7. Super Mario RPG, dev. ArtePiazza
A confession: I'm lying right now. I have not played a second of the Super Mario RPG remake that came out this fall on the Switch. (In fact, who is say I play video games at all? Maybe I'm a weirdo that likes to pretend I have opinions about digital products in some sick fantasy of consumption.) The reality is that I'm the kind of weirdo that has owned the original 1996 version of Mario RPG since it came out on the SNES Classic seven years ago. And well if the choice is between paying $60 to play a game and not paying $60 to play a game, I'll probably keep my money.
Still, having compared the two versions I can tell you that the remake is the better option. It is the thoroughly modernization you would expect. The new graphics are nice but lack the unique 3D pixels texture of the original, even if they kept Mario's very baby proportions in this new coat of paint. Yoko Shimomura remade all her original tracks so the game sounds better than ever. The best changes are just how much more civilized gaming is in 2023 versus 1996. You can switch out party members now, there's quick saves, there's Limit Breaks, and it no longer has a bizarre economy. The SNES version gives you a max capacity of 29 items and 999 coins. It is a preposterously small bucket to work with, and just removing that bit of stress makes Mario RPG much smoother.
The original, though, will always have a place in gaming history. Mario RPG was one of the first times Nintendo loaned out their biggest star for a spin-off project in a whole other genre. It was the first Mario RPG of any kind, with successors to this game becoming two separate sub-series: Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. The fact this was an RPG meant that Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom had to be better-defined as characters and places. Previously Bowser was just the mean turtle you beat at the end of the game, and the Princess was just a lady you rescued. Now both of them were full characters with speaking parts, some level of interiority, and a place in the world. It is a very silly world, Mario himself is treated like a celebrity - basically every NPC demands he jump for them to prove he is indeed, "the Mario". It is always charming to impress Mushroom Kingdom people with Mario's mad hops.
Finally, Mario RPG is again a great example of Nineties Square pushing the turn-based RPG as far as they could take it. Mario RPG gets really goofy with the dungeons and puzzle concepts. The game is really breezy for a dungeon crawler, most sections do not outstay their welcome. (Aside from the pirate ship and the final dungeon, those are long.) In fact, most of what you do is goof around and have mild slapstick. The dullest parts of the game are rooms with nothing but enemies. The very best section of Mario RPG is Booster Tower, where every room is another comedy section involving this Wario prototype bad guy, Booster, who wants to marry Princess Peach - while not really knowing why, it is just what villains do. It all concludes in a hysterical wedding sequence where you beat up a mutant cake. Between Mario RPG and Live a Live (remade last year) Square had fully pushed RPGs outside their humble origins as D&D campaigns and truly evolved them into limitless story engines.
Sadly Mario RPG was also Square's big attempt at a platformer game and uhhh... stick to your Moogles, guys. There's no sense of friction or momentum, and worse, it's an isometric platformer, so the perspective is never helpful. Luckily, this is Mario game where jumping is an after-thought, not the point.
Mario RPG's story even has some decently impressive set-pieces that are not comedy. I never understood why everybody was so obsessed with getting Geno into Super Smash Bros. - I understand completely now. He's basically Mario Gandalf, an angelic avatar of the higher realms here to set reality back in order. Seeing him inhabit his wooden doll body and then return back to heaven is really moving. It is sad seeing a good band of friends reach the end of their journey, some returning to heaven, some returning to being the villain, some just staying good ol' Mario forever.
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