The Video Game/Movie Review Blog

I have to say, Mario way back in the early days of gaming used to be so creative, and this game is no exception. I mean, just like its predecessor, it's very weird, but that's what makes it so charming and fun to play. As with the first Mario Land title, this game was released on the Game Boy, but for being a game on such a simple console, they did quite a lot with the visuals and world designs. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that this game makes the first Super Mario Land look like a tech demo by comparison. The story is the usual flavor of weird that the first game had as well. Mario's castle that he just...has for some reason, has been taken over by the evil Wario and the door to the castle can only be unlocked by going to six zones and finding the golden coins that reside in each. Yeah, this game has a weird story. The six zones are really where the game shines, in my opinion. There is the tree zone, which is a grassland type area that takes place in a giant ...

What a game this was! Many people say there is a battle between Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World for the title of best 2D Mario game. Well, after playing this game, I can say I have finally formed my opinion. Super Mario World is the first Mario game to be released for the NES' successor, the SNES, which means the presentation goes above and beyond what the previous games did. The graphics are especially gorgeous, with a variety of environments at your disposal to explore. The story is once again simple. Mario, Luigi, and Peach go on vacation to a place called Dinosaur Land. Once there, Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser, as per usual, and Mario has to go and save her with the help of a new friend, an egg laying, high jumping, enemy eating dinosaur named Yoshi. Yoshi is considered by many to be the best part of this game, but to me, he was just annoying. He kept getting hit and running away at inopportune moments and trying to catch him again ended up just causing more trouble ...

Well, this was certainly a game, or at least, a good demonstration of one. This is one of the more bizarre Mario games out there, so let's talk about why that is. Super Mario Land was the first portable mainline Mario game, released for Nintendo's black and white Game Boy. So how did Mario on the go end up doing? Well, quite weirdly as mentioned earlier. While it is a 2D platformer like the other games reviewed so far, this game definitely tried to stand out in ways no other Mario game really has done before. The story follows Mario as he tries to save the kingdom of Sarasaland and its princess, Daisy, from the evil alien Tatanga. Already a departure from the norm for sure, but even the enemies are weird. For example, Koopas now turn into bombs when you jump on them instead of just hiding in their shells so you can kick them later on. The game plays like the first Mario game, but in black and white, with more bizarre enemies like the aforementioned Bombshell Koopas, and actual ...

You know when something just takes its medium to a whole new level? Like a movie upping the stakes of the story? Well, for games, this is when you get more creative with the overall design giving players so much more to do, and that's exactly what we got with Super Mario Bros 3. This game was hyped up so much when it first came out, and rightfully so. It took what worked with the first game and made it bigger, better, and more challenging. The gameplay is tighter than ever, the levels may be short but they pack a lot of challenge into each one, and, of course, there are a bunch of brand new powerups Mario can use throughout his adventure, including the Super Leaf, which turns Mario into Raccoon Mario, giving him the ability to fly. The story, as per usual, is simple for Mario games. Bowser and his elite minions, the Koopalings, have transformed the kings of seven of the neighboring kingdoms and Mario has to defeat the Koopalings and return the kings to normal. Although the game doe...

Oh, boy, this is definitely one of the weirdest Mario games of all time. It's like if they took Zelda and made it a sidescrolling action RPG. Oh wait, they...they did do that. Awkward. Now, this game is weird for many reasons. One of the most notable is the fact that this didn't start out as a Mario game. The true second Mario game, now known as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels in the west, was deemed too hard for western audiences at the time and so Nintendo made the bizarre decision to reskin a completely different game called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic with Mario characters and thus the western Super Mario Bros 2 was born. Super Mario Bros 2 also plays very differently from the first Super Mario Bros. For one thing, jumping on the heads of enemies does nothing. The main gimmick of this game is that you now pick up and throw enemies or objects at other enemies to defeat them, which probably confused a lot of players who had familiarized themselves with the original game. It ...

I like Mario, that much is clear from the random beginning of this specific marathon, but regardless, there has been so much Mario content that has come out over the last few years that a review of all the Mario games I consider important sounds like a no-brainer. Well, after a couple weeks of thinking about this, that's exactly what I am doing, and what better place than the game that started it all? That, of course, is Super Mario Bros. Now, this game is hardly the most complex thing out there. It's a sidescrolling platformer where you play as a plumber named Mario who has to save the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom from the villainous turtle dragon thing known as Bowser. But even this simple plot was revolutionary for gaming. You see, prior to this game, video games didn't have any sort of story to them and really were just things made to rack up high scores. This was the first game to really give a more fleshed out story than "Get as much points and then, I don...