Tag: DrewMackey

Drew Mackie’s 101 Facts About Mario

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.

From the pages: a flyer for the original US arcade release of Donkey Kong. SNORT! HELP! FIGHT!

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.

Also from the article: the cover of “Popeye Magazine for City Boys,” an odd Japanese publication. Mackie suggests the photo may be one inspiration for the appearance of Mario.

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!

One more image borrowed from the post: a phone card with Mario and Peach sharing the scene with their vaguely-Arabian counterparts from Doki Doki Panic.

TToOVG: Mario’s Death Animation

TToOVG is the initialism I’m trying out for Drew Mackey’s blog Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games, and they have an excellent post up about Mario’s death animation, in fact the death animation of lots of platformer characters, where the fall off the screen.

They turn to face the player, as if acknowledging for the first time that there’s a space alongside the strictly 2D in-profile world through which he traveled before the Nintendo 64 existed, and leaps out like an ant escaping an ant farm. Like this:

Image from linked blog (there, however, it’s animated)

Mario isn’t the only character to die this way. Other faller-deathers include Milon, the Doki Doki Panickers, Wonder Boy, Master Higgins, the Mice Mickey and Minnie, Little Nemo, Kid Dracula, Kirby, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even Scrooge McDuck, who really should be able to afford a more unique animation.

Think about how odd it is that so many games use this leaping out of the screen idea, and that we rarely question it. Then go read the post, where they interrogate the idea even further.