Outstanding New Super Mario Bros. Post

HEADS-UP: Due to the large amount of Google Image hits I got for the Koopalings pic, let me just specifically say I didn't make the pic nor didn't intend to receive so many hits for it....  Click here for the picture's original page (credit to nintendrawer on deivantArt).

EDITED TWICE

Oh ho ho, don't we have a treat for you, boys and girls.  Cause there's absolutely nothing Daytona or Sega-related for me to complain about, let's talk about Nintendo.  Ooo, I went there.  Let's have some fun (as if we hadn't had any yet).  I know this is completely out in left field but I DON'T CARE.

So this is my family's second Wii.  This one is hooked up to the main television.  My parents thought it would be nice to have another one.  Once the gimmick of playing Wii Bowling wore off, I was left with this copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii which came as part of the Wii package but no one noticed but me.  It sat there in that little sleeve--not a normal game box.  Hmm, so this is interesting, I thought...

OMG!

So anyway, there's not much to say about it.  It came out in 2009.  It plays out like Super Mario Bros. 3--you get items, you walk around the world map beating levels.  You can ride Yoshi in a handful of levels--not many unfortunately...  You got this cheap-ass item in the form of "Helicopter Mario" who can fly like an eagle...makes beating levels much easier, like the P-Wing from Mario 3.

Official Site In Case You're Even Slightly Interested 

One difference is that the controls were rather different from the old Mario NES games.  In SMB1-3, you could zip around, catch some major air, etc. but in this one, Mario's much slower.  To compensate, you can do the ground pound and the wall kick (see Super Mario 64) which comes in handy.

So you can play up to 4 players simultaneously.  Oh Good Lord, it's bad enough with two.  So me and my brother were playing a while back and we went up to World 3, took the warp zone to World 6, and beat the rest of the game from there.  We just kept pushing each other off the cliffs.  He would run ahead and you've have to keep up or you'd be left behind to die.  As long as one player is alive, the dead player comes back in a "bubble" and you can keep playing like normal, kind of like in Halo how you wait for your teammate to be revived before you go on.

To compare, me and my brother spent 7 continues to beat the game.  On the other hand, I sat down from start to finish in 1-player and beat the game (no warp zones) in about five hours with 70+ lives spare.  I think the game's too damn generous, but if it were any harder than multiplayer would be impossible.

To increase the replay value of the game, you can go back to any level and collect three big coins per level to unlock stuff, but it's not like it's necessary...once you beat it, I don't know what else to do.  Try speedrunning I guess?

------------

And there's another part of the game that intrigued me.  This is one of the few games that has the Koopalings in it.  In case you didn't know, these are Bowser's seven kids (who's the mother, I don't wanna know).  They're most well known for being the bosses at the end of each world you beat the crap out of (jump on their heads three times) in Super Mario 3/World and then you move on to the next level.  Eight worlds = seven Koopalings + Bowser.  That makes sense, especially consider NSMBWii (oh man) has "eight" worlds too.

Reference

Of course, Bowser Jr. pops up and he's the eighth Koopaling, apparently.  He also appears in NSMBWii as an intermediary boss among many other recent Mario games.  Nothing wrong with him, but lately, if Bowser needs dirty deeds done dirt cheap, he goes to Bowser Jr.  Not much of anything on the other seven Koopalings.  Like they were originally meant to be "palette swaps" or whatever so you didn't end up fighting the same boss every time.  However, over time they became seven personalities that Nintendo didn't give much face time which makes little sense.

Maybe they're trying to do like Sonic in that the more characters in the game means the worse that it is, but that is a topic for another day.  Although about that, Sonic Adventure 2 is considered the best 3-D game and that has 7 main Sonic characters in it.  Yeah, so more is worse.

Yes, I know the Koopalings were in Hotel Mario, Yoshi's Safari, Mario is Missing, etc. but those don't really count.  Interestingly, there's a lot of stuff on them in the SMB3 cartoon and the comics, but I'm surprised it means nothing today.  Cartoons and manga mean nothing when it comes to game canon.  Click here for MORE INFORMATION!!!

My favorite is Iggy Koopa.  For one, we are both incredibly smart, and you see this in my blog every day.  He's the only boss in NSMBWii to have a Chain Chomp.  Also, he's demented.  This guy's the man.  Kind of reminds me of myself...

I mean, I come on this blog, complain about Sega, Burnout, Fast and the Furious, etc.  Then I throw knives at and shoot targets based on said video games.  I then punch a hole in the wall.  In my idle time, I talk to myself often, making mundane conversation about what just happened five minutes ago.  Later, I play Rock Band or Call of Duty and use extreme profanity whenever I miss a note or die in the game.  When the day's over, I lie down in bed and cry myself to sleep listening to Daytona USA 2 music and other "sad" songs like Fleetwood Mac's Gypsy thinking about what has happened to Sega and gaming as we know it...  Plus, when you have songs like this and this on your Sansa Fuze MP3 player (cause I refuse to buy an iPod), you know there's something strange going on upstairs.

Reference 1, Reference 2, Reference 3,& Reference 4

Yes, we will all now get the Iggy Koopa hats, mugs, t-shirts, and "Celeryhead for Secretary of Homeland Security" buttons.  Oh, what do I mean by that?  Well you notice how Princess Peach has been kidnapped like 100,000,000 times already?  What the hell's going on?  This is a VIP for crying out loud, get some Secret Service agents here, some hired guns, something other than the Mario Bros who apparently can't be there for her 24/7 (and even when they are, they hardly do anything, they just sit there and watch her being carried away)!

 

Thankfully, they haven't killed her yet--she's been hanging in there with a will to live.  You also see how none of the Toads or Yoshis carry any guns so Bowser is basically able to take over the country at will.  So clearly, the Mushroom Kingdom has no idea how to defend itself.  Now, what about Mario, you say?  Well...:

1. If it weren't for Mario and the player's resilience an infinite lives/continues, then the Mushroom Kingdom has no chance.

2. It's better to prevent something from happening than to fix it afterwards...that's like saying it's better for us to absorb a terrorist attack than it is to prevent one...what a bunch of baloney.

So bribe Iggy (like a sports coach/player, recruit him with money, more face time, etc.) or SOMEBODY, bring in some tanks, artillery, fancy satellite dishes, battleships, carriers, fighter jets, bombers, SAM missiles, etc.  I mean, who better to bribe than the smartest of the Koopa kids?

Or if you want to go cheap, just slip the ruler of Mushroom Kingdom a copy of this friendly Nintendo product so they can learn about conventional warfare:

------------

I also like to check out what other Mario games are being made and I'm reading about all these onves I've never played, such as Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story...  I mean, I understand Nintendo needs to diversify its games, but why are these all RPG's?  Not that RPG's are bad, but come on.  It's like Shigeru Miyamoto and his crew are sitting in the war room of an underground bunker, with recycled air whooshing and computers buzzing all around, deciding how to destroy Sega among other things...:

GUY: Sir!  All these kids are playing Final Fantasy!  They can't get enough of turn-based combat and deep storylines and Pokemon ain't cutting it!  What do we do now?

MIYAMOTO: Why don't we expand our portfolio by churning out a series of Mario RPG games!  Everyone loves Mario and everyone loves RPGs...it's a win-win for our side!  LET'S MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Let's take a look at the plot for such games...okay, let's try the recent Bowser's Inside Story.  The Toads are swelling up from some disease, this dude Fawful assumes mind control over Bowser who swallows Mario & Luigi whole, then Bowser runs around while Mario and Luigi are in his lower intestine and by then my head hit the table with a resounding thud.

------------

And one last thing because I can't take it anymore--this last pic was apparently made to swoon the fangirls, but it perfectly sums up my relationship with Nintendo.  Kiss my ass, Nintendo.  You know what--scratch that, Sega too.  Sega, you've done nothing but sit on your fat ass since OutRun 2 and even then you didn't do much beforehand besides the Dreamcast!  No wait--every video game in general, EVERY ONE OF YOU, for pissing me off with all this gore, violence, and other dreaded aspects that permeate through our culture!  You ruined my life!

Reference

If you actually played New Super Mario Bros. Wii, you know damn well what this is about.  I think I posted more than enough Iggy fan art before it borders the line of "awkward."  I'm through, goodbye, I wanna get out of here.

...


DISCLAIMER: In light of the 1/8/11 Tuscon shooting during the meeting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, I didn't mean to appear insensitive to the shootings or portray myself as a serial killer in the works.  I don't punch holes in walls...  Please take this post with some sarcasm.