throw some obstacles in your path. Yeah.

All right. Well, I'll allow you the next one here from Scott TV. Did the way between Mario 2 and Mario 3 feel endless to anyone else? It feels like this forgotten time in Mario history because all the marketing was based around Super Mario Brothers 2, so you would have the school supplies and apparel that had to maintain the Arabian theme. There's a part of my brain that still feels a... sense of freshness when I see the Super Mario 3 title screen fought. I know this era very well

myself too because when I super-duper got into Mario, I was six, I was five or six in 1985 or 1986, 87. And when I first saw Super Mario Brothers, I had to have it. A person next door, the kid next door had an N.S and was playing the game. I was like, well, I have to get this. and when I finally got it and really got into Mario actually it was like two had just come out and the Super Mario Bros. Super Show had just started airing and in America at least you could tell much of the licensing was kind of split between licensing

stuff from Super Mario Brothers 1 and licensing stuff from Super Mario Brothers 2 though more on the side of Super Mario Brothers 2 because it gave you more characters to work with and so they were kind of stuck in keeping the themes and the enemies of 2 over one in all these advertisements and so when three finally came out in America it was a huge change from what they've been advertising and all that stuff though I mean I can't even when you're

seven two years may as well be a million years yeah and actually I think I was listening to some NPR podcast or something maybe not as boring as that that sounds but they were explaining the scientific reason that as you get older your perception of time gets narrower and it's very simple it's that when you're young everything is a new experience so everything is like demarcated in more concrete terms but now that we're older and we're in our little ruts like what is 2015 compared to now it's like that is exactly what 1988 was compared to 1990 to a 35 year old back then but if you were eight uh that two year weight between two and three in america was just endless like two entire school years two entire summers so many memories

yeah so it definitely changed my perception of of what maria was when three finally came out i especially loved the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon made me so happy because it's the best of those cartoons and it's still bad. The cartoons are awful. They're bad. It was the most faithful though. It was the most faithful, which is what I loved about it. They definitely, I wonder if

Nintendo, it'd be pretty cool to interview somebody who had worked on both those shows back then because it definitely felt like between Super Show and 3 that Nintendo is like, you can't just make shit up. They can't go to Star Wars World. Yes, that was the worst part of that Super Show cartoon. I think I've remarked upon it

before but it was just like they couldn't even write original stories it's just like just call him kube vater and he could be mario cloud walker or whatever just write the damn script yes but yeah so hopefully that answered your questions um so we have a question from uh geromo himenez and he wants to know what do you think of coji kondo and for sms shunobu tanaka's use of melody in super mario world super mario 64 and super mario sunshine as you know all three games repurpose one main melody for a majority of their respective soundtracks, remixing them and arranging them in often surprising ways. Indeed,

it took me years to figure it out. I think it's a subtle way of creating an identity for each game, yet the arrangements are distinct enough to avoid a sense of repetition or laziness. It also makes Yoshi's Island feel even more like an outlier, since it's the one Mario game of the era not to follow this pattern. Love your show. Thank you,

Geremo. I like the idea. I feel like you need to have more variations than something like Super Mario World would do, or you know, Super Mario World is like the biggest one in my head because there's that main theme that gets remixed like five times. There's a overworld theme

version of it. There's the athletic theme version of it. There's the underwater theme version of it. The Ghost House theme version of it and the Fortress theme version of it. I feel like that's great but that is also a soundtrack in 1990 so you don't need as many songs. And you see like a lot of these old composers that still compose have a

eight or 16 bit mindset when composing music for an album of songs. Like I'm thinking in particular of Koichi Sugiyama, the Dragon Quest guy, yes, he is also 90 years old, but it's like, dude, we need more than one town theme in this game. It's 2017. Like, those games still have a very rigid, this is the field theme, this is the dungeon theme, like, this very rigid, like, collection of the, like, holes to fill for making an old video game soundtrack. But I feel like you really need to do more with it than Koji Kondo did in 1990. Yeah, well, I would say with Sugiyama, too, that he's, he's probably in the position of, like, unquestionable, knowing how, having some idea how Jaffiq. and he's seniority works.

It feels like he's an unquestionable position. Like, whatever he gives you, you can't change that. You can have men killed, I think. Yeah, but, you know, one of my favorite approaches to Mario music relatively recently, now it is actually within nine years ago. But Galaxy 2 and Galaxy both had amazing music, and they were very clear of, like, Koji Kondo was like music overseer. Like, he's there in the making of us, but he kind of was just about,

keeping the style correct and and supervising other people's compositions. I think he might just do the main melody and supervision, maybe write a few songs. I think he was the guy who wrote the new field or new Overworld theme and new Super Mario Brothers. I think that was him and that song is very annoying now. I don't like it. Yeah, at least they stop singing. At least they stop singing. Yes.

So Mike Blount asked with Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle being more or less a successful spin off from the core Mario games. What other franchises would you like to see combined with the Mario universe to create new spinoffs? Bonus question, what type of game would each of your answers be? That is an interesting question. I think Mario needs to fit with cute characters that fit with him. So not rabbits is what you're saying.

I don't like the rabbits. No, I hate seeing the rabbits when I'm playing this game, but I do love the game. It's X-Com. I love X-Cop. It's true. I mean, yeah, I apologize for that. I mean, rabbits are fine. Rabbits are fine. They're cute enough in a very French way. Yeah, I look, I'm, I am more into the idea of cuteness from like the Japanese or American standard. The correct kind of cuteness is Japanese cuteness. I'm sorry if that makes you mad. Rabbids are too asymmetrical and gross. I don't like that. But anyway, boy, a cute series that could cross over with. I mean, they've crossed, he has crossed over with just about every major Japanese series.

could at this point. I was going to say Dragon Quest, but he did that in Fortune Street. Yeah, Fortune Street. I think I'd be up for another Fortune Street that maybe makes it slightly more approachable to Americans because the game is basically monopoly plus the stock market. Yes, and the huge, I only played the Wii version. I know it's been around for like 20 years or whatever, but what blew my mind was it takes a long time to play a game and there's no way to save a game and then come back to it later. It's the dumbest thing. But what surprised me about that localization is oh my god like so the princess of moonbroke

from Dragon Warrior 2 is a character in the game and all of her dialogue is full of dog puns because in the game she starts as a dog and you uncurse her and I'm like only I could know this who are they localizing this for and I'm sure they lost a lot of money yeah oh I've certainly did I had heard it was just because Nintendo

was like we got to have something on the Wii yeah they'd never was 2012 it was 2012 yeah it was the year before Wii you and they're like we got to get something for the Wii So they'd never localized Idadiqi Street before I remember being at the E3 Where they announced it it was playable

There's obviously no line to go to it And when I played it I was like I told the person I'm so happy you guys did this But I also can't believe you did We've never had an Ididaki street In America before this Yeah it was weird

Because it is too weird in Japanese I'm trying to think of what Mario could cross over with I know I mean I guess it counts with Pac-Man The Mario Kart arcade version He was crossed over with Pac-D man yeah yeah but like i don't know uh maybe not mega man i really don't know i mean you're right he did cross over with basically everybody sonic it happened uh yeah that was the most obvious one well perhaps a way to think of it too is think of like what's a genre mario hasn't mastered yet

and like i guess there's like real-time strategy but pickman has already kind of got that and yeah and mario's too big for pickman he would crush them all squish him on his feet we go like so mutecki asks uh like i wondered if mario 64 took some of its ideas from the cult classic animated short Face Like a Frog by Sally Cruikshank, animated who did stuff for Sesame Street in addition to independent stuff like this. The surreal, even for Mario

imagery, the idea of the curse mansion slash castle, and maybe then stuff like the eel is inspired by the left field Danny Elfman purple lizard character who comes in to sing a bluesy song saying not to go in the basement. I have not seen this. I'm not seeing this either, yeah. Muteke goes on to say, there's distinctive

general similarity in visual theming. Do look up the don't go in the basement. and song sequence from that film since it's excellent. And it's clear that some of the longer time Mario staff have taken inspiration from several American cartoons, but at the same time, the film's incredibly obscure, and the similarities are still pretty broad. I may well be talking out of my ass on this one, but it's

certainly interesting to me, at least, to think about. I'm going to say, thank you for the comment, but no. Probably not. Probably not. I mean, if they did, they probably wouldn't want to say, like, I saw this movie and got an idea, because I think Japanese creators are a little more reserved. And most actually not just Japanese creators

Most people are afraid to say when you're interviewing them What they're inspired by And that's a question I always ask And they are always like oh I can't talk about that actually play games I'm talking about my caller They were probably also told by PR That too yeah Don't say this we could get sued by somebody

If you say this It surprised me when I interviewed the excom developers For the first time they brought that game back in like 2012 They flat out said like we love Final Fantasy Tactics We love advance wars We love these games I'm like, oh, my God, you can talk to me like a person. There was no PR person in the room, that's why.

Wow, that's a nice change. The closest I had to that openness was from, well, actually, two times, no, it was from Yujihori going back to a Dragon Quest where I asked like, oh, what Western games you've been playing lately? And he just immediately said, oh, heavy rain, been playing that, it's pretty old. Yeah, actually, Iigaki, because he was cut fruit loose from Konami, not Iigaki, Igarashi, rather, Iigaki would not talk to me. No.

Igarashi, I asked him what he was. he was playing and he said i play a lot of monster under with my son i thought that was cute and he said like a lot of the the ideas of uh that are going to bloodstain are coming from him thinking about monster hunter like crafting and different item drops and stuff like that so i'm looking forward to that game i've kick started it looking forward to it i got to talk to itigaki for once igorashi or itagaki itagaki okay and it was promised to be 30 minutes and after 10 he was like this is the last question and then i thought i'd get to interview him again uh the year they announced his devil's third game was coming to Wii you and then like he cancelled and subbed

in a co-worker of his at the last minute like just put on sunglasses as like i am itagaki now i honestly like this is just my speculation here based on how things turned out when nintendo and devil's third i would i wouldn't be surprised if itigaki was like pissed off at nintendo and just said i'm not doing this they still published it i can't believe they still publish that game. All right. Isaac 25P Pence, I guess, says, which main series Mario game disappointed you the most? For me, it was Super Mario Galaxy

2. That was me I gassed off Mike. This is because the game had the potential to be better than Galaxy 1, but in the end it just ended up being a regular Mario game. Not a bad game at all. I still give it an 8.5 out of 10, but Galaxy 1 was 9.8 out of 10. Wow. If 8.5 out of 10 is your biggest disappointment, that's still pretty cool. No offense, buddy.

I mean, well, Isaac, I absolutely disagree with you. Me too. I prefer Galaxy 2 to Galaxy 1. They are both great games, but in my opinion, Galaxy 2 streamlines the small amount of BS. I was like, this is taking me a while. Like this Hubworld's too big. Just on a giant head and it's great. Yeah, just like, good guy on this giant head. Here's Yoshi. We're speeding this up. We improved every idea we had in the first one and have 800 new ideas. I love Galaxy 2, but to answer his question, I don't want to, you may hear me rag on Super Mario Sunshine a lot very soon. Oh yeah, you were on that episode. Yeah, so that definitely was close to the most disappointing for me, but actually I would say of mainline Mario games, the first new Super Mario Brothers, because to do that, to make the first ever 2D Mario game from the real team in a decade, and then for it to be like, oh, it's 2.5. it's not as creative as I would have hoped this feels like the B team I obviously it was hard to

it would have been difficult to have even any higher expectations that I had for it so I was probably set up for disappointment but that was that was mine I think I would say Mario Sunshine but you can hear us complain a lot about that in a future episode and please please don't get mad we gave it a chance but I agree with Henry

actually that was a huge disappointment for me and I feel like it gave Mario this really ugly makeover that he's just kind of breaking out of now Now they're coming back to embracing the 2D art again And making them less like a stiff CGI DreamWorksie creation But yeah I agree

I felt like it was uninspired I thought some things were very anti-Mario Like yeah get a power up in another stage And then come back to a stage you already finish And hold on to that power up It's just like you usually give me the tools I need Within a stage for the most part I feel like that was like anti-Mario

So yeah it wasn't until 3D land I felt that they rediscovered what was great about Mario 2D art Though they still don't do pixel long Mario Art, those days are over, but they at least had the, you know, you'll get letters from Peach and then it's an original drawing of Mario Art. I think if it's not Bayoichi Kitabe,

then it is very much in his style. Yes, they found a good protege, and if he's still doing it, God bless him. So, let's move on to Zachary Walton, who says, most kids NES came with Mario and it was their first exposure to video games. The friendly neighbor across the street gave me her son's NES when he moved out of the

house, and it only had games like wisdom, trees, King of Kings, and Bible adventures. Wow. I got my hands on Super Mario Brothers a year later. So I think I have more of an appreciation for Mario than most because he saved me from having to stack animals and toss them into an arc for the umpteenth time. I want to know what that mother's story was.

She probably found it at like a Christian bookstore or whatever. Like, oh, they make Bible games for this thing, but they only made two. I can finally inspire my child. I think there's more than two. I think there's like four or five. There's like Sunday Fun Day and something with Moses in it. Maybe that is King of Kings.

Where you are, the King of Kings. Well, and just to make this somewhat occur, and I saw, I believe, it was either you or Jeremy bringing up the, like, I Am 8Bid is re-manufacturing a Street Fighter 2 cartridge for the Supri-N-E-S. And he was very clear of like, this is not, like, everybody's treating this like it's new. No, Wisdom Tree did make new Super NES cartridges. Nobody wanted them, but they were doing it. Yeah. so writer rego says their question is what are your favorite Mario products oh boy it's a good one for me what foreign products with Mario's wishes on it to do you wish you can get what are your favorite

Mario commercials what are your favorite features of a Mario game you know what these are all too many questions let's stick to the products ones yeah let's go for that one so uh boy the products one is really hard for me because like I said at the beginning I own hundreds of Mario things but as a kid my favorites were anything close to a Mario action figure but they just had PVC shapes so today when friggin

Figma and Nendroid make actual poseable awesome Mario figures that are in the correct shape for the character like his actual proportions and happy little face I love it in there I extra cute Japan makes all the best Mario toys as well

like every there's just something a little about Mario toys that I've seen made in America that they can't get his nose right. It's little things like his nose needs to be a perfect sphere. But they get it kind of flat. It's just... Yeah, I also, growing up,

I was also very disappointed by the Mario merchandise because it was all weirdly off model. Like, I would just buy anything that had Mario or was like in a Mario shape, like a bubble bath container, like a little coin bank where he looked like he was melting on it and like gum containers or it was kind of just like a gum Mario.

But did you say what your favorite thing was? Well, so my favorite of, it would be between the nendroid of Mario, but also there were these really cool kind of like almost diaramas of Mario that they were in 3D shapes, but they also made sound effects. It was one of the first things I bought when I moved to Japan. And my favorite one was it is the Super Mario end of stage, you know, stair block stairs with the cup a shell on it and you can make Mario jump on it until it makes. the one-up sat on. That is a deep cut. I like it. I really love that one just for its referentialness. I've said this on the, I believe the Yoshi episode from earlier this year, but my favorite figures that I have, or favorite Mario products are little figures. I think they're by

Medicom. Oh, yeah. Those are the greatest. Yes, what Mediom does, and they make regular figures too, but it's like, Mario looks like this once, and we're going to make that version of him in 3D as a figure. So my favorite one, I love the Mario Arts from the Mario Brothers Arcade game. In fact, it's been the wallpaper on my phone for like over a year. It's blocked by messages from Christian Tista right now.

I know. I know the art. But yes, I love how Mario and Luigi look on that marquee art. They look like Fleischer Brother cartoons meets anime from like the 70s. So Mediom made versions of them that look just like that. I bought both Mario and Luigi. They also made Yoshi

in his proper form. Dinosaur Yoshi with a saddle. But other things that they have that I don't have are Mario from the Mario One box. who looks different. He's a Miyamoto drawing, not a... Katabe re-drew it. Katabe based his Mario style on that art.

But, yeah, the box, the Japanese box art for Super Mario Brothers One was a Miyamoto drawing. Yeah, and that's when Bowser was based on the Ox King from Journey to the West. Yes, Journey to the West did inspire Mario Brothers. As it inspired everything in Japan ever. And Peach looks like about two feet tall. Yeah, she's weird looking. But, yeah, they also make Mario from that cover and Link from the cover of Zelda One. They are, now that those are deep cuts.

But yeah, my favorite ones are the Mario and Luigi from the Mario Brothers arcade game with their little dorky hats. And also my favorite commercial Mario is really, my favorite American commercial is the Super Mario 3 one because it basically showed what a cult-like atmosphere for Mario there was, which I kind of like just the Mario. Yes. But my- It was a version of Hands Across America that works. But my favorite Japanese one is actually the one they did for Super Mario All-Stars because they made. make it look like a they're all going to the premiere of a movie because it also ends with like also super mario brother's the movie in japanese theaters now but don't see it every every every character is on model but dressed up to go to a show i remember like peach getting out of a limo or whatever it's like a big red carpet premiere it's it's i love this situation there's a million great yeah i think as we've said go to youtube and look up all the japanese mario commercials or japanese video game commercials they're always a lot better because they're

They were just very well animated. The Mario Kart ones in particular, like, I want a Mario Kart anime that looks like that. I think I've said that before. So our next question comes from Eric Plunk, who says, do you think there's a place in today's video game market for a follow-up to Mario Paint? I like to turn that M upside down and see a Wario Paint title. That's part Art Academy and part WarioWare. Now, Eric, that's very interesting.

I feel like Wario-Ware-Do-It Yourself was a spiritual Mario Paints sequel. Basically was that, yeah. Well, and then meanwhile, there was also flip. note studio which don't no longer exist but the flip note was also meant to do that they even got all my information i have on uichi katabe's career with the nintendo was that's right interview he did to have the wada asks he did to advertise flip note and so they have tried it do it uh do yourself was kind of closest to it i hope you know it would really fit well with the wu if it had actually succeeded yeah the switch really isn't something you're supposed to

raw on like you would with a Wii U game pad so yeah I mean do you agree with me on the DIY yeah oh totally DIY was it I got I bought a copy of that uh to Portland retro gaming expos ago and I really want to try it out looks so cool and so complicated the deck the instruction book they used to give you books back then is like 100 pages yeah I I remember they had a very big presence for it at the game developers conference that year two where I got a basically their press pack for it was it's a white t-shirt draw your warrior stuff on it it's like this

it's like yeah it's pretty nice it's no doodle bear so go ahead with the next one all right another one close to my heart from Matt M my fondest Mario memory center around the Super Mario Bros. 3 McDonald's promotion offering the greatest of all the happy meals of my childhood

playing the game eating the nuggets collecting the toys life is never better oh yeah yes yeah though I have to say as a connoisseur of McDonald's toys which my mom was more obsessed with them than me and so I had

almost every Happy Meal toy because my mom wanted to collect them all the actual quality of the toys you got in the Mario 3 was kind of sucked but or they had they did a thing I hate if I may review old Happy Meal toys

they shouldn't be a fucking gimmick they should be a toy I can play with yeah so like oh this Mario springs up like you overthought this just give me a toy of Mario as a raccoon, because I can't actually buy that in America otherwise. At least the Cupa wanted moving parts. I do remember getting the Cupa. I really wanted the Cupa. Actually, I'm pretty sure I was out shopping with my grandma at an outlet store, an outlet mall, which is famous in the Midwest, just to get off-brand items for really cheap. On the way back, we went to McDonald's, oh, the

Mario Toys are here, and I really wanted the Cupa, and I got it. It was like, life never got better. It's all downhill since then. And I liked, the Gumba could do a flip, which was like cute and all the first time. don't think it really worked that well no it well you know i'd have to like lick the suction cup on it to make it stick that's disgusting so but when i was you know nine and saw that commercial i was like well this is the greatest thing of all time i'm going to get a new mario game and then i can also have all the toys from it and everything i love is telling me to buy mario and this is the greatest day ever so it i did i did indeed love it man all of the all the neurons firing in your

brain in like a pavlovian way like you're connecting video games with bad food with toys just like what's what's going on in there and a colorful commercials talking you about it and I remember the ad was it was really smart ad too of like Mario raccoon Mario is hitting coin blocks except they're happy meal boxes

I think we played one of those on the Mario 3 episode if I recall so cloudy music wants to know what's the deal with Peach is she the sole human inhabit of the mushroom kingdom why is she royalty of a nation that's apparently populated entirely by Toad that's a good question and they really don't

know what to do with that question in games. I think the Mario RPG games come the closest where you see the, there's usually a kingdom or like a castle and like a town around the castle, but it's all mushroom people and there's never a queen or king. There is like

usually like a chancellor that helps peach, but yeah, Toadsworth. Yeah, Toadsworth. Basically the good Jafar of the... Right, not all chancellors are evil. Don't believe what they tell you on TV and movies. And I don't know, Star Wars gave me a pretty negative outlook on chancellors. But yeah, I mean, what is your theory?

I mean... Well, I think going back to how Miyamoto drew her in the original drawing, scale-wise, she originally was the same size as a toad. So I think she was supposed to be seen as like... Now there's very... Nintendo is very different official opinions on gender with toads and that toads choose their gender and you can be a toad or a toad ad. And it sounds very open-minded.

But perhaps in the original idea, Miyamoto had for it of just like, no, there's only like a queen bee. There is one female toad and they are this tiny woman with normal, with human hair as opposed to a little hat thing or a toad head. But as it went on, she just became a human, I think, because they realized like, well, Mario needs to be in love with a human. And actually she's prettier if she's taller than him and she has to hit the, she kind of had to become a Pauline type as well. And so I know in the Mario and Luigi games They kind of goof around about it too But like all the Toads love her

And she is not She seems to be a benevolent king Who just kind of stands back And a benevolent monarch And I think she also doesn't Make too many policy decisions It definitely seems like Toadsworth makes them She's a little flighty for that

I mean I feel like if Star Wars can base a movie around We're going to learn Han Solo's real name Oh my God A Nintendo game could be like You're going to meet the king of the mushroom kingdom In this game And it'll be just as disappointing.

It's just like, oh, just a green mushroom guy. You know, it's something Zelda, the Zelda games didn't touch on for a long time until they weren't like, nah, we're not going to show you a king until I'd say Wind Waker was when they decided, no, a king matters. We need a king for it. We need to have a king of high rule for this story to work. Right. And so that's when they pulled them in.

Also in Minish Cap, too, after that, the king was a major character. Where was the king in the link to the past? Was he, like, sick or hiding or something? I think he, man, I can't remember. The game starts with Gannon's stream and overrun the castle, or Aganam or Aganam, yeah. I think the king is definitely missing, but there's not really, you don't see him on screen. Look, I'm on here as a Mario expert. I wasn't prepared for these answers here.

What's up with these curveballs? All right, you're up next. Okay, Wavo said, I feel that Mario Brothers here in the United States has surpassed the mainstream superiority of Disney's Mickey Mouse. The Mario Brothers series is likely to continue for another 30 years, and by then I should be happily playing Super Mario Bros. games as I am beginning retirement question will there be any possible scenario

where my assumption may turn out to be false anything possible that may tarnish or abase the Mario series and not let it last for future generations love the show well first off that it's interesting they mention the Mickey Mouse thing because that was like this apocryphal story that I feel is sourced back to the David Steph's Game Over book which is

Yeah I heard it a lot back in the early 90s Yeah and that book is such an important work of American video game history and Japanese it was one of the few English language books that would tell you anything about Nintendo history though there's some parts in it

directly from Hank Rogers and Uri the inventor of Tetris they told me Uri Russian last name Yes they both Pajit Knob

yeah Alexi whatever Alexi Pajinov anyway both of those guys told me that book gets that book gets the spirit of the story right but gets multiple facts wrong to tell a story I see but anyway in that book he says

oh and this one Pew Research Group thing says Mario's more recognizable of kids and Mickey I don't know if that's the case now but I think Nintendo is definitely in the Disney-esque groove of keeping Mario current and until there comes a day when they don't care about that

when they don't feel like investing like they could make the mistake Konami made with Castlevania perhaps or like Capcom did too of just like we can take five years off nothing of nothing of this people do forget a generation of children like we said about how

time works for kids if you take five years off of making anything about your most popular character children will forget and you will have an entire generation who doesn't know Mario I've said on podcast that's why I don't go crazy for Star Wars because that was when George Lucas was like I'm bored of this I'm sick of it

who just watch the VHS tapes and play with the old toys I don't care and that's like Ghostbusters too. The only people who care about Ghostbusters were kids of the 80s because in the 90s nobody kept it going. It's a very businessy bullshit thing to say, but it is like

you have to keep a brand current and if you don't, then you have to spend a lot of money you'll probably end up spending more money to make it current again if you want it to be. Yeah, and I think that Mario I'm not sure if you'll ever eclipse Mickey because Disney owns everything but Nintendo right now. But

I think that Mario was created in the 80s as a man out of time. He's very much a working class guy of the 30s. You could see him in like an old newspaper comic climbing up girders and stuff. He was made to sort of reflect that whole Fleischer Brothers kind of New York style of animation

and stuff like that. So I feel like having been out of time since he was created will make him timeless because things like Bubsy the Bobcat are like, that's so 90s. Even Sonic, I'm surprised actually Sonic still sticks around even though it's not my thing. I'm still surprised because

he is such a 90s creation. I think maybe if he had sunglasses he would not be sticking around but they yeah he's more versed I think he's more versatile than you think because like one he's nude so other than his shoes so that means you can add more close to him to make him for a

style of a time and you can change him up and also I do like seeing one of my absolute favorite things in Sonic Mania is the opening animation the original animation which is done by mega dorcos like us who got into animation who grew up in the 90s they want him to look really

cool but in that specific way of having his long hot dog nose and his fat belly and so yeah actually i will take that back i think uh when in our sonic episode the the character designer said i gave him the the head of felix the cat in the body of mickey mouse and those are characters from like the 20s and 30s so maybe that has made sonics design and like just the general aesthetic around him stay kind of timeless yep We're going to be on. Here at Podcast One, we love hearing from you. We read every tweet and comment you send our way.

So don't miss your chance to take our summer listener survey. Just go to podcast1.com and click on the survey banner. Or go to podcast1.com slash my survey. It only takes a few minutes. And it gives you the opportunity to make a time. direct impact on your favorite shows. Tell us how you really feel so we can get to know you better. We value your thoughts and participation.

So check out the survey at podcast1.com slash my survey or click on the survey banner on podcast one.com. You know, when you're a kid, there are a lot of things that you think exist. Unicorns, dragons, mermaids, you name it. When you're a kid, it's real. But when you find out later that they don't, well, it's kind of disappointing. Of course, as you get older, you get over the disappointment. But when you're looking to buy a car, there's nothing worse than finding the one of your dreams online,

and then you find out later it doesn't really exist. It's not true. That's why at True Car, they show you real pricing on actual inventory. This isn't pricing offered to you by True Car. It's an actual VIN-based price from a True Car-certified dealer in your area. Real prices. And these aren't just any dealers either. True Car certified dealers are a can.

carefully curated network of dealers committed to transparency. They offer competitive prices and a faster, easier buying experience for you. It's a fact. True car customers are more likely to enjoy a faster buying process when they connect with the True Car certified dealers. And, on average,

they save over $3,000 off the MSRP. So when you're ready to buy that dream car, visit True Car and enjoy a more confident car buying experience. Some features not available in all states. Hey, friends. I don't watch sports or gamble, but as you might know from my other podcast talking Simpsons, I am an expert

in that particular subject. And as the Simpsons taught us all, gambling makes sports even better. So if I started watching sports, I'd definitely start gambling. And since where you're betting at is just as important as who you're betting on, I'd make my destination my bookie.ag. MyBooky has been in this business for years, and their rep is rock solid. They do 100% cash bonuses, so off the bat you're making money for doing nothing. And they have the fastest payouts, seriously, just two business days. That's why I'm urging all of you Retronauts listeners to make your way to MyBooky. You win, they pay.

They have in-game live betting, the most rewarding player perks in the business in an all-new mobile site that makes wagering on the go a breeze. And if you join now, MyBooky will match your deposit with up to a 100% bonus. Just visit MyBooky.ag today and use the promo code Retro to activate. this exclusive offer. Remember, that's mybooky.ag. You play, you win, you get paid. Super Mario is back.

He's blasting through worlds where no one has ever been. He's taking on enemies. No one else dares. This time, Mario plots up power wherever he goes. So he's bigger and badder than ever before. You've never seen creatures like these.

You've never had an adventure like this. It's everything you'll. dreamed of and worlds more it's super mario too only from nintendo now you're playing with power and caller number nine for one million dollars rita complete this quote life is like a box of uh rita you're cutting out we need your answer life is like a box of oh sorry that's not what we were looking for on to caller number 10 bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy

to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. So Mike wants to know after a little bit of a preamble. He says, what does the Mario series represent to you? Thanks so much for your consistently thoughtful and excellent discussion about gaming history. Well, thank you, Mike. Yeah. I think, I'm saying this multiple times. I've said this before, but, well, I have said it before. And I think Mario games are sort of like the benchmark of everything to follow. You're not going to meet this standard but here's how you design this kind of a game. So like Mario

Brothers, Super Mario Brothers was like okay guys here's what a 2D platformer looks like there's been some in the past and they weren't as good as this you at least have to try to be as good as this and with Mario 64 it's like here's how a game works in 3D this is how it has to be from now on because Mario 64 exists. That's what

Mario means to me. Maybe that's not what the Mario series does anymore but I feel like they did established a formula in a format and genre with many games before the turn of the century. Yeah, I think the ones after 64 did it in a lighter way, but I do think like 3D land at least showed here's how you do a real 3D platformer on a handheld, which hadn't really been done that well before. And I think the Galaxy game showed here's how you do a much more directed, focused version of the open world stuff we'd been, we'd done in 64.

And I'd also say that new, I, I do mean it, that new Super Mario Brothers really disappointed me, but I, well, I don't think it held a bar of quality up. It did definitely show, it repopularized retro games coming back or like these throwback type titles, started happening a lot more, I think, after the 2004 release or six of New Super Mario. Yeah, I think with how much that game sold, as much as I don't like playing it, I feel like it did make it okay to make 2D games again because we were of the mindset like, well, there's not going to be any 2D games, maybe just on handhelds. But it's sold so much that people started making 2D games again. Ridic amounts of money. I can only imagine how many games got greenlit in a meeting because the person pitching it said, well, and you know New Super Mario Brothers sold 30 million copies. Yeah, there's no saying no to that. So that's our answer for you. I love the revelation that Super Mario Bros. 3 was a stage play. The game begins with a curtain opening. Environmental platforms are actually set dressing,

either bolted to the background or suspended from the sky, and everything casts a shadow on the background as if the sky were actually a flat backdrop. Miyamoto himself confirmed it in 2015, and links to a Kitaku article on that. This would make it a precursor to visually stylized Nintendo games like the Kids Cran drawing look of Yoshi's Island, the knitted yarn aesthetic of Kirby's Epic Yarn and Yoshi's Wully World or the claymation stylings of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. The interesting thing was how many of us played this game

and how few people noticed the stage play aesthetic. I would argue that Mario games were already so psychedelic to most audiences in the late 80s that few of us were really deconstructing what we were seeing. The whole thing was surreal, so why try to make sense of bolt suspension wires and drop shadows? Yeah, I think I just took it for granted. and only years later did I realize

just like, oh yeah, you're kind of exiting stage left at the end of every stage you're going behind the scenes when you duck on the white blocks and yeah, all the blocks you have bolts in them, like they're bolted to the background. The game begins with a curtain going up on anxiety even. Yeah, and like the whole cast is out there like running around too.

But I think that we as kids or even non-kids playing that game, we're like, well, a game wouldn't be post-modern, and a game wouldn't be meta or have commentary on like, oh, this is stage play. And I think, too, they did as best they could like with the visual ability they had then like the the claymation look of curvy and the rainbow curse which is a gorgeous game i love that game but i think they can only really achieve

that with the fidelity they have now they definitely can do that on the n yes yeah yeah yeah i think it's great and actually if you play mario maker um they actually have things cast more shadows in the background so they're kind of building up that aesthetic even more that they couldn't do on the nes like the mario spright cast a little shadow on the background in mario maker so i guess they just liked how that aesthetic looked So we're up next with Ryan Hoss, who says, while I would not state outright that Mario Plus Raving Rabbins and Super Mario Odyssey are necessarily inspired by Super Mario Brothers the movie, uh-oh.

I would still argue that the film represents a certain touchstone of the overall franchise by which later games and canon developments can be compared. How much, if at all, do the retronauts consider the film an influence on the franchise? I will say less than 0%. Less than 0, yeah. I absolutely believe that Nintendo, washed their hands of it the moment they did it was shooting

even before the release and they just had contractual obligations to help advertise it. I've seen interviews where Miyamoto gets asked, so is his name really Mario Mario? He's like, look, we did that for the movie. No, it's not his name. Yes. And I also think

every Mario game, if the movie wasn't called Super Mario Brothers, it wouldn't be a good movie, but I think people could at least appreciate it like, wow, this is great set design or what an interesting world it builds. But it is, the world is such an absolute rejection of everything that people loved Mario for. It's true. It's true. And every game, even the American developed Mario games, which I'd say like the Mario versus Donkey Kong series, those don't give a shit about the Super Mario Brothers movie.

They don't, yeah. And I feel like the sets are great, but for another movie. They're really impressive, but not for a Mario movie. It's just like, they're kind of like running around in a Blade Runner world for no reason. and we did an entire episode about this movie in 2012 you can go to archive.org and find all the one-up episodes

because they're hard to find now but I said everything I wanted to say about it then I don't think my feelings have changed but they're just so much wrong about that movie even as a kid I was just like no I want my Mario movie like I want it and I don't know who they were making it for I feel a certain shame of the source material

like oh we can make this crap yeah I mean that's why they don't get in their costumes until like the last 10 minutes Yeah, it's like, probably just because they're like, we can't make a toy if they're not in these costumes. Yes, that's funny because I remember watching this for that episode, and I'm like, when are they going to get into the costumes? They find their own costumes in Kupa's base.

Yes. And it's the hour and 40 minute mark, I'm pretty sure, when it happens. Just like, they are so ashamed. But just like, I feel like that's how superhero movies were like until fairly recently. Like, we can't have these guys in costumes. That's stupid. It looks so dumb. Yeah.

But now we have. super red spider man swinging around it's great yeah no i'd say iron man really changed that definitely uh all right so jason x says curious to hear what you guys think about the continuity of the mario franchise this is very important to me oh boy uh continuing miamoto has supposedly said that he views the characters as being akin to old warner brothers cartoons where each new outing has little if any relationship to its predecessors even so i'll be in the cold cold ground before i recognize cooper junior over the true cupa kids should the fans take a more a more laissez-faire attitude to Mario Canon?

Or are we justified in desperately clinging to our preferred configurations like some kind of peach-shaped body pillow? Well, I will definitely give, I absolutely respect Miyamoto on this, and I'd say if anybody is the last word on Mario Cannon, it's him. And he totally doesn't give a single shit about Mario Cannon. He, when asked about it like, so who's the mother of Bowser's kids? I don't care. like his answer for most of this interview is over

well he'll be nice and be like look it doesn't matter Mario's last name is this okay who's older which brother is like I don't he doesn't care he doesn't care but I think a lot of people who work on Mario games do care and I think you can definitely find moments

of Canon being built in there by people maybe not him that kind of fit around it I'm especially mega interested to see what they do in Mario Odyssey because Mario to see, he wears all these costumes he wore in classic games. It is recognizing

like, here's this costume from Yoshi's Cookie. Here's this costume from Mario's Picross. Here's this costume from one scene from the Game Boy launch game that was a rip-off of breakout. Oh, Alleyway.

Yeah, the costume from one screen of Alleyway. All these things in there that I'm like, well, okay, somebody really gives it shit. It reminds me of how breath, sorry. It reminds me how Breath of the Wild is like, oh, every Zelda game kind of counts in this. Right. I like the idea of references more than the tying everything to like a specific history. Like I like when Zelda Breath of the Wild rewards you with like, remember this

from this game, it's here in this form. And same with Mario Odyssey, seeing like the Yoshi's cookie costume and things like that. I'm not a biggest fan as saying like, oh, when were they born and when did they arrive in the Mushroom Kingdom and stuff? Because there's like, there's like a different story in every TV series. And then like Yoshi's Island contradictions. fix that they were like born in the mushroom kingdom well they were delivered in the mushroom kingdom but then the other Yoshi's Island games uh definitely not to mushroom

I think we just see their their legs yeah but they do live in a mushroom house that's true but as I as I will say on a Yoshi's Island episode in Yoshi's Island sequels they then say that wasn't the family and they have to be dropped off at another house but and there's another thing in Mario

continuity which I feel really should count that people kind of overlook is that in Donkey Kong 94 which is a Miyamoto asked Mario game. So if any continuity counts, it's that one. When you finish that game and defeat Donkey Kong, DK, DK Jr., Mario, and Pauline fall into the Mushroom Kingdom, drawn to look like Super Mario Brothers One Mushroom Kingdom.

Interesting. So it's like, oh, so is this how they say that 94, how the Donkey Kong story then drops Mario off in the Mushroom Kingdom? There's many answers to that. And I do think Auditson has showed some. So you're not wrong to care about continuity because some people making Mario games do care about it. But just know that ultimately, as long as Bia Moto is alive, he will hand wave away any attempt you have to say. I'm like, well, so did Bowser Jr. be born after this?

Like, he doesn't care. I will say, let's please not turn this into a Legend of Zelda timeline thing. More pointless conversations have been had about that than probably any other topic in history. What makes me, I'm so mad about the timeline. Well, I made you right. Well, I paid you... I did take money for it. But, yeah, I did write an article for Games Radar about, like, sort of, I think, breaking down the timeline.

And what blew my mind about it, I had not even read the official timeline or seen the book, High Real Story, until I sat down to write that article. And it begins with a preface. It's like, none of this is true. None of this is real. We can change this whenever we want to. So it's like, well, then why does anyone have conversations about this? I guess it's true of all fiction.

It's all made up anyway, so who cares? But it's just like, I just like the idea that the Windmaker kind of put forth that, like, oh, it's a different link every time or whatever. And I wish we could just have that back. It was so pure and special. But, yes, that's my final word on that. So next question comes from Lefloic? Lefloic?

I'm currently studying slash doing research about game history, and I love how memories and anecdotes can paint a picture of how games were played back in the days. So my questions would be, do you have any funny slash quirky slash unique anecdotes about you? Link to the Mario Brothers series and how you played them. One for me. When I was young, we didn't know the name of Big Bertha. So we always called her Colette Goslin, French Canadian name for some reason.

It's still how we call her in my family. And I even gave her name to my young corgi. Always a pleasure to listen to you. Thanks. I just remember my older sister would always make fun of me for knowing the enemy names. Yes. And like I was a nerd. Like I was probably like seven and she was 10.

And I was like, she was playing. I was like, oh, jump on that Goomba. She's like, Goomba. You know the names of these things? We get along great, by the way, still today. Yeah, no, I had that same, I did have that same obsessiveness of going through, I mean, the instruction manuals there, you know, you have to, and also, as somebody who watched all of the cartoons, I was like, well, okay, that's a blooper. That's a shy guy. That's a mouser. That's a ninja, a mouser. I knew all those names. And so that's, that's why I would obsessively call them. So I didn't make up names for them. Definitely a big memory I have is how obsessed me and my mom were and my little brother. there were with Super Mario Brothers that we bought our first ever strategy guide, which was just printups of every stage in order and how to get through them.

And it was a good time. It was a happy memory. As was, my mom loved Dr. Mario, probably her favorite game ever. And she would beat it all the time and just watching over her shoulder or watching together the very like kind of like melancholy moment of the viruses on top of it. the tree watching like fireworks together. It was, I, I like Japanese, too. Yes, yeah.

That tree should have been pink. Yeah, for some reason, I'm just remembering this in 1990 or 89, whenever that game came out. Moms did love Dr. Mario, and I don't know why. Moms come and run into those colorful pills. My mom played it all the time on the Game Boy as well until after school, I lost the Game Boy cartridge. I think some kids stole it for me, and she was very disappointed. I lost the Game Boy Cartridge. He's got the prescription for my Daily Blues.

Kevin Bunch says, being a Mario Obsessed Kid, my parents indulged me whenever something related to the franchise came by my hometown of Detroit. I remember they took me to the Ice Capades Mario and Ice Production, which I still have depended from, and to a traveling exhibit, Mario Nintendo put on to advertise the Super Nias shortly after its launch. One of the most striking things I remember, there was a floating, talking Mario head, sort of like the Super Mario 64 opening, that would crack jokes. to make wise guy comments. I read just a few years ago

that was done by having Charles Martinette in the display area effectively improvising everything he was saying do you have any insight on that one? I also recall a link to the past promo video doing with voiceover from the cartoons actor I don't remember that one and I love it that ever surfaced on the internet

I don't recall that link to the past one. I have never seen it but that probably was Charles Martin A. Oh yeah, I've read many of Charles Martin interview and he was very clear like that was when he started. He said that Nintendo needed a voice for Mario for this trade show they were doing

just to show off this you know 3D Mario head and they'd need a guy to talk over that head and so they get this guy who does a cutesy Italian accent he says like he had a more gruff Italian accent at first and he didn't know it was Mario he was auditioning for

and they're like no no cutcier and so then we got that voice and he He tells stories that he just basically did a ton of Italian stereotype jokes. Oh, where's Luigi? He's off a camera making a spaghetti. Yeah, actually, that's funny. You said that because I was at an E3. Yep.

Yeah, I forget what he was there, not visible. Because there was a 2014 one I think. That was my last E3 I went to. Or 2013. One of those. I was at both of those. But I remember the Mario head talking to people. And somebody was like, somebody did ask where's the Luigi?

He's like, oh, he's making a pasta. And then the Italian Anti-Defamation League showed up and arrested him. I remember he did that. This was right before the show floor opened, so it was like, it's only press there. And I can't remember the journalist he said, but like, oh, it's a guy from a polygon. You say so many nice things about a Mario. Hey, I was like, this is weird. That's considered a bribe, sir.

Yes, yeah, I mean, that is, that was Charles Martinet. Yeah, and Nintendo, the NCL Masters, I think. think even more so than Nintendo of America, like, oh, we like this guy. They like him so much. Like, they don't, unlike with say Solid Snake, there is not a Japanese Mario voice. It is Charles

Martin A as well. I mean, okay, yes, you will find ads for, like, the Cat Mario Puppet. Obviously, that is a Japanese actor speaking in Japanese in a Mario voice. But in the games, like I remember 3D World, one of the things I loved most about, when I

got to interview, the creators for 3D World, that included Miyamoto. They mentioned how much they loved hearing meow because that is not the, that is not the Japanese onomatopoeia. It's, yeah. But they got, they heard Charles Martinet doing meow, meow, they're like, this is adorable. We love the way you make a cat. We're building a game around this now. And so they, they were very insistent, like in, in Japan as well, it was Charles Martinet and the other actors saying, meow, not meow. Yeah, that's cool. Wow. I wonder if that opened up a lot of Japanese people's eyes to our world of Anamonopoeia.

The right way to say a cat noise. I prefer gowl as the cow sound. I like kukurikuriku for the kikiki that roosters do in Spanish. I prefer Wan to bark. Wan, Juan, that's weird. Wan, one, one. I guess that makes more sense than bark, bark, bark. So let's just do a few more.

We got so many questions and we're reading them in whoever actually posted first. We're kind of going in order, so you do as you lose, but I read all of these, so thank you for your contributions. And let's go on to Charlie Manny, who says my first Mario game I played was Super Mario 64 when I was seven, but the first one I owned was Super Mario All-Stars plus Super Mario World. Since then, in my past 21 years, I played just about every Mario game. I was wondering just a few things. Number one, which Mario game do you think has been overhyped? Number two, what Mario game would you love to re-experience for the first time? number three, what do you want

at Mario Odyssey? These are three questions. I wanted one. Let's pick one of these to answer just to be fair to everyone else. How about Oh, then I can play again. Yeah, let's do that one. It absolutely is Yoshi's Island for me. I think Yoshi's Island it's really hard to say it's

it's tied for first place with like two other Mario games for me is my favorite. And it is a Mario game. I will not couch any conversation otherwise. But just experiencing like every boss fighting that for the first time was like, oh, this is amazing. Yeah, new special effects.

I'll say mine would be Mario 64, just to have my innocence back about like, this is the first time a 3D game has felt right. I mean, I'm sure I, God, I don't even know if I played Doom or whatever before that, but it's the first time. It's just like, oh, this is how games are going to be now, and this is cool. You kids don't know what a marvelous moment it was to be like, oh, this is what a 3D game is. All these other 3D games are bullshit.

Like, this is what a 3D game is. And just, like, looking around every corner, climbing every tree, like, oh, my God, there's a waterfall. How deep can I swim? It just was, like, that even just being in a 3D world was enough of a novelty. And it was great that there was a great game attached to it that controlled well. So, thanks. We have one from Frowny Face. I'm not sure if he's trolling us.

You want to read this one, Henry? Sure. Oh, boy. Frowny Face said, the emoji of a frowny face says, are there any black people in the Mario Universe? Hmm. That is a toughie, you know? There are very few humans in the Mario. that's true

I'll say that too or or human looking people as far as well black people because using the term African American that would preclude other dark skin people

who are not from America but anyway enough about noamically on that I can't well Mario was in blackface once but that doesn't count right we don't talk about that that wasn't like kicks

the gameplay version of kicks I think yes dark dark dark dark memories yeah look yeah look it was 1990 Japan has learned Nintendo has learned quite a lot

Nintendo Japan has learned quite a lot about how blackface is not acceptable outside of Japan where it somehow kind of still is a little bit The baggage is not attacked to it But anyway, getting away from that I can't

I definitely can't think of one off the top of my head because it's pretty rare I bet I would hope we will see some in Mario Odyssey It would be weird to go to a version of New York City that only had white people in it

That would be very strange. That would be like an episode of Friends or something like that. Exactly. Old joke, but it's still true. I think all the humans in Mario are Italian. They're all Italian Americans. Yeah, pretty much Italian-Americans other than Peach who is just like standard white lady. And Lauduigi was grown in a lab, I think.

So, yeah, I hate to say, I hate to disappoint people, but I can't really think of any. I think there might be some in the War games, if those are, you know, Nintendo adjacent. but yeah, sorry, I need to dig more into this, but none are coming to mind. Prove us wrong, listeners, prove us wrong. Let's read one more question. I'm just going to pick one at random. That's good. So our last question comes from Relo Main 23, who asks,

Super Mario Land 1 and 2 were my first Mario games and are highly regarded by me. Why do you think none of that content, enemies, bosses, stages, etc., were carried into the Mario universe? Would you like to see Mario Land 1 and 2 rolled into Mario Maker? 2D Mario games versus 3D Mario games if you had to pick one. I will say that those were back when Nintendo still had their different teams. Those were R&D 1 games, and the Mario series was, were they R&D 3 or 4, the mainline Mario games? Oh, those, I believe it was, I think 3. I think they were EAD at that time.

Okay, I thought EAD was like 3 and 4 smashed together over time. Yeah, pretty much. but yeah they were they were three and four yeah it was it was uh i will say like uh mario land one two and then the wario land series were made by not mario team people and by the time they got to marion land two it was it was already becoming a parody of mario games and marion land three is just an outright parody of mario game um and i point out all the reasons why in our wario land episodes like episode two of our comeback please listen to it i love the wario land games but i feel like they were more interested in being weird uh and and in breaking formula

than, you know, the main Mario people were. And I love that those goofballs were ready to, like, joke on it and goof on Mario. But also, if I was, I don't know, if I, if I was a very controlling person about making Mario games, like perhaps, like perhaps Miyamoto and Takashi are about it, they might be mad that somebody changed up things so much. But because the other people who made Mario Land 1 and 2 had such a lot. seniority they could just do it and i think you end up land one and two is what happens when you ask people who are not the mario team to make a mario game and they're very good at making games but

they don't know how to exactly make a maria game like mario land is just so so weird it has some defenders i like some of the ideas but i just find it very hard to play like Mario drops like a brick like he just immediately just drops like a lead balloon yeah the the physics are a little off and also you can tell they were more interested in like doing like shooting stages yeah I think they did better with shooting stages. Those are more fun. They did trying to fake Mario. And then just the weird idea of like, oh, these are kind of

Cooper Troopers, but they turn into bombs. Yeah, again, they're kind of playing with the ideas. But I think Mario Land 2 is a great game in the Warri Land series. Obviously, I love. I love Mario Land too. And it was, I felt like Mario Land 2 was them trying to be more like a Mario Super Mario World. It was made in the shadow of Super Mario World.

So it had more directed power-ups, cuter sprites, bigger worlds. but it still is a weird ass game especially in the case of like Wario is a weird ass character like we're just so used to Wario now it's like no it's an uglier fatter meaner Mario who is what Mario really would be if he was honest

which is like I'm a greedy guy who loves coins that's true okay I never thought of that like yeah like Mario's really just out for coins exactly but Mario's got to have that happy face on and I do recall when I got to interview the director of Super Mario 3D land about the game I did ask, like, you know, it has the same name style as the Mario Land games.

Like, what inspiration do you take from that? And he was pretty demure of like, not really any. Like, this was to the EAD team, I don't think they feel it was those are Mario games worth emulating. Though the closely said, it's like, well, the fireballs in this game kind of bounce off walls like the balls do in land. I see, I see. That was the most he said. But so I think NN EAD, who is calling the shots, no employee there particularly cares much for those land. games because they didn't make them if they were there when they were being made.

So I think that's why they're not really taken into a car. The Wario Fields are lying fallow. I really want a new Mario game that's good and not outsourced. And Game Memorio wasn't, but it was still bad. I reviewed it. And not great, not great. Not a great Wii U game. So yeah, that was our Mario Q&A.

Thank you so much to everyone who posted a comments. There are more of them, but we were at an hour. And for God, we let that loft! We're at an hour. And these micros peek behind the scenes, they're supposed to be like 20 minutes. Never do that. We're giving you so much extra. I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone. I love reading these comments. And if you enjoyed us doing this, let me know if you want me to do more of these. I have fun sitting down and frankly not having to do a bunch of research. That part of it, it's great too. But it's good to hear from you guys. And it's good to hear your ideas and stuff reflected in our podcast. So thank you so much. And I should have pointed out like I'm doing this podcast because Mario Plus Rabbits just came out and is apparently good. And I should probably play it. And Mario Odyssey is like two months away. So we're like at the dawn of a new age of Marry. Mario. A new 3D Mario that's not like these little prescribed levels. It's back to the Mario Sunshine and Mario 64 kind of approach. And I'm very excited about that. I know Henry is too. Absolutely. And I love its seeming celebration of Mario history, which they really don't do in games. And so just having these conversations or any of these questions further reminded me like, oh yeah, I'm really excited for Odyssey and what it offers up in Mario history celebration. I can't wait to get it. I have a switch and I'm ready for Odyssey. But let's wrap up. As always, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo

and you're listening to The Restaurants by the way Thank you very much. My other podcast is Talking Simpsons and because of all of our great Patreon people we can record in Henry's apartment and I don't have to go all the way to San Francisco and spend two hours in transit to do that. So thank you so much.

Talking Simpsons is a chronological exploration of the Simpsons every Wednesday on the Laser Time podcast network and I'll let Henry tell you all about that Patreon and what you can get if you want to donate to that. Retronats, that's Patreon too of course and we thank all of you donors to that but we have a lot of crossover fans and Henry, please let people know what they can get

if they also give their hard-earned money to Talking Simpsons. Yeah, so if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up for just $5 a month you will get access to dozens already exclusive podcast. So you'll get the entire first season of Talking Simpsons, which is only available there.

You'll get all of our exclusive season wrap-ups that now includes deleted scenes as well from season five. And you will also get every episode of Talking Critic, which is us doing the same kind of history rewatch treatment to the critic the first spin-off ish of the Simpsons ever

and we're having a ton of fun on those I love it you get so many extras from there and yeah that's how we were able to do things like get the equipment to buy, get the equipment to record here and then have the free time to do it in Berkeley instead of having to fit this around a full-time

job and I really appreciate everybody who has made that possible. Yeah thanks to everyone who donates anything to either Patreon We appreciate it so much. And if you're interested in the Retronauts, Patreon, that's Patreon. That's Patreon.com slash Retronauts. There are perks to that, but I feel the most important perk is the $3 tier. And with that, you get ad-free episodes at a higher bit rate in a week earlier.

We know some of you don't like the ads. There are a necessary thing for us to make this our full-time jobs. But if you want to go around the ads, it's only three bucks a much, but I think comes out to like 50 cents per podcast. It's a time slash money equation. You decide which is more valuable. I won't do it for you. But thank you so much for listening to Retronauts, and we'll see you soon with another brand new episode. And caller number nine for one million dollars.

Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10.

Oh, gosh. Bad network? Got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save.

The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor

of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder.

I'm Ed Donahue.