The Fryhole

So… this Super Mario Bros game is… wow. Roger and I ran out and bought DS Lites and Super Mario Bros in a ‘package deal’ (they weren’t actually being sold together for less money so we had to buy them at the same time and use our imagination) this last week. Worth every penny — I’m playing it more addictively than I did Super Mariokart DS. Not sure what it is… I never particularly like the original Mario Bros games when they were on the ’standard consoles’; but this DS version is the shiznit.

It could be that you get to grow really, really giant (which to my knowledge you could never do in the originals), or it could be that I’m just giving it more of a chance than I ever did with the original console-based ones. Yesterday I actually got my Wolf into armor on a level 1 mission in EVE, because I was distracted hopping about trying to get that last giant golden coin for a level and I didn’t notice the 7-8 Serpentis that seemed to take exception to my presence. That would have been an expensive mistake, considering the Gistii Type-A I just put on it.
Anyway, back to Super Mario Bros. Nintendo always has the little touches, and they haven’t missed out here. When you close the DS (without ending the game), Mario says “Bye-bye!” and when you open it again he says “It’s a me! Marrrrio!” Silly and meaningless? Perhaps. One thing that it does do, however, is bring you right into the game. There’s no delay between opening up the DS and starting to play (unless you end/quit the game — I’m talking about using sleep mode, here). You are in-game, and Mario is alive and well and it’s time to find the princess and there’s no time to spare — all as soon as you open the DS.

Not sure if it works that way for others, but Mario’s speech on opening the DS really delimit game-play for me — both the start and the end of it. I’ve heard that it takes people a fair amount of time to switch between tasks, and I wonder if Mario’s speech actually helps this process along by focusing the mind on the task at hand (and releasing it again).
It’s the little details that really make a game, isn’t it? All the koopas base r belong to me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 18th, 2006 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Planet Nintendu 64. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.