
It’s a-me: How Super Mario became a global cultural icon - brandur
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21712064-pudgy-italian-plumber-who-lives-america-was-conceived-japan-and-loved
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faragon
Super Mario games are way better than what they look at first glance, in my
opinion. E.g. even the 16-bit SNES Super Mario World, with its modest looking
by its time, has a huge amount of work below everything: the games are so good
because there is way more than the first impression. Perfect game play, lots
of secrets, pretty amount of freedom, etc. make you enjoy and love them over
time. Pure genius, pretending being just simple video games.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Shigeru Miyamoto named SMW the game he was most proud of. I can see why that
is.

SMW, Super Mario Kart and The Legend Of Zelda on the SNES are milestones of
the genre, never again has this level of perfection been reached in 2D gaming
imho (excluding SMK here).

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is no. 1 on some all-time best of
lists. Maybe its the impression it made on many of us in our youth, but a year
ago I played it again, and it was still great. The music, the art style, the
controls - its the stuff that nostalgia is made of.

~~~
ralfd
When I replayed I found the ending really satisfying. A mesmerizing effect
with the 3D Triforce, triumphant music that makes you feel like a hero and you
revisit places in the game and see how you restored them to good (your uncle
is well again!) When the credits come with some parallax background you watch
them silently and with crazy respect for the team and only then switch off the
Super Nintendo.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8JU0C_l4aac](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8JU0C_l4aac)

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loudmax
I remember watching some silly Hong Kong movie on TV one night when I was
living in a hostel in Taiwan in the late 1990's. The people staying at the
hostel were all fairly young and included Americans, Brazilians, French,
Germans, Japanese, South Asians and whatnot. Most of us were chatting in
whichever languages we happened to have in common, or halfway paying attention
to the TV. I forget what the movie was about, but at one point there was a
dream sequence or something and suddenly the actors are wearing overalls and
hats with big fake mustaches and they start running around big green pipes and
jumping on turtle shells. And suddenly the whole room started laughing because
_everyone_ understood the reference. Mario was a cultural touchstone we all
had in common.

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mysterydip
Super Mario Bros supercharged my interest in appdev and eventually indie game
making.

My first computer was an IBM PCjr with various games on floppy, a cartridge
BASIC, and a spiral-bound programming manual. Not sure how old I was, old
enough to read, but as I was flipping through the manual one day, I noticed
one of my brothers had scribbled words next to the colors in the section on
drawing to the screen: brown had "block", cyan had "sky", etc. It was a
mapping of Super Mario Bros tiles to BASIC colors. It was at that point that I
realized I didn't just have to play games made by others. I could make my own!

A couple decades later and I'm still making them. I like to think my skills
have improved some since those days :)

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ebbv
I lived through Mario taking over the world and it's really no mystery; the
main line Mario games have been universally really solid. The one black sheep,
Super Mario Sunshine, is still a solid game it just was too big of a change
from Mario 64 for people to handle at the time.

Particularly Super Mario Bros 1, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World and
Super Mario 64 really pushed games forward. Each one of them really opened up
new possibilities in games that the rest of the industry was influenced by.

The amazing thing is that Nintendo did that with the Zelda series as well, but
this thread is about Mario.

~~~
cableshaft
Super Mario Sunshine holds up pretty well. I still really enjoy going back to
it today. Even more than Mario 64 (although that's still a great game too).
The controls were a lot tighter than Super Mario Galaxy, I feel, because it
didn't use any motion controls.

~~~
pryelluw
Im playing through SMG1 for the 1st time and the controls are a bit weaker
than M64. Not bad, but there is a noticeable difference. Its still a fun game,
but I fInd myself playing SMW more often. That one has perfect controls. Even
on the Wii version.

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chiph
The nieces still play Super Mario Kart with their friends. It would be cool if
Nintendo could release a smartphone version of this, with multi-player over
Bluetooth.

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Waterluvian
There's a Mario 602 star race all day today on Twitch. Unfortunately I can't
find the link on my phone but it should be easily discoverable.

~~~
JonnieCache
[https://www.twitch.tv/602race](https://www.twitch.tv/602race)

info: [http://bombch.us/giU](http://bombch.us/giU)

(yes, speedrunners have their own, zelda themed url shortener.)

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akssri
NES clones are still going strong in India :) Summers spent playing pirated
games on 8-bit cartridges - what joy!

SNES sadly was a rarity, even if it was much better (I'd personally rate SNES
higher than Wii). Frankly, if there were nice touch interfaces for SNES
emulators, I'd gladly pay $10. Carrying a bluetooth gamepad is definitely an
alternative.

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Keyframe
If you can, try to get ahold of 'Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World'
book by David Sheff. I got it eons ago as a freebie along with 'Arcade'
magazine and proceeded to read it as I had nothing better to do at the time.
It has to be one of the best game-oriented (industry) book I've read.

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franze
Sadly there was a real-actors saturday morning TV super mario show in the
early 90ies which forever spoiled the character for me. (Even worse then the
blockbuster movie). The games are the best there is, but he never became cool
- in my humble opinion.

~~~
jerf
Thanks to Netflix, my 8-year-old and 5-year-old think it's a good show. It's
cheesy, but it's hard for me to get too, err, emotional about it when I
compare it to the other things I watched at the same age. (I never did see
that when it was out.)

My wife was on the verge of putting the parental veto on it, but the kids
moved on to other things. I didn't mind it so much, but the Netflix version
has the Legend of Zelda stuff yanked out (presumably licensing issues), which
probably helps out overall, as I gather that part of the show was legendarily
(pun intended) annoying.

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kellet
Yip, yap, ya-hoo!

