Super Mario Bros. legacy

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:13

Okay, Mario started his first adventure in Donkey Kong, which most of us little kids didn't even know about back then. There was Donkey Kong jr. (who grew up to be the tie-wearing one we know today) and a third donkey kong game as well when he was getting tired. He gunned for Mario one last time in Mario Kart then gave up the ghost and retired to become Cranky Kong. Then he and Luigi appeared in the arcade game Mario Bros., where their average work days as plumbers cleaning up the pipes full of monsters is shown. Then we have the Super Mario bros. games which they are famous for, and it is revealed that they live in the mushroom kingdom.

Up to Super Mario World (and Super Mario land for game boy), everything went sequentially. Then came Yoshi's island, which is a prequel. It reveals that Mario and Luigi were, in fact, born in the mushroom kingdom. So that stuff about him being sucked down a bathdtub in New York is no longer canon and it was all a bunch of hooey. Things kept getting more complicated with Wario and the 3d games coming in. Now there's a Yoshi's Island 2 for the DS with baby wario and baby Donkey Kong, and partners in time is making all kinds of paradoxes (haven't beaten it yet though).

What I'm really wondering is, do the mario land games come before, after, or during the super mario bros. trilogy in chronology?

As far as I know it goes like this:

Yoshi's Island -> Yoshi's Island DS -> Yoshi's Story

-> Donkey Kong -> Donkey Kong Jr. -> Donkey Kong 3 -> Mario Bros. -> Super Mario Bros -> Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan -> Super Mario Bros. 2 USA -> SMB 3 -> Super Mario Land -> Dr. Mario -> Yoshi's Cookie -> Wario's Woods -> Super Mario World -> Hotel Mario (lolz) -> Super Mario Kart -> Super Mario Land 2 -> Mario and Wario -> Super Mario Land 3 -> Super Mario 64 -> etc.

What a mouthful

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:38

I wonder if Nintendo even bothers to keep track.

Lava89 · Post by **Lava89** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:48

Since when have we expected the Mario games to make sense??

I best explain the logic of the Mario games, like I explain Star Trek: Voyager: After Donkey Kong (aka the real world, non-mushroom kingdom games) Mario stumbled upon the Nexus.

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:02

Or you could just say that Picard messed up the timeline, so Starfleet Temporal fixed it, but the resulting mess-up caused the reality of Star Trek: Enterprise, and These are the Voyages... and Star Trek: Voyager are further along in the Enterprise timeline. But so is Countdown. So from the Enterprise timeline that Starfleet Temporal fixed, there came the Abramsverse, which explains the weird-looking NCC-1701. It all makes sense! There are only three Star Treks running around!

Lava89 · Post by **Lava89** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:13

Haha, well actually I strongly believe that Katherine Pulaski was the one who stumbled upon the Nexus-- which explains the similar name to Janeway and cold personality. Then in the Nexus she assumed her own command, that she always wanted, and starts her half-baked journey through the Delta Quadrant. That also explains the one dimensional characters on the show.

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:18

Come to think of it, all of Voyager and all of Enterprise and any other episodes we don't like could also be really bad holoprograms.
My opinion of holodecks just went up even more notches.

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:58

I forgot to throw Legend of the Seven Stars and the paper mario games into the mix. I thought it was kind of weird that in partners in time there was an alien invasion in the past but nobody remembers it (time travel stories have ways of making no sense due to paradoxes). I mean, Mario games are full of crazy stuff, but aliens is one of the things I never expected to see, and it just doesn't feel right (and they're alien mushrooms, as an added bonus). But come to think of it, Mario RPG: LotSS was about an alien invasion and that felt okay. Super Paper Mario makes mario an inter-dimensional traveller and mario galaxy made him a space traveller, so I guess he's done all those wacky, way-out there things now.

Oh but wait, partners in time wasn't the first game involving time travel! There is also the much less appreciated (and for good reason) Mario's time machine for SNES. He has a time-travelling surfboard!

The Mario teaches typing story must fit into the mix somewhere...

Lava89 · Post by **Lava89** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 3:08

Deltamatic wrote:Come to think of it, all of Voyager and all of Enterprise and any other episodes we don't like could also be really bad holoprograms.
My opinion of holodecks just went up even more notches.

Possibly. Enterprise did end in a hologram.

VikingBoyBilly wrote:
The Mario teaches typing story must fit into the mix somewhere...

And don't forget Mario Party 1 through 20.

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 3:19

Or is Mario just a set of disjointed universes with no continuity and only some elements that happen to repeat, like the Final Fantasy series?

Post by **tulip** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 9:01

But a bit more things seem to repeat in Mario games, like almost the whole cast of characters.

You didn't even mention Super Mario RPG, where is this going chronologically?

Galaxieretter · Post by **Galaxieretter** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 16:00

Deltamatic wrote:Or is Mario just a set of disjointed universes with no continuity and only some elements that happen to repeat, like the Final Fantasy series?

I always thought that the Mario games were more just a character set with games made about them with no relevance to each other. Much the same as with the Walt Disney characters. (Movies and short cartoons, not games in this instance.) I could be mistaken as Viking Boy Billy mentioned, there is a plot? I never got into Mario much at all because of it's randomness. I prefer a more generally straightforward game such as Commander Keen.

Final Fantasy on the other hand... isn't like that at all. On the surface it seems like they have nothing to do with each other. In actuality all the Final Fantasy games take place on the same world, in chronological order, with possibly hundreds of years in between or perhaps only decades. After Final Fantasy 8 though things... change.

Play Final Fantasy 6 and you will know why the world looks COMPLETELY different from game to game. (Events like this might also explain why the amount of established cities are so few. Or it could have just been the limitation of the 16 bit console.) Final Fantasy 4 has a couple of examples of this as well as does Final Fantasy 5. Having portals to nothingness opening everywhere does tend to ruin the landscape. Also once something is changed or removed from the world in Final Fantasy it remains that way. For example, the existence of the crystals and the summons / espers. The existence of the "weapons" coming about when the world has been threatened severely. The general increase in technology after the crystals and the subsequent diminishing of raw magic. Also "Materia" appeared in the old NES Final Fantasy games. Hence the plot for 7.

All of the Final Fantasy games represent times in this fantasy world's existence where the future of all things are in jeopardy. Each crisis in each subsequent game gets worse and worse. Sometimes the badguy actually WINS.

IMA3HDDMNKY · Post by **IMA3HDDMNKY** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 19:26

Lava89 wrote:
Deltamatic wrote:Come to think of it, all of Voyager and all of Enterprise and any other episodes we don't like could also be really bad holoprograms.
My opinion of holodecks just went up even more notches.
Possibly. Enterprise did end in a hologram.

I still don't get the hostility towards Enterprise. I thought it was fairly good. And Scott Bakula is awesome!

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 23:42

People become stark raving mad after watching Enterprise episodes because they're die-hard Trekkies and don't like to see their favorite series' continuity mauled. That's why such a high percentage of people in mental institutions are in full Starfleet uniform.

Lava89 · Post by **Lava89** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 23:58

IMA3HDDMNKY wrote:
I still don't get the hostility towards Enterprise. I thought it was fairly good. And Scott Bakula is awesome!

I don't have hatred towards Enterprise, or even hostility. I believe it was well written, and I liked most all of the crew, except T'Pol, which to me was basically a vulcan version of Seven of Nine. However I thought the premise of the show was flawed-- as I believe most prequels run into problems, just like the new Star Wars films.

To be honest I think the writers for Enterprise just wanted to reboot Star Trek altogether from the beginning but didn't want to upset the fans. So by making an enterprise voyage pre-date Kirk or even Pine, they essentially did that by having room to rewrite the history. I think the proper way to reboot trek is what they did with the new movie, make a new timeline so if you screw things up you won't upset existing canon. Whereas my problem with Enterprise is that it WAS in the main timeline, so you had to accept the Vulcans oppressing the Andorians because it's considered canon.

My other major beefs with the show was the long story-arcs and pre-occupation with time travel and the Xindi. When the show first came on, I was happy for it because Trek has so much history that hasn't been discussed. And it's too bad the show felt side-tracked till the end, and even then, the Federation stuff it did felt rushed.

I also never got into DS9, but I won't deny that Enterprise and DS9 were well written shows,. Whereas I think Voyager was a truly bad show-- bad plots and acting, and the premise had a bunch of problems-- it's like, do they seriously have to strand a crew into a far reach of space to just find some originality?? Especially after how good TNG was.

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 2:12

I prefer the Starfleet Museum's and Star Trek Minutiae's to ST: Enterprise's version of that era.