Mackie’s Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games often covers Nintendo-related topics, and this one is much more so than usual: a barrel-full of trivia related to Mario, his games, and his friends, enemies, rivals and hangers-on, spread out across seven long pages, all glorious text with some images and other media scattered through.
Most of it is new information, including a fair bit of arguing against perceived elements of Mario lore, like his getting his name from a Nintendo warehouse landlord. I’m personally glad that one of the many sources cited is Matthew Green, deceased game journalist and the maintainer of the (also deceased) blog Press The Buttons. Wherever you are Matt, I hope there’s lots of great games to play.
There’s a bunch of stuff there. It’ll take you quite a bit of time to work through it all, but honestly? It’ll still be much faster than if it were all presented in a two-hour Youtube video, so count your blessings! Wait, they’re already counted: 101, a hundred-and-one blessings. How holy!
