Creative and Wonderful | Super Mario Bros Wonder (Ep. 135) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
podcast where we do deep dives and analyze all of
our favorite games and some of yours too. My name
is Rick. I am your host, and today, in honor
of March tenth, Mario Day, we're talking all about Super
Mario Wonder. Very excited to dive into this one. As always,

(00:36):
at the top, I must thank the patrons for it
is them that keeps this engine turning. Thank you, thank you,
Thank you to the patrons. If you would like to
be like these fine folks, go into the episode description
and check out the link that goes to www dot
patreon dot com slash pixel Project Radio. As always, I'm

(00:57):
joined by a wonderful guest, and today we've got a
first time on the show. He is the host of
the Nostalgia Arcanum podcast. We've got Doug here. Doug, thanks
for joining me. Man, it's a me.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm ready to go. I'm very excited to talk about
Super Mario Wonder. This is that we'll get into it.
But this game is a treat on just about every.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Level, on just about every level. Yeah, I really do agree.
I'm going to just get that thought out there. At
the very beginning. I completely agree, which is strange. I
saw a lot of criticism for this game online, and
I've said this before, I don't really have a lot
of Mario experience. This is kind of getting into the

(01:39):
next topic here, so I'll just segue us over onto
our Mario histories I don't have. It's not that I
don't have a lot, but it's very spotty. I've played
the nes marios, all three of them, well all four
of them, if we're including the real Super Mario Brothers
two Lost Levels, a little tiny bit of Super Mario World,

(02:02):
and then the Super Mario Land series on game Boy
that trilogy. I've never touched a single new Super Mario
Brothers game, none of them for DS three DS we U,
none of them, and a lot of the criticism that
I've seen kind of hinges on that knowledge. So in
that way, I'm approaching this fresh completely separated from any

(02:25):
biases from that general area, which in some ways I
think can be good. In some ways, maybe little disadvantageous.
We'll see. But what about you. I know you will
talk about nostalgia arcaneum towards the very end, but part
of your show is looking back into the past at
the things that we've all enjoyed from our childhoods. And

(02:48):
for you, that's a lot of the older Mario games.
But I'm curious, do you have a lot of experience
with the other two D Marios, any of the three
D Marios, anything of that sort.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
So, yeah, I was born in nineteen eighty, so my
Mario experience goes all the way back to Donkey Kong.
You know, you know his first appearance. I think that
was his first. So I have very strong memories of
when the original Super Mario Brothers came out, playing that
a bunch, and then the hype and the and for
American Super Mario Brothers two, and the mega hype that

(03:23):
surrounded Super Mario three. And I still think Super Mario World,
the first one for the SNS is probably edges three
out as the best two D Mario. For me, I
do have some experience with modern two D Mario, but
not nearly that much. I didn't play the Game Boy ones.
I didn't play a lot of those three D three

(03:44):
DS ones. There was one that I think they poured
it over to the Wii that I did play, if
it's the one I'm thinking of. And then there's that
new one, the one with the cat Mario that's like
mostly two D sort of like they you kind of
move around in three D space a little, but it's
not the same way you do. And say sixty four
and I did play the major three D releases, So
I played sixty four, played Sunshine, collected all forced myself

(04:09):
to collect all of the collectibles in that. I did
Super Mario Galaxy one and two and completed those as
well as Odyssey, So I've kind of hit most of
the mainline Mario stuff. So to give you a sense
of like where my Mario history lies.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Just out of curiosity, what is your favorite? Is it? World?

Speaker 2 (04:31):
World would be my favorite two D Mario game. I
think I feel pretty confident in saying that. As far
as favorite three D one goes, probably probably one of
the Galaxy games. I have a clearer memory of Galaxy one.
I remember loving Galaxy two, but you know, I've not
played it recently, so I don't remember how much better is.
But those I think are the best three D marios

(04:53):
for me. This the the joy of, you know, warping
three D space into these little asteroids, completely changing the
perspective on what a three d Mario can do. So
I have a lot of funness for those, But all
of it goes into what I think makes Mario a
special franchise and why it is kind of the ambassador

(05:13):
for video games despite having no real meaningful story in
four decades of Mario. Is the ingenuity that you associate
with Mario, where it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's gonna
he has a fairly like set set of verbs that
he does in a game, Right, We're gonna find ways
to keep reinterpolating that over and over, giving him inventive

(05:38):
things to do, different gimmicks per level, ways to implement
those gimmicks and power ups that like no other franchise
I think can touch. And which is why Super Mario
Wonder works as well as it does. It's because it
taps right into that core philosophy that really starts with
Super Mario Brothers three.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
That's well said. I agree with a lot of that.
This This game to me, felt a lot like a
celebration of the ideal of Mario and the philosophy behind
these games. Less less so, it felt less like a
platforming challenge. And I've seen that criticism thrown at it

(06:19):
that it's easy, that it doesn't feel as uh what's
the word, that it doesn't feel as challenging compared to
like Super Mario Brothers three or Super Mario World. And
I totally see that. I do agree a lot of
this wasn't mechanically difficult, but that never seemed like the
point to me as I was going through top to bottom.

(06:41):
It seemed like a way of showcasing all of the
creativity that goes into designing the Mario experience. Uh, And
the mechanical challenge is only a small part of that truly.
In you know, for better or for worse, in some
ways that has not that has become less of an important,
less front seat sort of identity piece for it again,

(07:05):
for better or for worse. Well, we'll kind of parse
that out because I think upfront, this is going to
be a shorter episode because it's Mario. But also I
think it would be interesting to compare this to some
of the games in the past because of how the
design philosophy has changed, and because so many of the
Mario oldheads as they're known, everybody knows them that way

(07:26):
worked on this and contributed to this that was a
core philosophy of designing this game was returning to that
sense of exploration that was present in the older ones,
finding secrets, exploring the levels to find that warp whistle,
where to find that secret warp pipe that'll let you
skip over a couple of worlds that was at the
core of this And did they achieve it that specifically?

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (07:50):
I mean, we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, it's not perfect. It's not my favorite two D
Mario game. I think, though, if you gave me one
of these every couple of year, I'd be very happy.
You talked about difficulty, and I think the question is
difficult to whom because you know, I've been doing this,
playing these games for forty years.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Right.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes, to me, most of Super Mario Wonder was not
a mechanical challenge. I had no difficulty completing this game.
There are a handful of levels that have some tricky
stuff in it, but it's less than five percent of
the game. Most of it is not about you know,
how many times it's going to take you to get
past the challenge. It's you know, there's some but like,

(08:35):
this isn't Celeste, right, It's not you know, this is
not mesa core platforming But you know, I try to
put myself in the headspace of like, well, what was it.
You know, I can beat Super Mario Brothers three now
without too much trouble. It was more of a challenge
when I was I think ten or nine or ten
when that came out. And so it's a little hard

(08:56):
to look at this Mario and gaming like it's too easy,
Like well for you full grown adult. Yes, if I
handed this off to my kids, who you know, who
would be the prime age for this, they would find
it fairly challenging. So I don't think that's exactly a
fair criticism to level against it that, like, I'm sorry,
it's not hard enough for you guy who can beat

(09:17):
Elden Ring with a guitar. But you know, that's just
not how it's meant to be, you know. I think
the pleasure in Mario, it doesn't come from the challenge.
The pleasure in Mario comes from the sense of wonder, right,
the sense of like, oh man, you just surprised me
with something fun and cool. This is you know, this
is much towards the candy side of gaming than it

(09:40):
is towards the eat your vegetable side.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
I think that's an interesting way of putting it. It's
analogy that It's an analogy that I've used before myself.
I think it comes down to, by the way too,
I am, I'm not particularly good two D platformers like
I just played. Actually, I had played Super Mario three,

(10:06):
the final NES installment for this episode, specifically before playing
Super Mario Wonder, just to see that lineage. I wanted
to play World as well. But I just you know,
time one, I loved Super Mario Brothers three. It is
really terrific. It's hard, you know, talking to folks like

(10:27):
you and some of the other folks around in our
shared spaces that have lived with it for a long time,
they're like, oh, you know, it's it's not so bad.
I struggled of a fair amount. I mean never to
the point of a game over, because you get level
you get one ups like crazy in those games, so
you're expected to die to learn the road map. That's

(10:48):
just part of it. It's basically dark souls is what
I'm getting at here.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
But yeah, yeah, in a way, yeah, I was gonna say,
what Super Mario Brothers three does is that, like you said,
it's constantly throwing free live you and power ups all
the time. So what it's telling you is like, yeah, yeah, whatever, die,
don't worry about it, dude, you're gonna try again and again,
and we're gonna make it. We're gonna give you all
of these different tools you can try to make it
easy for yourself. Here's a power up that lets you

(11:13):
basically fly over an entire level if you're having trouble
with it. So it's very friendly in that way.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
You know what's funny is I, for some reason, I
didn't know that you could use those like before the
levels start until World six. Before that, I was man, Yeah,
I was just raw dogging it the whole time. But anyway,
we're not talking about Super Mario Brothers three. Let's before
we dive in any further, let's read some community forum responses.
This one comes from Matt's Storm. Matt's Storm again. Here's

(11:44):
what Matt says, and I've paired some of these down
lightly just for length. I'm a longtime Mario fan. I
was really excited for Wonder since I had felt that
the new Super Mario games, while fun, had gotten kind
of stale. I'm sad to report, though, that I was
pretty disappointed by this game. It's not a bad game.
I just didn't feel the Wonder. It felt pretty average

(12:06):
to me. It's undeniably gorgeous to look at, especially on
the switch olt, and the music is great, but I
only got about three worlds in before dropping off. I'll
probably go back and finish it at some point, but
I'm bummed that I didn't seem to see in it
what everyone else has. Now just to read one that
goes right off of the back of that Let's read nomad.

(12:26):
Nomad says, as someone who missed out on a lot
of the Mario games growing up, I was quickly taken
with Wonder when I saw the announcement for it. The
fun visuals and the unique level design really spoke to me,
and I found myself craving a whimsical adventure. I found
myself quite relaxed anytime I played. The care free nature
of it all was soothing, and I really enjoyed the

(12:46):
Wonderflower mechanics that turned each level into something different. That's
what drove me the desire to see what crazy new
twist was going to be thrown at the player next.
At the end of the day, I felt like Mario
Wonder wasn't the best platforming experience I've ever had, but
it's a journey I was glad to go on. So
we've got two responses back to back that sort of
saw the game very differently. And this is what I've

(13:07):
been seeing online too, as I've been looking up just
different Reddit threads. This game has been out for about
a year now, year and change, and we've seen a
lot of positive and negatives about it. I tend to
side a little more with Nomad. It's a shame that
Matt jumped off three worlds in for my money, two
of my favorite worlds in this were World two and

(13:29):
World six, which we'll get to when we actually talk
about it, but World six in particular and five, two, five,
and six were I thought very very strong.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I think four, five, and six are the strongest levels. Yeah,
so Matt, Matt jumped off just before it got real good.
But I understand the point he's making, and I for me,
what it is is, I see where this game misses
the mark on something that world does very very well.
So I'm glad you got a chance to play three
before we did this. I kind of wish you'd got

(13:59):
a chance to see little more Super Mario World before
because when you go through Super Mario World and you
are you find like secret exits to levels that unlocks
pathways to more levels, like you know, all sorts of
secret cool ways to go to. Basically, your reward is
more game and here when you do that, your reward

(14:22):
is one more seed to but you're never really going
to be like short wonder seeds. So it does unlock
things sometimes, but not nearly to the degree it does
in Super Mario World. And I think that is a
missed opportunity that, like you, you could have I mean,
the templates right there, you already did it. They could

(14:43):
have just done it again instead of just sort of like,
you know, okay, well here you found that there was
a secret wonder seed in this level, So good for you.
I hope you enjoyed that. And it's still fun. It's
still fun to do that. But also you might have
to go back and play the level again to get
one of the ones you didn't get, and then there's
not much to do with that seed once you have it.
So I do see that feeling of like, oh so

(15:05):
close but not quite on that. However, the individual levels,
like when you're in the moment of like experiencing basically
you know, a trippy hallucination of whatever's happening. There's so
whimsical and delightful that you just can't be helped. It
be kind of like tickled by the weird shit that's happening.
It's a little like the here a famous level from

(15:28):
Super Mario Brothers three, where like this angry sun comes
and attacks you. Right, it's Super Mario Wonder basically is
like what if every level had something like that in it?
Every level had a creative, weird gimmick. And I don't
think any of the weird gimmicks in this game. I
could be wrong, but I don't think any of them
are reused more than once. So if you see a
cool gimmick, you might see it one more time and

(15:50):
then never again. For an entire game, that's a lot
of weird, creative gimmicks they have to come up with.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Do you, uh, Doug, do you by chance know the
YouTuber video game?

Speaker 2 (16:00):
I've heard the name, but only in connection with the animal.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Well, yeah, he's he's been around since the twenty tens,
like the early twenty tens. A lot of people see
him like, don't take him seriously as a critic, partly
because you know, he's that's not his persona. He's like
a funny guy, right, But also, I mean there was
some drama around him with critics. Anyway, I think he

(16:26):
really knows what he's talking about when it comes to
a lot of his criticism, especially with Mario, and something
that he had said when he was talking about Super
Mario Wonder is he made the distinction between the plot
and the story of a Mario game. And when he
said that, I was like, I'm very intrigued, Please tell
me more, because the plot of this game is very simple.
Bowser comes in as he is wont to do to

(16:48):
shit up the place. He turns into a floating, flying
castle sort of thing with the power of a wonder seed,
which becomes our mcguffins throughout the whole game, and just
to kind of be evil. And that's pretty much it.
Like like he doesn't kidnap Peach or anything, but it's
sort of there's not a lot of there's nothing really

(17:09):
else to say about the plot, but that's just the plot.
And Donkey goes on to say the story is the
trajectory from level to level, the start of the level
to the end of the level. The first level to
the final level world to world. That's the story and
what makes Mario wonder. So I think effective is that story.

(17:29):
Like you were alluding to, Doug, it never gets stale.
There is just it's an endless fount of creativity. There's
always something that they're trying, even if they only try
it for a level. They're just saying, let me, let
me just give this a try, and that's you know,
we'll get into the development stuff here in a second,
but that was one of their development philosophies. They didn't

(17:51):
have a deadline. They just straight upset, straight up said
no deadline, which in any other team would cause a
lot of problems, and it was because they wanted to
try so much stuff. I think the number that I
saw thrown around was over two thousand ideas were floated,
which you know, what does that actually mean? Who knows,
but that's a lot of potential ideas. A lot of

(18:13):
it was scrapped too, obviously, but Tezuka stated that he
wanted to prevent people from saying we won't make that deadline,
so we just didn't have one, and it shows. I mean,
the story, if we're talking level to level, world to
world is so exciting and fresh. Yes, the mechanical challenge
is in anywhere really near something like Marie Brothers three

(18:36):
or World Good goodness knows, it's nothing like Lost Levels,
because this game is actually good. But it's very exciting,
you know. And I could see maybe somebody that's really
cynical saying something to the effect of, you know, it's
to keep the children's attention. But I don't buy that
because I never felt pandered to. I felt pandered to

(18:57):
because of the flowers. I think that's like the biggest
miss misstep of this game are the talking flowers. We'll
talk more about them later, but in terms of like
the actual level and the story they're presenting to me,
from start to finish, I thought it was really delightful.
This is I mean, this to me is what Nintendo
does best. I thought it was really terrific.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah, there was a designed philosophy on Super Mario Brothers
three that was basically like, you know, as they were
designing these levels, someone would go, well, is it fun?
Wouldn't it be more fun if we did something like this?
And it was kind of you know, as you said,
it's the same team basically, right, all the old heads.
They're bringing back that philosophy and it's like it's that

(19:40):
on steroids again. Like I said, it's every time they're like,
I don't know, what if there was some sort of
like a triceratops stampede and you have to ride it? Okay,
you know why not? You know, wouldn't that be more
fun than just running over a bunch of pits and
spikes and enemies? Hell yead is right? They and they
do that over and over and over again throughout this

(20:00):
entire game. And I think that's that's what I'm saying
when you say like, oh, well, it's going to hold
a kid's attention because it's what candy colored and cartoonish,
like that's nothing to do with it. Like I'm just
so like delighted by the inventiveness that it's like, oh,
you you know, every time you're gonna find one of
those flowers, it's like, what's it going to be this time?

(20:21):
What weird thing came out of your imagination and nobody
said no to it? Right? That I think is he said,
that's the moment to moment story of Mario I can
think of, Like, I mean, Alice in Wonderland is a classic.
It has no story. Alice wanders from interesting weird thing
to interesting weird thing, and that's the story of Alice

(20:43):
in Wonderland. Like it's just a series of encounters with
the Mad Hatter and Tweedledum and Tweedlede and that's basically
what this is. It's just, you know, just replace all
of these, you know, Lewis Carroll characters with like, I
don't know, the lights go out and Mario is three
times his natural height squishing himself in the shadows, because

(21:04):
why not. It's weird fun, right.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
It's a very it's a very Japanese approach to storytelling.
And you know, disclaimer, obviously I'm not Japanese and I
don't claim to know the culture. I could speak the
language well enough to get myself into trouble. But you know,
whenever I watched The Ring, the original Japanese version a
while ago, terrific, terrific, terrific horror movie, and when I

(21:27):
was reading just some stuff online about it because it
was so different from what we got here, I was
reading some folks that were saying, like, you know, with
Japanese horror, it's not really about the story, you know,
the story of Ghostface or the story of Michael Myers.
It's not really about that. It's about the individual scenes
and what kind of impact those scenes can have on you,

(21:48):
and the moments between them, linking them together. It's I
don't want to say it's secondary, but it's not the focus.
And we can see that design philosophy yes here, but
also it's it's been coming up within the Mario games,
I think on and off throughout the history.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
M hmmm.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Speaking of creativity, We've got two more responses to read,
and they're both really short. This first one's from Ryan
Ryan from the List of podcast. Here's what he has
to say. It's no wonder that a two D Mario
title just sings. The unique ways Wonderflowers transform Mario's surroundings
make this game a joy to play by creating a
constant stream of delight smile work, delightful, smile worthy moments.

(22:51):
Super Mario Wonder is truly wonderful and it is well
worth your time.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
I can promise that we're not going to make as
many of those puns as Ryan s Ryan.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Is Keaton shares, I promise nothing.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, that's true. You get a pass, You get a pass.
Keaton Uh says much of the same. Keaton says, the
creativity it must have taken to come up with all
of those wonderflower transformations must have been wild. I was
blessed to play this both with the nine year old
nephew and some forty year old friends. The only difference
is the nine year old kept killing me on accident,
while my friends did it on purpose. I totally agree

(23:25):
this is it is not so overly saccherin that it's
just for kids like this is. This is for anybody.
But I want to I want to go back to
the creativity thing. I think it was, for lack of
a better term, Sure there are better terms, but I
just want to use this one. It was really ballsy
of them to use one of their best moments of

(23:46):
creativity right at the front, because I think it's world.
It's not even in a world. It's like in the
introductory levels. The second level is where you get the
now very famous Kiranha plants on parade. You touch the
one seed and the piranha plants come out and start
singing along to the soundtrack, and there's more that goes

(24:15):
on to the level turns into a sort of auto
side scroll. The environment interacts with the music. This game
has a lot of rhythm game DNA in it, which
is very cool to me. But the environment interacts. There
are multiple it's a whole musical theater production, basically in
a Mario level, and that was level two. They were

(24:38):
so confident in what they had coming up that they
put their best foot well maybe not their best foot,
but they put a very, very competent foot forward. That
astounded me. I was smiling ear to ear throughout the
whole first hour of this game. I couldn't believe that
they were leading off with this. And sure there are

(24:58):
some levels in world that like, yeah, I wasn't as
big on, but you know, as a whole, I mean,
this was really something special. I agree with Keaton in
particular the wonderflower transformations, which we'll get into it here
in a little bit. They are really stupendous. Some of
them were like I was just laughing, like I was

(25:22):
twelve on a Saturday morning. Again, that's not a feeling
that you can often replicate, but it happened here.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
I agree with that one thousand percent. And putting there's
the confidence in putting that Piranha plant musical in the
second level, which you know, as you said, it sets
a tone, but also it sets an expectation. We were like, man,
what else have they got up their sleeve if this
is only the second level and they don't disappoint for
the most part, for the rest of the game, they
continue to surprise you with stuff. And then there's another

(25:50):
bit of restraint, which is we're not getting a Piranha
plant musical in every world. There's only one other time
they do it, and I think it's in one of
those like secret hard to reach levels up in the sky.
If I could be wrong about them, but I think
that's where they put it. So like, the confidence to
do it and then the restraint not to overdo it
is really impressive.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. But that's that's part of
the treasure that they were able to harness from having
no deadline and just have both new staff and old
just throw ideas out and see what's stuck and see
what was interesting and see what could be implemented upon.
That's a big reason so much of this works so well.

(26:32):
And speaking of that, let's talk development for a second.
As always, you can find the full credits on the
wiki The IMDb, or you could just play the game
and experience the wonderful credits sequence, but develop and published
by Nintendo, No surprise there, directed by Shiromuri, who was

(26:54):
a programmer with Nintendo since the late nineties. First full
directing credit was on the New Super Mario Bros. You
Deluxe Bit of a Mouthful, produced by Takashi Tezuka, as
well as Shin as well as Shinya Takahashi and Shintaro Furukawa.
Art style art direction Masunovu Sato, a couple composer credits here,

(27:17):
composers Shiho Fuji, Sayako Doe and Schisaki Shimazu, and of
course the sound direction by none other than Koji Kondo
or as my auto correct like to do it, Koji London,
which is what my notes say. I got the impression
by reading that Fuji that she was the lead composer here.

(27:38):
If that's incorrect, I apologize. But Fuji has some really
impressive credits on all of the s Platoon games on
we Fit and most, if not all, of the new
Super Mario Bros. Games as well as Odyssey, which to me,
those those are all very very different. This is a
very diverse composer.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, I assume Cogi Condo's credit may only be for
the you know, reinterpretations of the classic Mario music that
he did back in the day. Sure, I'm not aware
of him composing anything new for this. Maybe he did,
I don't know. I think the music serves its purpose here.
It's very Mario e right, it's you know again, whimsical, colorful.
I kind of miss the days honestly, of like the

(28:22):
early Mario stuff because the technical limitations allowed for such
short loops and such. You know, even on the SNS
where it was kind of like because of that limitation
is like, well it better be a friggin' earworm of
the highest degree. And you know it was. All that
stuff is still great. I mean, I like the music

(28:43):
in Wonder, but I do wish it had been a
little more like I walked out of it humming a
few more of the tunes, like in my head, it
was a little more wallpapery for me, just kind of
like it's there, it's doing its job. But yeah, I
to me, it's the Wonderman of this is less the music.
The aesthetics are good, but it's really in the gameplay

(29:05):
in those again, those inventive transformations where it shines.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah, I mostly agree. We've got a section on sound
and music coming up here in a sec. A few
more stats to get through. This was announced at a
direct in June of twenty twenty three, and it was
released that October. That's like the sweet spot for me.
Announced the game just a couple of months before it
comes out. That's perfect, That is perfect Chef's kiss. This

(29:32):
got leaked online around a week before it got released
full game. We're talking ROMs like you could play this
full game online and this became a big talking point
in Nintendo's recent major crackdown on emulation litigation, which is
still a very contentious topic. My stance has always been
that I don't see a problem with it at all.

(29:53):
I think a lot of what Nintendo is I I'll
say this, I think a lot of what Nintendo is
doing is deleteri to the overall gaming landscape. And that's
a real bummer that a lot of what's happening is
from the snowball effect of Nintendo. They're vicious with their lawyers,
they're i mean, they're just like Disney in that respect.
But it is what it is. This did get leaked.

(30:15):
That was a big part of it. As we said,
a goal of this was to rekindle the discovery of
secrets in the Super Mario Bros. Franchise because there was
a sentiment that the new Super Mario Brothers games were
getting a bit stale. I can't speak to this, obviously.
It sounds like you can't either, Doug, But this is
a very popular sentiment that goes around. What I can

(30:38):
say is that the little that I have seen, and
I think I might have played like one level of
the new Super Mario Bros. Like that's it. What I've
seen is it gives me the same feeling as I
get when I look at like corporate art you know,
like the Google Doodle. Not the Google Doodles because those
are like real artists, but like I wish there's that
corporate design where the people are like big and chunky,

(31:00):
with like no facial features and palette colors. Do you
know what I'm talking about. I get that kind of
feel when I look at the new Super Mario Bros. Games.
It's very polished and sheen, but it's got like no
personality to it. The music I feel the same way.
Oh my god, I hate that sound patch with the bupah.
It just it sounds so soulless to me. But that's

(31:21):
kind of what I get when I look at New
Super Mario Brothers. I haven't played it, that's just my impression.
But they wanted to change that up. Whether they were
listening to the fans or felt that themselves, who's to say.
But I think it's good that they did.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
It's a copy of a copy of a copy.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
I think what you're feeling, because I mean, in some
ways it is right. Again, this is a formula that
has existed since the eighties, and so you do need
to do something with it to revitalize it. So just
simply having Mario and a set of different power up
suits that he wears to get through levels designed specifically

(31:58):
for a Mario what has those powers, by itself, it's
not gonna be bad. It's always still going to be
like a B plus right grading on the curve. I
bet those games are still pretty fun, but they are
going to feel, you know, especially with the lack of
a story that Mario has, it's gonna feel a little
bit like, well, you know, this is I'm just jumping

(32:19):
through an obstacle. Course, again, it doesn't move you anyway,
and that's why I think Wonder does such a good
job of Again, you got to feel surprised around every corner,
and that's what this does.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, yeah, I like that analogy to a copy of
a copy. It just affects simile of to effects similarly
each and every iteration. I have heard three D World
and Bowser's Theory especially are very good. I've got to
downloaded on my switch. I just you know, haven't played it.
I still got to play Super Mario World. What am
I doing trying to play three D World? You know?

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Three D World and World do not just because they
share that name. They're not connected. Three D World is
a little more like the new Super Mario Brothers stuff,
as I recall, and I liked it enough. Bowser's Fury
is better. It's more inventive in terms of changing up
the format. It's a very good three D Mario game,
and it's a nice short length. It's kind of a snack.

(33:14):
So yeah, I like that one a bunch. So they're
they're they're good, like I mean, that's the thing about Mario,
Like there's a certain level of like polishing quality that
even in like the weaker Mario games, they're still going
to be pretty solid entertaining experiences. But Wonder is kind
of one of the first ones in a long time
since probably Bowser's Fury, to have to make you kind

(33:35):
of feel like, oh, okay, this feels like a proper
new Mario game as opposed to, hey, we're just marking
time by releasing yet another one of these.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Totally, totally, And all I meant, by the way, by
that World comment is just that, you know, Super Mario
World is a titan, right, not just one of the
best Mario games, but widely considered one of the best
SNS games, if not one of the best games of
all time. All I meant was like, you know, I'm trying.
I haven't listened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and I'm over

(34:05):
here trying to learn Glazanov saxophone concerto. Right, that's something
that everybody can relate to, right, like niche classical music pieces.
I thought, so, okay, perfect, we've kind of brushed up
against musicals. Yeah, of visuals, So let's talk about the
visual presentation here. This is a return to squat stout,

(34:25):
little fat Mario, and I couldn't be happier. I love short, little, tiny,
fat Mario, all of the characters here, which, by the way,
I guess we should mention you get to choose your
character here. You have a plethora of characters to play as.
The main ones are Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, two Toads,
Red and or not Red excuse me, Yellow and Blue,

(34:47):
as well as Todett. You can also play this game's
like sort of easy mode as a couple of different
colors of Yoshi and a nabbot. Is that what they're called.
I've never played those games. A nabbit Those characters won't
transform or get hurt, so it's like an easy mode,
but everybody else plays as normal. You could freely swap

(35:08):
between all of these during the overworld before you go
right into a level, which I thought was very cool.
And the visuals for all of these when they're in
their little form, their tiny form before they eat a mushroom,
they're all short and squat and chubby, and I love it.
I think that is such a good design for the

(35:28):
Mario games. You know, when Mario, I'm not that Odyssey
and Galaxy and you know, Smash doesn't look good. It does,
but I just want my Mario to be a little guy.
You know, Bring back fat Pikachu, Bring back fat Mario.
Just give me, make make my characters little tubby guys.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
You know. Yeah, the character designs are great, you know,
considering that, as you said, these are characters we're all
familiar with at this point, right, they have a set
design just like say, you know, like Mickey Mouse or whatever.
But he you know, there's a way they're supposed to look.
But the world around them is very striking. They've done
a great job with like this feeling of like you know,

(36:07):
you get this in the first few levels. Anywhere there's
like kind of grass or like a kind of a
carpet of like clovers over hills and things, they kind
of shimmer as like the wind blows through them, and
it makes everything kind of pop visually and feel alive
in a way that looks great while still not being

(36:28):
a distraction, which is you know, that's tricky to pull off,
to have something that they want you to notice and
be beautiful without it getting in the way of you
like precisely jumping over a gap or you know, landing
on an enemy.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
There are so many little touches like that throughout this
whole game, in the environment and in the characters. It's
almost like, where the hell do we start talking about this?
We could we could probably talk about this alone for
the next hour. The character animations. I don't know about you,
but the character animations are what made me smile the
most and the most consistently. I don't know if there's

(37:01):
a word for this, Doug, maybe you do, but there are,
especially in newer games, or I mean especially in like
the PS two PS three era, you could always kind
of tell when animators would take shortcuts. And I don't
mean that derogatorily. I just mean like it would take
way too long and too much manpower to fully animate everything.

(37:23):
So let's just copy and paste this animation here, let's
use camera tricks, let's, you know, do whatever, just so
we could be pragmatic about it, not kill ourselves, but
also get this game out. And you can always kind
of tell, you know, just like in old cartoons when
you can tell something in the background is going to
be interact with by a cartoon character because it's like
it's in the foreground, it pops a little more. It's

(37:44):
not a background sort of palette. It's not the case here,
like every little thing is animated. Every little animation looks
exactly the same as every other little animation. When you
go into the pipe the pipes, character's hat, Mario and
Luigi's hat will kind of float off and they reach
out of the pipe to grab it and then they

(38:05):
go through. If you're in the elephant mode, which we
haven't talked about just yet, and you go down a pipe,
you kind of get stuck because elephants are big, they're fat,
and then you squeeze and shinny down and then you
go through. Even down to when you're ducking, Mario and
Luigi will like hold their hat below their eyes and

(38:25):
kind of move back and forth like that. Every little
detail here is just so perfectly placed. It was really delightful.
And that's just the characters too. I mean, there are
so many instances with the backgrounds and the foregrounds, the grass,
the sand, the enemies even down to like the koopas

(38:47):
and the goombas. If they're coming towards you and they
see you and they're like getting closer, their facial expressions change.
Little touches like that just make this stand from It
makes it go from like a grate to a really
eight you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, I mean it's a matter of like you said,
they didn't have a deadline, and they probably didn't have
too much in the way of a budget. We just
told you, you know, you're you're doing the next big
Mario game. Take your time, do what you want, man,
We'll stand behind you one hundred and So sometimes that's bad.
Sometimes we're a creative team. You know, when you don't
have limitations like that, you get bloated nonsense where like

(39:24):
nobody's saying no or you know. Sometimes you know, it's
it's often like the team that's very, very limited, you
watch them come up with amazing stuff to surmount those limitations.
That's usually the case. But here though, it works because
what that affords this team is the luxury to go like,
you know, we have the time, we don't have to
get put this much flourish into an animation, but we can.

(39:48):
So let's do it right. This is the this is
the kid in a candy store approach, and so yeah,
that that is evident in every like image of this
game that they're like, well, we could just make the
coople walk at you, but as he said, we could
also add like he cartoonishly gets a little you know,

(40:08):
frightened when he sees you getting close, or whatever it
happens to be. It's one more way in which the
core philosophy comes through, which is what if we delighted
and surprised you at every turn? Right, the game feels
very much alive in that. It's like anticipating that in
a way that like you probably wouldn't have noticed if

(40:29):
those little things weren't there, but because they are there,
you appreciated that much more. It's like, oh, look at
the craftsmanship on display. You spent the time and attention
to put these little things in there, and cumulatively, because
there's so many of them, they raised the entire game
a letter grade.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
You would either not notice them, or you would notice them,
but not you wouldn't be able to put your finger
on it, like when you know, like when a song
is missing something that's deep in the mix, like a
bass or something. I don't know, you could tell something's gone,
but you just can't put your finger on it. I
think it's I think it's the same here. I think
you're exactly right about that. You know, you you would
you saying that that occasionally that sort of abundance philosophy,

(41:13):
that let's do no deadlines, let's throw as many things
at this as we can to see what sticks. That
can cause bloat. I have to say a thought that
I had is that, you know, everything, everything at this point,
especially in game development, does come down to money in
some aspect, right like this is It would be pollyannaish

(41:36):
and naive to say that profits weren't a consideration here.
Of course they are. But I do feel like the
Mario team, especially the folks developing Mario, are probably and
I hesitate to speak to claratively here, like don't don't
quote me on this, but probably like some of the
best balance I've ever seen in a team when it

(41:56):
comes to like design for profit and design just for themselves.
It's like it's, yeah, they're considering the profits, but they also,
as you said, are those kids in the candy store,
They're doing it for the love of the game and
the love of the art form. And it's like, well,
if we don't have a deadline, let's just do whatever
we can. Let's let's make the game we would want
to play. You know again, profits, Yeah, absolutely, Like that's

(42:19):
it's Nintendo. They're one of the biggest corporations on the planet.
Of course they're thinking of profits. But at the same time, yeah,
this team, it's I feel bad. There's probably a genre
of listener that's gonna listen to this episode and think like, well,
this is just you know, them sugar talking this whole game.
I'm out of here. I want criticism, And it's like,

(42:40):
if that's you, I'm really sorry to say, but yeah,
this isn't the episode for you. This is gonna be
a lot of like talking up this game and just
about all of the amazing times we've had with it.
It's really great.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
I have criticisms of it. It's not perfect, sure, but
you know that's fine. But you know what you're talking about.
I see that with like of the best film directors too,
where like, you know, like some of the best Spielberg
stuff has this right where there's like clearly stuff in
this movie where like Steven Spielberg just thought to himself,
you know'll be really funny, or like we would really

(43:13):
mess with the audience what if we did this, or
like think of a director like Joe Dante who did
like Gremlins and Inner Space and like some of these
really weird films where you go like, this shouldn't work,
it's bonkers, but it's in the film because they thought
it was weird and funny. And my feeling on stuff
like that is like, maybe that stuff doesn't work nine
times out of ten, I don't care. Give me that

(43:35):
tenth thing. I'll take the nine failures to get that
tenth weird thing. And that's what you see here. Like
it's again, it's a creative team, you know, indulging their
creative juices with the like the luxury of being able
to do that with you know, like you said, virtually
unlimited time and resources. Like I said, they threw out

(43:56):
two thousand ideas, you know, for for a level of design, right,
I'm sure that's true of the art and everything else.
They're they're picking the best stuff. So you know, we'll
talk about some of the things in the game that
I don't think came together as perfectly as they could.
But this, but this philosophy is like what gets it
as far as it gets like that. You know, so

(44:16):
few games get to do this level of just you know, again,
joyful expression that that you see on display.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Here, and some of those ideas they threw out weren't
home runs, and they did fail. You know, not everything
was that you know tenth thing. Most notably, one thing
that I saw they wanted to include at one point
was a sort of like live commentary on the game
play that you were doing, like a sports style commentary,

(44:45):
which oh god, no, yeah, as somebody on the outside,
like I don't even know. They would have to record
so many lines just for the because you know, if
if this team were to do that, they wouldn't just
half asset and I can imagine that that would just
take so much time and programming and voice recording. That's
how we got those flowers, which I mean, I guess

(45:06):
we could talk about them in visuals. I don't know
where else we would put them other than like story talk.
But this game has a lot of these little flower dudes.
They don't look that different from the flower power power up,
but they are sentient, they speak. They're kind of like
Nintendo's Greek chorus, always giving little pithy quips and little

(45:30):
jokes or words of encouragement to the player when you
pass them. I'll be honest, there's way too many of them,
Like I think they're there for the kids, right. I
think this is most definitely a kid decision that kind
of grew out of that sports commentary thing. I don't know.
I've heard them referred to as embarrassing. I wouldn't go

(45:50):
that far, but there's just there's way too many of
them for me, and they've always got something to say.
They're always getting the last word in every scene.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
And.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
It's it was just a little too much. Like after
after the Third World, I think I was like, I'm
really done with you guys. I don't want to hear
it anymore.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, there some of them are funny. Some of them
are legitimately very funny. There's like one, I think where
you're like in a you know, one of the Wonder sequences,
and then the Wonder sequence ends and you're like falling
and he's like falling alongside you just like goes, oh God,
you know, screaming his head off. Like there's funny moments
with them, but there's so many of them, and there's

(46:32):
just they just don't have enough stuff to say. Some
of them are literally just like wait to go, Mario,
and like I've heard that thirty times now, you know,
it's it's not adding anything. So I wouldn't call him embarrassing.
I just think they needed to show more restraint as
to when to use them. You know, if they were honestly,
if the writing was better on all of them, then
we wouldn't be having this conversation, you know. I think, yeah,

(46:55):
fewer of them used better and they would have been fine. Yeah,
certainly we don't need the John Adam commentary for the game.
That would have been horrible.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Who knew John Madden would come up in this episode?

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Hell? I mean, you know, he's running over a pit
of spikes and he jumps on a turtle and boom,
like that's that's what it would sound like for an
entire game. Would be horrendous.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Those little flowers will also give you clues if you
missed something like a wonder seed. Wonder seeds, I think
we got to save till we talk about the game
gameplay itself. But if you miss something, if you miss
a hidden block, a hidden area, a wonder seed, they'll
always sort of say the same thing like are you
sure you're not missing something or something to that effect,
Or if there's like an area that seems inaccessible, they

(47:38):
might say something like, I wonder how you get there.
They're always giving you a little nudge if you missed something,
or my personal least favorite, if you're doing like a
challenge level. They've got these badge challenges that we'll talk
about too. Sometimes if you mess up once or twice,
they'll say, just breathe, just breathe, And I was like, brother,

(47:59):
that's having opposite effect. You got to stop that right now.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, Like they're they're fine. Yeah, a fewer of them,
more interesting, more interesting banter from them would have gone
a long way because in the times it works, like
especially towards the beginning of the game, where you're not
you're not used to having these as part of Mario,
Like all of a sudden, have this voice pop pop
in and say something clever like it's great. It just

(48:24):
wears at it's welcome.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, yeah, here here before we hop off of visuals,
Like there's a lot to say about visuals. Don't get
me wrong, if I did, if I already said this,
forgive me for repeating myself. But this is far and
away the best looking game I think I've personally played
on my switch. Like there's a lot of talk about
the switch being underpowered. I'm one of them. I'm one

(48:49):
of the people that says that I was disappointed by
the hardware of the switch in some of the game performances.
But that being said, Nintendo knows how to optimize for
their own system and work around that. This game, especially
on the switch o LED, looks simply incredible. It is
some of the best looking video gameplay I've ever seen.
It's stylized, it's crisp, the it really makes the OLED

(49:14):
sing I didn't want to get out of this section
before saying that, like credit where it's due, this looks phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah, I played it docked on a four K TV.
I usually prefer to play docked anyway because I just
like to be able to see what I'm doing and
not hold it in my hands as much. So I
don't have the o LED switch, so I played it
plenty of handhild. It looked great on the basic switch,
but on yeah, on a big TV, like it really pops.

(49:44):
And that's important because you know, again, this is all
about visual readability for Mario. It's a platformer. You got
to be able to see where you're going, and you know,
we're looking for secrets and trying to you know, make
sure you read what's happening in the level. It is
as you know, crisp and clear it could be, you know,
and again like the flourishes we've been talking about, they

(50:06):
all really like sing because of that added attention to
detail and fidelity, like all those little waste things shimmer
and move. It's it's hard to describe in a podcast
or even in a screenshot. You kind of have to
see it in motion to really appreciate just how beautiful
this is and how well it's put together.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Mm hmm. I totally agree. And that all aids in
the level design too. You know, something that I was
thinking about, having come off of Super Mario Brothers three
is the level design you could tell has changed. That
philosophy has changed over time, not not for the good
and not for the ill. It's it's just changed. It
doesn't have to be a value judgment. But the level design,

(50:48):
and in particular the level mapping and the level the
level's ability to navigate you around is so different in
these newer games. It's it's a lot more straightforward. But
that being said, it's not obnoxiously straightforward. Uh. And I
think in part that's due to how this is visually presented,
the colors, the layout, everything, it looks really terrific. Yeah,

(51:14):
I don't, I don't. I don't want to go on
too long and just repeat myself. But level design, I
don't know, how are you feeling about level design? So
you have more experience than me with the with the
N E S SN E S era too, even beyond
Mario World, Yoshi's Island, I'm sure things like that. What's
your feeling on the level design here in wonder compared

(51:36):
to especially some of those Golden era marios, it.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Really borrows heavily from Super Mario World. I think as
far as the way levels are laid out, the path finding,
this is very much of a piece with the world.
It starts with three, because three, I mean Super Mario
Brothers too, Dokie dokie. Super Mario Brothers Too has verticality
in it that the original sub Mario Brothers did not.

(52:01):
Sube Mario Brothers retakes that one step further by giving
you the power of flight and making you know, flying
through the vertical spaces of levels a critical part of
the explorer of exploration. But there's still, even though you
have more verticality, fairly fairly left to right affair. Mario
World does much more, not only vertical stuff, but also

(52:23):
like exploration into those spaces in different directions, down pits
that actually lead somewhere as opposed to being bottomless pipes
that go to interesting places and here they really amp
it up by not only doing that, but sometimes you
actually go down a pipe and find yourself in the
background of a level. That's always a fun gimmick or
the round loved that. Yes, every time that happened, I

(52:46):
was delighted. I was like, oh good, we get to
do that again, even though functionally I'm doing the same
exact thing, just smaller and in the background. For some reason,
it just feels like he you know, I'm nine years
old again. You did something fun for me. But yeah,
the level design fitting into like what we were talking
about with visibility, like you need to have a sense
of where am I supposed to go, especially if you're

(53:07):
trying to hunt for the wonderflower or some other secret exit.
You learn to get a sense of like, oh, that
wall doesn't look like the other walls. Something's not right there,
or you know there's some where there's I can see
a platform up there, and if I think about it,
I bet I can suss out how to get to it.
So they this level design approach like that was the

(53:29):
thing that most made me feel like confident what they
were doing, which was like, this is like level to level,
much more like Super Mario World than it is anything else.
And if you're gonna try and copy something, go for
the best. It's by and large they I think they
succeed in that endeavor.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Yeah, I think they do too. I'm looking forward to
getting to Super Mario World. I just didn't have the time,
but I am excited to check it out. That going
from the foreground to the background, I agree with you.
It delaighted me. Every time there is I only encountered
this once. It might only happen once. Maybe it happens more.

(54:06):
There are instances where you start off in the background
but you don't know it, and then you go down
a pipe and suddenly you're in the foreground. I love that.
I love that so much, those little perspective shifts. There
are also a few areas in the game where it
switches to a top down perspective too, with the power
of the wunder Seed, which is just absolutely terrific. They

(54:30):
they're taking that design philosophy that you had mentioned that
started with three and was really polished in world of
exploring all axes X, y, and Z of any given level,
and I just I love to see it implemented. Of course.
I mean that's a little easier to do in three
D games because well they're three D. What's really cool

(54:52):
is whenever you have that limitation of two D and
then you know, it gets in the think how are
we going to do this? Maybe we put them in
the background, or oh maybe what if we just go
top down? All of a sudden, there you go. That's
cool and you get these really novel levels and sections
just so terrific, so terrific.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Yeah, I mean, exploration is what It's one of the
most like core motivating things we have as Homo sapiens, right,
this need to explore, and you think about works like Flatland, right,
the story of a literal two dimensional shape who encounters
three dimensional space for the first time, or or going
through the wardrobe to Narnia like the developers have myst
for example, talked about that as being a core principle

(55:36):
for them of like we want you to feel like
you're constantly stepping through another wardrobe behind another wardrobe, and
Mario does that here too. It's the same thing of
just like you know what if, yeah, the world tilted
on its axis and suddenly things were top down surprise.
You know. They love doing that, and I think that
this game, more than any other Mario game in recent memory.

(55:59):
Gets back to that.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
We talked around this a little bit, but I'd like
to focus on it now for a moment. Let's talk
a little bit about the sound design and the music,
and we could start with the music since we're kind

(56:29):
of picking up where we left off there. This is
going to be familiar to you if you have been
in the Mario game universe for any length of time.
There are going to be synth patches for strings, guitar, brass,
and notably mallet percussion. You know your xylophones and marimba,
things of that nature, congos, bongos, and various other sorts

(56:52):
of percussion that aren't just drum sets. This game took
I think I don't know when this started. I can
confidently say that I know it happened in three D
world with Bowser's fury, but Bowser is now represented by
a distorted electric guitar which gets a little metal at times,
which is pretty cool. The music as a whole, like,

(57:12):
I don't see it as that sort of copy of
a copy of a copy is like what we talked
a little bit about before. I don't see it so
much as effect. Similarly, here, it didn't move me in
the way that Galaxies soundtrack move me, which to this
day is my favorite. Mario Far and Away in a Galaxy, Far,
Far and Away that is. That's like three episodes in

(57:33):
a row now with Star Wars references. Geez, I'm not
even like the biggest Star Wars fan. I don't know
what it is.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
It's too big. It just has too much gravity. It's
gonna snack.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, yeah, too much gravity. Yeah, good one. I liked
the music in this. I did come away humming some
of them. There is like a it's not quite a
twelve bar blues, but it's pretty close. In one of
the flower challenges were one of the bad challenges. That's
kind of bluesy ish a little bit, but not quite.

(58:06):
I liked that quite a bit, and I did you know,
I did like the I don't know if it's the
overworld theme or if it's one of the six World themes.
I'm gonna put it in here. I didn't. It's not
so earwormy as Super Mario Brothers three or Super Mario
Brothers one, or even Galaxy or sixty four. I don't

(58:29):
think it's quite to that level, but I did. I
did really enjoy it. It's very in general, it's very
fast paced. There's not a lot of slow pretty tracks
on this. Generally everything's going to be walking speed or higher,
so that might be a con to some some folks,

(58:50):
but yeah, I don't know. I really liked the music.
I thought it was fun.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
I think it's overall it's functional, like it's not bad,
you know, it's good. I think the moments when the
Wonder Seed kicks in is generally where you're going to
see the more standout tracks, which is again not surprising
since they're trying to grab your attention with those things.
As you said, the metal stuff for Bowser is kind
of fun, especially when we get to his stage and

(59:18):
everything is kind of you know. The theming is hair
metal rock concert, which is pretty fun. So I like
that the the As you said, the Pirana Plant musical stuff,
there are some levels where timing is really important and
they use the music to help you. Yeah, that's like

(59:40):
the the you know, you can basically feel the metronome
you need to know when to jump or do things.
Those are great, but I have mixed feelings about the
mechanics of those levels. But musically like the way they
help you, I think is a good touch. So, like
I said, overall, I like the music. I love the
sound design, you know, I think I think the annoying

(01:00:02):
flowers aside. I think the way they incorporate classic sounds
from these enemies and things or marios just universe that
we're so used to hearing is really great. There are
some levels where they literally will There's like those little
like they call them break break time levels or whatever

(01:00:22):
they're called, but it's just like here, like no challenge
at all. This is just we just want to have
a little fun for forty five seconds. Some of them
are musical in nature, and the music is literally lifted
from Super Mario World or three or some of these
older games. So they do a really good job of
incorporating Mario's sound library into this game in a way

(01:00:43):
that is still whimsical.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
I really liked some of those stages that use the
music to encourage you or to give you the map
on how to move some of them. Honestly, there wasn't
any challenge. It was just all right, just make sure
you jump on beats so you can get shot up
into the air and keep you know, progressing up the level,
you know, verticality, vertically. I like that a lot. And

(01:01:06):
then of course the entire end fight with Bowser is
all musically centered, which I thought was a bold decision,
ending with what is essentially like a rhythm boss fight.
Very bold, very bold move.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
We can maybe talk about that fight here in a sect.
But I generally most of these worked for me, and
I think it's a combination of you know, how it's presented,
and then the music being very good, the fact that
they weren't very difficult or you know, maybe mechanically weren't
as inspired personally. I forgive that just because I thought

(01:01:46):
the experience was very fun. I could see how folks
might not like that, though, especially if you're looking for
something that's you know, maybe a little bit more than
just start press the button on the beat. Good job.
But you know it is, It's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
I don't just saying I don't have a problem with that,
you know, that's it's like again that goes back to
the like, well, this isn't challenging, it's just a lot
of fun. It's like right, you know, it's it's challenging
to hike the real matter Horn, but riding the one
at Disneyland is also really fun, just because it's not
hard to do, you know, like it's it's okay to
just you know, get your fun out of a different

(01:02:22):
aspect of experiencing a game. It doesn't have to be
hard to be a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Yeah, we're not all doing challenge runs of Super Mario
World in those ridiculous uh, I don't even know custom
maps what you would call that. Challenge runs is the
best thing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
That all the stuff the people making Mario Maker that
are you know, nightmares.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Yeah, dude, it's crazy. I don't, I don't know how
people do that. A lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Dedicature is you're you're I was gonna say, you're seeing
the fifty thousandth attempt.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Yeah, yeah, oh totally yeah. Speaking of the sound design, though,

(01:03:12):
this is another this goes back to them adding in
just little flourishes and grace notes where you might not
notice them if they weren't there, but having them. There
is just the sprinkles on the icing on the cake.
Did you notice that everybody's jump sound is different? Each
character has a different jump pitch.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
I only played as Mario and Luigi. I didn't go
like playing with all the different characters so much, but
I did notice. Yeah, there's a slight difference, and even
just hearing their voices right throughout the experience. You know,
it's not Charles Martinett anymore, it's his replacement, but whoever
it is does a pretty good job of continuing on
those legacy voices. But right there's all those little things

(01:03:52):
that are slightly different from character to character. There's little
things around the world that just make noise sometimes just
for the sake of like you know, the as like
literally the fun of like I'm a toddler and I
bonked a thing with another thing and it made a
fun sound, like they're putting that in there, like it's
it's everywhere, so that there's not a moment wasted where
they're not trying to delight you with something like that.

(01:04:15):
And you're playing. You can as we've alluded to this,
but you can play this multiplayer where not like old
school Mario, where you take a turn, and I take
a turn. But you can have multiple people on screen
at the same time, which means that you could have
kind of that chorus of different sounds. Is not only
you know, fun for the you know, like I said,
the whimsy, but it actually helps differentiate, you know, even

(01:04:36):
if you're not acutely aware of it, who's doing what
and when, if you were sitting with a bunch of
players trying to do it at the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Yeah, totally that that. I actually did not realize that
or think of that until you mentioned it. And that's
because I didn't engage with the multiplayer on this not
because I don't think it's a cool idea. It's just
I don't know. I don't really have I don't play
a lot of games with other people. Did you engage
Did you play multiplayer in this game at all?

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
I haven't. I would be curious to try that out
with my kids. You know, they they like games, they're
they're not as gung hole on its as me. But
like they tend to play things like Mario Kart, they're
not shown a huge interest in a lot of things
like platforming. I think they would find that pretty challenging
and I don't know if this is the game I

(01:05:25):
would start them on with it, or would they want
to start with you know, the old school stuff. But
at some point I would love to, like, you know,
I have enough controllers to do it, Like, hey, why
don't we all sit and play this game together and
see how it goes with everybody jumping around and you know,
my son would lose his mind anytime he dies. I
think we would just be crying. So we have to
to wait till they're ready for this. But I mean, yeah,

(01:05:47):
I mean it's clearly designed with that in mind, and
it's I wish I could comment on that aspect of
the game. I'm sure someone's listening to this going like,
oh man, when you do this in multiplayer, it's totally different,
So I yeah, I can't speak to that experience.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Though, you know, speaking of the inspiration they took from
Super Mario World, and I haven't confirmed this, I think
I heard this on Triple Click podcast or whatever, but
I have heard that if you're playing two player multiplayer
and one of the characters is Yoshi, you can get
on that character and ride Yoshi like you could in
Super Mario World, which I think that's great. I think

(01:06:20):
that's where that was introduced, right in World, Yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Yeah, Yoshi. I know there's something like technically they introduced
Yoshi in some earlier you know game. I don't know
if he's in like Mario Golf or something, you know,
like he's in the background. But really Yoshi is like,
that's the innovation for Super Mario World. He like in
Super Mario three, they're constantly throwing all kinds of weird
different power ups at you, and in World they scale
that back and just go mostly there's the flying Cape,

(01:06:44):
the Fireflower, and Yoshi. That's what you got. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Yeah, and with with Yoshi not taking damage and also
not transforming, I can imagine that would be just really
cute to see an elephant Mario on top of a Yoshi.
I think that'd be nice.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Who knows if he could survive, if his spine could
survive it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a he's engineered to handle
that kind of a weight. He's a little little fact
about Yoshi's they're made in a lab. Sorry, kids, you
had mentioned the voice actor. That's true. I don't think
this was controversy. I think it was just a lot
of folks. It was a mixture of some folks being
disappointed and then a lot of folks feeling the way

(01:07:26):
that I did that. You know, Charles Martinez has been
a treasure and has been putting in the work for decades.
Now let the man rest this this game, Mario and
Luigi were voiced by a gentleman named Kevin Afgani, who
didn't like before this had some switch commercial overdubs and

(01:07:46):
I think Genschen impact, but no like big ticket credit items.
So this was really the first one. I think he
does a fine job, Like if you really listen closely,
you can tell it's not the same.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Mario n one Mario none but one mesic hits go alright, alright.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
But I was never taken out of it. I think
he I think he does a perfectly fine job. And
now well now quote unquote this was confirmed like right after.
But he's voicing Warrior in Wallauigi too, in some games
that they're in, so he is, he's picking up the
reins from the king.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
I mean that's just the case with all legacy voices. Eventually,
you know, the person dies or retires and you gotta
we have to find a new bugs bunny. You know, yeah,
dig mel blank up anymore. And you know, you just
you just find someone who does the best impression that
they can, and you hope that they do not only
embody the voice, but also the character. And yeah, for

(01:08:45):
my money, he does a great job, you know. And
I hardly noticed it that it was like, oh yeah,
like he's barely any different. Like it's you know, he
does a good job.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
It's a very close approximation. And that's that's an unfortunate
truth that a lot of folks don't think about, is
our voices don't stop changing after puberty. You know. That's
the joke is that you know, one day you're up
here and then the next day you're down here. But
it changes as you go throughout life. I mean, talk
to any opera singer and they'll be telling you like, oh, yeah,
I've got to sing this role before my voice changes

(01:09:14):
in my late thirties, and you know, I'd like to
do this before my voice changes again in my fifties.
And it's just a NonStop evolution of the body.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
So you know, if you watch The Simpsons lately, yeah,
I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Oh my gosh, dude, Marge's I feel so bad for
Marge's voice actress, she or her voice has been throttled.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Yeah, I mean Julie Kavner always sounded kind of raspy,
but you know, now she's just getting up there and
it's hard.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Even Dann Castellanetta sounds a little different, like you can
definitely hear it. It's sad. It's sad. It makes me
realize that time never ends, it never stops for any
of us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Nope, no one gets out alive.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Oh my gosh, h g. Stay tuned for outer wilds
where we get into more existential crises.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Yeah, this is not the game for existential horror.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
No, this this game should make you feel happy, happy
tears only.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Kevin does a fantastic job. I think the Peach and
Daisy voice actress they sounded. I think the Peach and
Daisy voice actors sounds different to me, But I've also
not played any games or they were voiced for a
few years, so I don't know. They did a great
job too. I mean, everybody does. Fine. This isn't a
very talky game. You're really only hearing them make their

(01:10:26):
grunts and here we goes and it's a MEAs and
that's that's about it. Oh and Wowie zowie. Everybody says
Wowie zowie. That's like the catch phrase of this game.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
Yeah. I mean, look, they could have tried to, I guess,
leverage the cast from the movie to doing it. You know,
they could have gone in that direction they but they didn't.
They decided we're going to go for you know, continuity
of like the classic voices from the games everyone knows,
and I think that's a good decision.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Yes, yeah, I could not imagine this game with Chris Pratt,
and as much as I like him, Charlie Day cannot
imagine that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
A lot of Charlie Day voice. It's it's a particularly
grating voice.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
So yeah, well, let's not beat around it. Let's talk

(01:11:30):
through the game. I mean, the best way to talk
about this game is through its mechanics, because that is
the game different from other Pixel Project Radio episodes. We're
not going to talk about the plot because we kind
of summarize it at the beginning, and we're also not
going to go through and talk about every single level.
I started taking notes that way and quickly realized that
that's a fool's errand we're not going to do that.

(01:11:52):
Either we're just going to talk at a global scale
about all of this. The game starts up. As I
mentioned before, Bowser is kind of up the place. He
steals our wonder seed, and he is planning to unleash
a big wonder We don't know what that means until
the very end. What we're gonna do. Oh gosh, what's
the Prince's name, Florian? We are going around with this

(01:12:14):
little bug guy right named Prince Florian.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Yeah, it's like you're not in the Mushroom Kingdom anymore.
You're in the Flower Kingdom next door visiting. When Bowser decides,
you know, I've yeah, exactly, I've ruined the Mushroom Kingdom
enough times. Why don't I try and ruin this nice place?

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Yeah, And Prince Florian is gonna accompany us around as
we get these wonder Seeds. Functionally, they're just a mcguffin.
They can kind of do whatever the story needs for us.
The Wonder Seeds are going to let us progress to
get the Royal Wonder Seeds, which can dispel some of
Bowser's defenses, to let us, you know, get to the
final level. We're gonna go through the Flower Kingdom and

(01:12:55):
interact with this little race of poplins. They kind of
look like to toads. I mean, they look very related,
but they're cute. You know, you'll run into them, they'll
help you through. They kind of extort you. They're like, oh, yeah,
you could get through the next levels, but I just
don't have the energy to build this bridge. And then
you pay them and immediately they're like, oh wow, look

(01:13:16):
at that motivation. So there's a little of that, and
they give you some wonder seeds too. They're just, you know,
they're the little supporting cast. They're they're fine, they're cute.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Yeah, as you said, it's picture of toad, but instead
of you know, a mushroom based hat, it looks more
like like the steeples on that Russian that was it,
Saint Peter's Basilica in Moscow. I was thinking really kind
of pointy things.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
I was thinking a flower that hasn't bloomed yet. But
sure we could do Russian Saint Peter's Basilica.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
And as you said, thet there's an economy in this game.
There's there's a standard gold coins that, as always one
hundred of them gets you a free life, and then
there's these purple crystals and then a case. In each level,
there's three big purple like flower those that are worth
like ten and your goals. If you want to, you
can try and collect three, all three of them in
every level. But you're not gonna be hurting for these

(01:14:08):
like you're you're gonna be swimming in these little things.
But they are the currency that you use. So when
the guy says like, I'm gonna extort you to build
this bridge, it's gonna cost twenty of these, and you're like,
I've got nine hundred and twenty of them. Yeah, this
is never like a barrier to you making progress.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Yeah. Yeah, these folks are all hurting for fifty coins
twenty coins, and Mario just comes in. He's in a
different class strata. Clearly, you can buy it at these
little Poplin shops is what they're called. You can buy
extra lives, you can buy wonder seeds if you just
you know, this game is just like any other Mario game.
You don't have to do every single level and get

(01:14:47):
every single wonder seed to progress. I didn't do the
math off hand, but you know, you don't need to
do every single one if there's a level giving you trouble.
You can buy wonder seeds. You can also buy badges,
and that comes into a pretty important mechanic of the game.
There are a couple of different styles of level. There's
your standard level, there's a subsection of that that does

(01:15:10):
a wonder seed that uses wonder seeds. We'll talk about
those two here in a sec There are breake levels,
which are just kind of like fun minigames, and there
are badge challenges. You get to equip a badge through
Prince Florian, who just kind of lives in your hat
in every single level, and some of the levels that
are badge challenges will force you to use a special badge,

(01:15:33):
so instead of picking one, it picks for you. These
badges are going to mostly give you special abilities by
hitting the right shoulder button. Sometimes they just give you
inherent abilities though I'm just going to kick it to you.
In general, what did you think of these?

Speaker 2 (01:15:48):
Well, you know, to borrow the phrase, we don't need
no stinking badges now, and we do. Actually, these are good.
They basically function like a ring slot you know RPG
right like, And there are different classes of them, so
some of them affect your movement, some of them kind
of affect the world around you. So like there's one

(01:16:11):
that reveals blocks that would otherwise be not there, which
can be helpful. Maybe it helps you get over a
gap that would be harder to jump without them, or
climb up to an area that would otherwise be harder
to access. There's one that like it's literally like a
metal detector at like beeps when you're near where a
secret is. So there's a bunch of different kinds of these,

(01:16:32):
and some of them have very kind of specific applications
where like there's a level where like you don't have
to use it, but you're probably gonna want to have
this badge for this level, and you can only have
one at a time. Now, there were certain levels, certain
badges that because they were more like all purpose useful,
I had on more than others. So like say the

(01:16:54):
badge that lets you float down, you know, control your
descent like a parachute, or like I said, the one
for the secret blocks or things like that. But then
there's ones that like there's that one that's like a
vine that's a grappling hook that's really fun, favorite time
with that. That one's so good that basically it almost
like turns Mario into a Metroid game or something. It's

(01:17:14):
really cool. So these are great, like they they it's
one more way in which just like again going back
to Mario three, it's a way for the game designers
to say, like, here, you play with this toy however
you feel like playing with it, and so like, I
think overall this is a success. There's a handful of them.
I kind of wish you could like it really was

(01:17:36):
like Metroid, like it was a power up that you
got and then you kept, rather than having to because
you can't take them on or off mid level. You
have to. You know, you pick one and then you start,
and you can't switch in between. If you die, you
can go out and change and come back. But yeah,
it's I think other than those little tweaks I would
make because some of them are yeah, so like I

(01:17:57):
don't want to keep this equipped all the time that
they're a little flawed, But like I said, by and large,
this works really well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
Yeah. These I like the analogy of them being toys
and you can play with them however you'd like, and
mix and match in the levels. What makes them so
successful to me is they all aid in that design
philosophy that you had mentioned and that I had mentioned.
This idea of exploration. The very first one that you
get lets you use your hat as a parachute and

(01:18:24):
it lets you kind of glide a little bit farther
with your jumps and descend a little slower. Talk about animations, dude, Oh,
it looks so cute and good when they do that,
they grab their hat. If you're playing as a character
that doesn't have a hat like Peach, Daisy and Toad,
because those are not that is explained in the game
in the load screens. Those are their heads, not their hats,

(01:18:44):
but they pull out just a color coordinated Mario hat.
It's very cute. It's really cool, but it lets you
explore areas and make jumps that you maybe otherwise couldn't.
Or another one that was really useful is you can
wall jump in this game, where you can jump onto
a wall and then you sort of kick off of it. Right,
that's nothing new, but there is a badge that lets

(01:19:04):
you jump onto a wall and then do one vertical
jump up the wall, and then that lets you then
kick off the wall. So you can now explore vertically
even more, and it lets you access areas of stages
where you might not see it, but you can see
your little character moving up top through the little magnifying
glass that shows you where you're at, sort of like

(01:19:25):
in Smash. Really terrific. And then of course, like you
mentioned the vine chain shot that is just so much fun.
It turns it into like Metroid Spider Man Zelda hook
shot is what I meant to say, so.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Much spider Man is a good Yeah, that's a good
analogy too, that it's Spider Man. Yeah. These are all great,
and like I said, by and large, they're additive. And
in some cases there are definitely levels where you look
at it and go, like, you know, I bet if
I equip this one thing, this would make this a
whole lot easier.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
And you're usually right, that's a win for this too.
In my opinion, there are going to be some folks
that say this game is really short, Like I think
my end time and I did not get every under
seed full disclosure, but you know, my end time was
like I don't know based on how Switch does it,
it's not super accurate, like six hours, six and a
half hours something like that. I'm not far and away,

(01:20:19):
I'm not the fastest, but you know I'm also not
the worst, pretty average. You can go back and re
explore some of these levels and get to new areas
by mixing and matching these power ups. You know, maybe
in one level, you know, once you're good enough at
the magma levels, you don't need the badge that lets
you fall into the magma once and then it just
kicks you out for free. Maybe you don't need that.

(01:20:40):
Now you can add in the timed super jump ability
you know that we saw actually now that I think
about it as early as Donkey Kong ninety four, where
if you time your jumps, landing them properly and jumping again,
you jump even higher. Maybe you use that badge instead,
and now you're at a whole different level, a different
part of the level it incur is replayability and exploration.

(01:21:01):
I love it. I think that's great, really fun, really terrific.
Some of them I didn't get much use for, and
some of them are situational. Dolphin Kick is one that
you can use underwater that makes you kick like a
dolphin made underwater levels, not a slog which you know,
I personally never like an underwater Mario level, at least

(01:21:23):
not in the two D ones that I've played. This
made it much more bearable. I still did not like
the underwater levels as much kind of of pain, especially
those big cheap cheaps that just icha which actually am
I thinking of three? Am I getting those mixed up? Yeah?

(01:21:43):
Those bugged me in there too. But some of them
are situational, Like there's one that I don't remember exactly
how it works. The badg icon is a block with
an exclamation point. It like reveals hidden blocks around you. Yeah,
I don't know. Maybe this is why I didn't collect
everyone interseed. But I didn't get a ton of use
out of that one. Some of I don't know. Some

(01:22:05):
of them aren't MVPs. They can't all be, because that
would you know, if everybody's an MVP. Nobody is. But
you know, I did not even collect all of them
by the end, I didn't. I'm easily missing, like I
don't know, six, seven, ten.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
I think in my first playthrough, I got all of
them except the last one, which you have to that's
the reward for beating every level, getting every wonder seed
and the last tricky challenge level, which I didn't. I
think it's a it's dumb too. I forget what it is.
It's like it's not useful at all. By the time
you've again completed the entire game, what else are you
going to do? But I think I got most of them,

(01:22:43):
and like I said, most of them I found a
use for here and there, and some I had pretty
regularly you know, equipped of like, well, I don't need
anything special, but I'm glad I got this one with
me right now. You know, whether it's there's like a
ConTroll double jump, you know, something like that that's like
this is going to be generally useful.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
A lot m ConTroll double jump one is really good.
There's also a oh what is it you like do
like the Princess Peach one in the older games, like
in I think even Dokye Dokie two. Float Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the float jump. You know, there's there's a little there's
a lot to experiment with. But those are just one

(01:23:18):
aspect of the mechanics. I mean, we also have the
titular wonder seeds and the wonder levels. This to me
is like this game's bread and butter. That's the calling card,
that's what it shows you on the tin. It's why
you come to this game. I bought the ticket for yeah, yeah, yeah,
any number of analogy that you might like to use.

(01:23:40):
I loved almost universally loved every single one of these,
whether you're transforming or not.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
Well, sometimes you transform, sometimes the level transforms, whatever it
is it's gonna be. You know, as we said, we
can't go through all of these, but they're wildly inventive.
There's some where you are now you're floating through the
air and like you're trying to catch falling Invincibility Stars
to go through electrical barriers as you continue to float upwards.

(01:24:08):
You know, it's just basically it's an entire new gameplay
mode in the guise of you know, a drug trip.
Like the whole thing, like literally the when you get
the Wonder Star, the whole screen like shimmers in like
rainbow energy. The music distorts, just like and you know
then like, oh boy, we're going to go into some

(01:24:28):
kind of weird you know, dream sequence basically, and that's
what they all are. And they don't like we've mentioned
some of the different types, but like they never cease
to delight, and it's almost a disservice to talk about
them because it's like that's the fun it's like every
time you pull one of these, it's like, what's it
going to be that comes out of the slot machine?
And again, I the greatest thing about this is there

(01:24:51):
are there's none of these gimmicks that's used more than twice,
so you're almost guaranteed. You know, you're seeing something you
loved the first time around one time, one more time,
time for an encore or something brand new.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Some of them are really not challenging either. It's just
about the spectacle. It's about they're taking the Mario Galaxy
approach versus the Odyssey approach, where they want a specific
experience for the level first and foremost, and I can
appreciate that. That's part of why I love Galaxy so much.
But you know, you might get it, get the under seed,

(01:25:25):
and suddenly you're running on stampeding bulls that are flying
through the sky and all you have to do is
stay on and you know, jump to get some coins
or whatever, or it might start raining Invincibility stars and
you just book it and go. Which by the way,
they run in the same animation as they do from
Super Mario Brothers three, which I liked a lot. I

(01:25:45):
like that little animation, but then sometimes too, it transforms everything,
and that is those levels are the ones that always
had me just ear to ear smiling. You transform into.
One of them that I like the most is there
are these enemies. I think this is in the sun

(01:26:07):
Baked Desert World four, it might be in World three
Shining Falls, but there are these enemies that kind of
look like little rodent guys, gophers, and when they see
a goomba, their mouth opens real big and they eat them.
And the whole level you're like, look at those dumb goombas,
get eating goombas. And then you hit the wonder seat
and you're a goomba now and you have to stay

(01:26:28):
away from those things by hiding behind trees. That is
just so terrific. It's you know, it's like if you
show this game to a kid and the kid was like,
what if you could do that? And as an adult,
we've lost that kind of childlike wonder. That's the only
time I'll use that, by the way, and we don't
think that creatively. But they are. Another one that I

(01:26:49):
really liked is and this one, to its credit, does
show up a couple times. I think you turn into
a sticky blob thing that can like hug surfaces and
suddenly it's not just about jumping on to platforms and
across platforms. You're hugging the entire perimeter, and it's winding
you through the level in a way that you could
not do before, all while still collecting coins and dodging

(01:27:12):
enemies and stuff like that. That's just so cool, man,
Like I it's like you just said, Doug, it's it's
almost a disservice to talk about it, which is unfortunate
for an auditory medium like the podcast, but it is
like it's like you said, this is why you bought

(01:27:32):
the ticket. It's so awe inspiring, and so it just
kicked me out of the creative rut that I sometimes
feel like whenever I'm in my fiftieth JRPG grinding and
it's just like this is just such a breath of
fresh air.

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
And I think that's what it's designed to be, right,
this is meant to be a breath of fresh air.
It is again, it's the Angry Sun level of supermar
Mothers three, which I know that's just one I'm pinging on.
There's many game levels like that in three where they
did just that where it's like I don't know what
if you get to hop inside a weird shoe for
a level, just want to know, we'll just do it once.
You don't need it more than once. And that's what

(01:28:07):
they're doing here, right, It's every single one of these,
whether they're turning you into a goomba or a blob,
or they're turning as you said, it goes all all
of a sudden, you're in a top down perspective and
like you're walking on the background elements. Yeah, you know
you're a shadow. That's again you like you're this stretchy
gummy bear shadow.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
Like when you duck everything else in the environment like
ducks down to so you're not only managing being this
like black silhouette against a bunch of other black silhouettes,
but you're managing the height of the objects in the
level while you're ducking just weird stuff, really weird, really
like there. You can't do this in any other series

(01:28:49):
for the most part, Like even things like Sonic the Hedgehog.
If you're gonna do this, like there's a certain like
reality to and you know, consistency to his world, where
like Mario, it's just Mario's a little more of a
Looney Tune where it's like, I don't know anything goes
They're like, I think like Duck a Muck, right, the

(01:29:11):
classic Looney Tunes cartoon where Daffy is walking around trying
to perform as the animator is fucking with him and
like redrawing him in the environment. Like that's basically what
this is, except it's you. Now, it's Nintendo and Company
doing that to you as you're trying to make your
way through this level and like you know, you're you
just got a grin from ear to ear while they're

(01:29:33):
doing it because you're like, you know, what'll they think
of next? Like that's the that is the fun of it.
So yeah, and still you get to do all the
other classic Mario stuff as we've we've alluded to. There's
a couple of basic power ups that you use here
and there, and you couple that with the badges and
it's like, you know, there's no end to kind of

(01:29:53):
the way that you get to creatively interact with their creativity. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
Yeah, First of all, great pul I love ducka Muck.
That is so good and that's I mean that comes
from the I'm reading a book right now called The
Inner Game of Tennis. I'm rereading it. I've read it
years ago. Amazing book. Not just for tennis players. I
don't play tennis. Look at me, jeez, can you imagine
me running across the court. No, I can't. But it's

(01:30:19):
it's more about mental performance in any host of things.
But anyways, a big part of Timothy Galway's mentality is
quieting what he calls self one, which is the critical voice,
so that your self too, I e. In this context,
your body can just do what it knows how to
do without that critic in you, and we can extrapolate
that a little bit. I think this kind of creativity

(01:30:41):
comes from that, when we talk about childlike creativity, getting
in touch with your inner child and casting aside the
shackles of the limitations we set upon ourselves as we
grow up in this world, for good or for ill.
That's how we get there, is by cast out this
self one, doubt or critical voice. That's a whole different topic.

(01:31:05):
I just it made me think of that. I loved it.
Let's talk a little bit about those power ups, though,
because that's another big point of this game, and mixing
and matching those with the badges I mean, let's not
mince words. It's just a hell of a lot of fun. Okay,
I will say this game's flagship power up is the Elephant.
What I thought was interesting. I don't remember which director
said this. Maybe it was Tezuka, I'm not quite sure,

(01:31:31):
or maybe it was Miamoto. Actually, now that i'm thinking
of it, maybe maybe it was Miamoto. They said that
it didn't feel like a Mario character. It didn't look
like a Mario character like how they envisioned it. I
have mixed feelings about the Elephant. You get it more often,
I think, than any other power up, and it's certainly useful.
I mean, you're not all that much slower. Your trunk

(01:31:53):
can be used as a weapon as you're running, which
is useful, can suck up water and hydrate plants, or
put out fires, which is useful in like one or
two stages. But I don't know. I for as often
as they gave it to you, I would have rather
had the Flower power the fire fire flower power up.
That was. I mean, that's just my favorite, next to

(01:32:15):
the Drill power Up. I love the Drill power up? Man?
Is that new to wonder? Doug?

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Do you know I believe so, I mean I don't. Again,
I don't have the most encyclopediccknowledge of Mario, but I
believe that the other than the classic fireflower, the other
three you get or the elephant, the drill, and the
bubble flower, I think those latter three are all new here. Yeah,
I like the elephant. He's the ability to deal damage

(01:32:44):
laterally is actually kind of a big deal since Mario
is normally more you know, he's got to jump on
top of you vertically to do something. So this would
enable you to sometimes like blast open paths, you know,
with your trunk. Watering the plant is usually more of
a puzzle where it's like you water up a flower,
something comes out of it, maybe leads to another one

(01:33:05):
of these, and you have to do a sequence of
these flower watering things to open up maybe where the
wonder seat is. So that's less of an offensive thing.
It's less useful for that purpose. But yeah, other than that,
the elephant is fine. It looks fun. It looks more
fun than it actually is, I think, to be the elephant.

(01:33:26):
But you're right. The drill, So the drill thats you
do is you can drill into surfaces above or below,
and so once you're like underground, you can just slide
along the perimeter of the wall or the floor or
the ceiling and that will allow you to get up
to things. But also, because you have this big pointy
drill on your head when you jump out of the

(01:33:48):
floor or the wall or whatever, if there's an enemy around,
you bash them with it. So as Mario you're used
to hitting things with your feet, now you can bonk
enemies with your head, and so you're getting them in
two direct and it yeah, it just it makes everything
a little more fun, a little more zippy. So yeah,
that would be my pick as well for the best
power up in the game.

Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
Yeah, I the drill is a lot of fun that
being able to burrow into the roof or the ground
and then traverse the level that way and deal undersided
or oversighted damage to enemies is super cool. The flower
power up is okay. The Bubble Flower, I should say,
is okay. The bubble lets you shoot bubbles and if

(01:34:30):
it catches an enemy, it you know, instantly takes care
of them and turns them into a coin, which is
pretty nice. But it's got a dual purpose use where
if you shoot your bubble and then jump on it.
You get a little bit of a double bounce, a
little hype boost, which can be useful for traversal. I
found it more useful in theory than in practice. I

(01:34:50):
this is actually one that I had during the final
boss fight because one thing this game lets you do.
I don't know if this is new to this game,
but you can bank on power up if you collect them.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
That is a that is a super Mario World classic right.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
There, Oh world class.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
Oh of course, that's a very that's a very like
key part of that is like you it's like because
you have the feather that lets you fly, and then
you might have like a flower up there, and it's like,
oh well if I switch into one, I bank the
other one back up there. And so yeah, that's a
big part of that game is you always have you
can have one in reserve. So they do that. Here.
The bubble thing like straight up lifted from Bubble Bobble.

(01:35:28):
If you've ever played that game, Like that's it. That
whole game is yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
Oh yeah, wait a minute. I thought Bubble Bobble was
the thing where you you've got the jewels and you
have to like shoot them from that's a puzzle.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
That's puzzle Bobble, which is like a you know, a
kind of offspring of the original bubble Bobble, which is
your little guy a little dragon, and you laterally shoot
bubbles to capture enemies and then you bounce on them
with the or you bounce on your bubbles to reach
whatever you need to reach. It's fun. Yeah, so they
they literally kind of co opted the bubble, the basic
bubble bobble mechanics. This it is really good offensively in

(01:36:03):
this game because you can throw out, you know, tons
of bubbles at once, just one after the other after
the other, which puts kind of like a safety net
between you and any enemy. They're gonna hit it and
then be bubbled by it. So it is useful. It's
you know, it certainly better than having no power ups.
But yeah, it's useful for traversal, but quite often you

(01:36:23):
can use one of your badges for even better traversal,
so it's not as vital.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
Yeah, it'll it'll get your places in a pinch if
you need it. There's some jumping in the last final
boss fight that is integral, and I had the flower power,
the bubble flower power during that one, and I used
it just because I had it, but like you, you
don't need it anywhere by any means. I liked it,

(01:36:50):
you know, I mostly I would prefer the fire Flower.
And there are some stages that are eliminate all of
the enemy's stages where you've got like four different three
or four different rooms to go through and you've got
to eliminate the enemies, and depending on what the enemies are,
one might be more useful than the other. More often
than not, I'm reaching for the Fireflower. It's you know,

(01:37:12):
it's just classic. You can kind of direct where it's going.
The bubbles you can't really direct. They just go out
laterally and they kind of have a deceleration. The fireballs,
I just find them to be a little more predictable. Yeah,
I don't know, it's fine. They're all fine. None of
them are bad. That kind of covers the main mechanics.

(01:37:53):
I think. I don't think I'm missing any am I No.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
I don't think so. I mean that is basically what
this game is. We can talk about the individual world,
but by and large, they're just collections of playgrounds where
you get to do this stuff. The only thing is
that I think the like I said, in the Desert world,
when you get to four, it kind of opens up
a little more. It has a lot more like pathways
places to explore. Yeah, so I kind of wish that

(01:38:17):
more of the game had that. But still, like level
to level, it's just you're mostly getting like esthetic changes
to things. I don't know that going through the individual
worlds is yields much more in terms of like meaning
for this conversation than it would talk about any individual
level over and over again. It's just you know, there's

(01:38:40):
six of these worlds plus bowsers and world and then
the secret one that you can get to with a
couple of like challenge stuff you challenge levels in it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
Speaking of challenge levels, there are some levels that will
have you play some sort of a mini game to
get through. They're not like you can use any badge. Well,
what I'm thinking of specifically are the ones that are
a company by the metronome that gets faster and faster
it accelerates. Etcellerando is what we call that music. But
I don't know why. Sometimes I like to be a

(01:39:09):
parody of myself. I don't know. I don't know why
people listen to this show. But What I appreciated about
that you mentioning that challenge levels made me think of
this is that a couple of these are hard, hard, man,
Like I struggled to get through a couple of the
last ones. Because as the metronome accelerates, new blocks and

(01:39:31):
platforms will appear. So it might start off at like,
I don't know, eighty beats a minute, and every other
beat you are getting a new platform, and you can't
go too fast because the boxes won't appear, the platforms
won't appear, but only I think four at a time
can be there. So whenever number five comes in, number
one goes away. When number six comes in, number two

(01:39:54):
goes away, and so on and so forth. That's sort
of snaking pattern. And as it starts to get faster
and fast, you've got to be really precise with your jumps,
and man, some of these are tough. There is, uh,
there's one that I just couldn't get so I.

Speaker 2 (01:40:08):
Stopped and they yeah, and they even show you, like
the outline of where it's coming, so you know where
it's going to be. It's not it's not like you
have to totally memorize it and surprise it. It's not
a mega man. But these are among the hardest things
in the game. I have beaten them in my first playthrough.
I got up at this time when I was playing
for the show. I was like, I don't need to
force myself to do this again. I did it once.

(01:40:28):
I proved I I proved I could. But so if
you if you do have any appetite for the mesa
core platforming, there is a little of it, you know,
for for those you know, more experienced players or someone
looking for a challenge like this. But but like as
a gameplay I idea, they're not bad. And it's also

(01:40:48):
like you you still do the bat They show you
the countdown like it's a total of like forty five
seconds of gameplay to just do it, so the goodness
is like failing. You can iterate on it. Try again,
I'll try again. Okay, I'll try it again. You know,
it's a short thing. It's just hard to do for
forty five seconds. It's you know, it's almost like a
you know, circus type trick. You know, it doesn't last long,

(01:41:11):
but it's got to be perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
One thing I do like that they threw the bone
that in those levels are coins and flower coins too,
including the big ten flower coins, the big ones that
give you ten and if you get those ten flower coins,
the big ones, and then you die, you don't have
to get them again. Like they throw you that bone,
they say you earned it, you got it. Now just

(01:41:33):
focus on finishing the level. Easier said than done.

Speaker 2 (01:41:37):
Yeah, but they are nice and that they are more
like sign posts of like where you're supposed to go,
so they do hop in that regard totally.

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
Yeah, I had a lot of fun. I like a
platforming challenge. You mentioned Celest earlier just as a as
a joke. That's one of my favorite games of all time.
I love Celeste.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
I do too. I bought it sight unseen because my
daughter's name happens to be Celeste. So it's like there's
a game call to lest I guess I better buy it.
And then it turned out to be kind of a
big deal and it was hard, like I pushed my
way through it. But yeah, that is I think kind
of the gold standard for like very precise.

Speaker 1 (01:42:13):
Yeah, nothing like that here, but those metronome levels are
still fun. What say? We just end conclude by talking
through some of these worlds as a whole, including the
final one. Bowser's Rage stage. Sure, so we've got six total.
They are Pipe Rock Plateau, fluff Puff Peaks, Shining Falls,

(01:42:34):
sun Baked Desert, Fungi Mines, Deep Magma Bog, and then
it ends with Bowser's Rage stage. I said earlier offhandedly
that my two favorites were fluff Puff Peaks and the
Deep Magma Bog. Matt fell off only three in before
the last four, which you, Doug said, were your favorites.

(01:42:55):
Did you want to elaborate on that at all?

Speaker 2 (01:42:57):
Well, like I said, I really liked the desert stage
four because that is where the map kind of really
opens up. So for example, when you're doing the mountain
climbing one or the fluff Puff Peaks, there's still a
pretty path you're supposed to stay on it. Occasionally you
get to a spot where there's like three levels you
can do in any order or ignore if you need to,

(01:43:18):
but they're still fairly linear in a way that like
the desert has a lot more secrets to it. You walk,
there's like a palace in the middle of the desert,
so like you can kind of go behind it in
places and find secret little alcoves and stuff with other
secret levels. Inside them or other you know, gateways to places.
So I really liked how that was laid out in
terms of a map that was more of like the
kind of Mario map that I wanted. I think the

(01:43:40):
individual levels in that stage you're also pretty good, So
I like that one. The fungi minds are cool and
that you kind of get a little more lost down
there in terms of trying to get to the objective.
Same with the bog, the Magma bog. Like the final
level where the wonderflowers is actually right near the start,
but they give you a high number of Wonders. It's

(01:44:01):
gated behind, so you have to basically wind your way
down through most of this mind uncovering everything, doing lots
of levels to then finally come back up to the
top and go, okay, now I can go proceed. So yeah,
I like them all, but again it's sort of like
it's all as far as an individual level goes. It's
all in esthetic coating on top of a wire frame,

(01:44:23):
and the wire frames of these are where it's at.
Like that's you know, so all of this stuff is great,
but I don't know that like there is distinctive, like
I think when you play Super Mario World and see like, okay,
we're in the forest. The forest levels are way more
like get Lost and then say some of the others
or like the ghost houses, which they don't really do here.

(01:44:44):
There's not so much like the Boo Mansions like they
have there. So that's why I feel like these levels
they have a lot of personality in terms of their
visual design, but I don't think that like that quite
translates into the design of the levels themselves. It seems
more aesthetic than play.

Speaker 1 (01:45:05):
Mostly, Yeah, there are a few little things. The desert,
for example, introduces sand which you actually run slower through,
so you get a badge that helps offset that, a
badge that just lets you run faster, which you can
then use in the challenge levels against Wiggler. There are
some race levels that comes in handy for and then

(01:45:26):
you know, obviously Deep Magma Bog there's just going to
be more lava and that one, because of course, you know,
it's aesthetic and function. I think the Desert one too,
if I'm not mistaken, and I might be that had
more secret passages and like hidden areas in the actual
levels themselves, at least up until that point. Like then

(01:45:47):
Pipe Rock, Plateau, Fluff Puff, and Shining Falls. I think.
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:45:52):
So there's also like, yeah, occasionally a level, so when
you go to a level, it'll show you there's you know,
two wonder seeds within the level, which is always there's
one for completing the level and there's one for getting
the wonder thing within it. Right, almost everything has two.
Occasionally there will be one with three, but they don't
tell you that. So sometimes you'll get to the end
of a level and you won't get a under seat,

(01:46:13):
and you'll be like scratching your head, which means like, ah,
there's what I have to do is find the secret
exit or you know, you'll find the secret exit first,
you'll luck into it and you'll see, oh, there were
actually three and now I have one and three, but
not the middle one or something like that. But like
I said, you don't get necessarily get a new path
for most of these, some of them you do. There's
occasionally they lead to a little like Captain Toad guy,

(01:46:34):
which is just like fun O, wait really fifty quite yeah, yeah,
if you find one, you'll you'll you'll find your little
secret paths and Captain Toad will be there to be
like Ahi, and you get fifty purple stars for finding him,
and then some of these I believe you need to
do to reach the pathways up to the Secret Challenge
levels of the sky Man.

Speaker 1 (01:46:56):
I tell you what, whenever I talk like I've been
up front, I'm like the biggest Mario head. I have
a lot that I don't know, but I swear, man,
every time I talk to somebody that knows these games,
I feel like I've never played them at all, you know,
especially like Super Mario Brothers three in World, Geez Louise,
Odyssey and Galaxy. I just feel like I've anytime I

(01:47:19):
beat one of these, I feel like I've played fifty
percent of the game and there's just still so much
more to learn and to unlock.

Speaker 2 (01:47:26):
I mean, that's kind of the thing for Mario right again,
it's total about exploration. We want to reward you for exploring.
It goes all the way back to the first Mario,
where you're like in that second level, it's like, hey,
wait a minute. If I ride this elevator up and
over the exit pipe and then go, hey, look that
there's pipes that let me warp to worlds two, three,
and four. Right, that experience is again like a core

(01:47:46):
Mario thing, and they want to give, Like you definitely
want to get to the end of a Mario game,
beat Bowser and realize, hey, there's like thirty percent of
this I haven't even seen.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
Yet, totally absolutely, speaking of getting to the end, Bowser's
Rage stage is sort of the final level once you
dispel all of Bowser's they're like piranha plant smoke screen
things that you get the Royal seats to dispel. But
once you do that, he invites you in to experience
his wonder, and his wonder is, like you said earlier, Doug,

(01:48:14):
kind of like a hair metal glam rock concert. It's
pretty cool. It's pretty cool, it's pretty spiffy. What I
liked about these stages, and you can encounter a few
of these on the way here too, is that they're
kind of like a mixture between the castle levels of
the past and the ship levels from Super Mario Brothers three.

(01:48:35):
Those are just in my head because I had just
played it, but they're basically a twenty twenty four version
of that. You know, I know this game came out
in twenty three, but it's an updated version of that.

Speaker 2 (01:48:46):
Yeah, they're definitely deliberately calling back to that. There are
some ship levels that are literally just like the ship
levels from Mario three. And yeah, this last world is
definitely it's a little bit of the you know, the
classic let's give you a final exam. There's gonna be
some things you've seen before, maybe in a different way,
but like there's that level where there's like missiles everywhere

(01:49:07):
and you have to ride them. Oh yeah, you know,
that was really cool. I remember that they all have
this rock theme, which is nice because like they already
gave you like a Magma world, and usually Magma time
is the that is, you know, world eight, that is
your your end uh stage with Bowser, So they had
they decided to use that on something else, So what
are they going to do here? And I think making

(01:49:28):
it feel like, yeah, you are like everything. This goes
back to a thing with Mario three as well, where
Mario three is the conceit is that it's a play
that's happening that you're watching with like curtains and stuff,
and here it's sort of like, yeah, you feel like
you're sort of on stage almost as Bowser is uh
being the guy in the booths managing the lights and

(01:49:49):
pyrotechnics as you're going through it, which is great, Like
it's this great feeling of like, you know, when when
danger appears in these levels, it's not just oh, there's
another turtle floating somewhere, it's because like Bowser is shooting
a thing at you or setting off some kind of
trap deliberately as you're making your way through, and it

(01:50:11):
feels like he's kind of got his finger on the button,
just kind of going like hey, Mario, watch out, yeahs.
As you go through. It's it's a cool like set
piece of a world.

Speaker 1 (01:50:20):
It totally feels like that you're exactly right all the
way up until the final battle too. The final battle
with him, he's still in his floating like head castle
kind of form, but he brings up sort of like
floating hands to mechanical hands, not dissimilar to like Masterhand
and Smash, And the final level is just entirely centered

(01:50:42):
around like jumping to the rhythm and just it's it's
what it amounts to his several jumps and headbutts into
the hands and Bowser's you know, floating head thing until
you're able to jump on his head and that sort
of completes it. That's that's sort of what it boils
down to. But in the interim of that, you know

(01:51:02):
the ground is going to be pulsing with the beat,
and sometimes it pulses all at once, sometimes in bisected,
sometimes in quadrants like that, and you have to sort
of know what's going to come up based on where
the beat is. And all the while you know he's
throwing giant fireballs and missiles and enemies at you. It's

(01:51:24):
a lot of fun. It was really gutsy of them
to use basically a rhythm level as the final boss.
I loved it. It's all, like you said, he's hitting
the pyrotechnic buttons, he's controlling the lights, he's got the
music going. It's I mean, esthetically and like musically, totally
different from the rest of the game, not even close.

(01:51:48):
But what a fun final romp, I mean, unless you're
counting the end credits, which is just a celebration of
the entire game up to that point, which again I
loved it so much. This final level was like really intense,
and I really like, it's not hard, but it is.
I thought it was appropriately long and just just a spectacle.

(01:52:10):
I had a lot of fun, you know, I had
a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:52:13):
Yeah, it's not hard, but it's exhilarating. Yeah, like yeah,
that feeling of like you're watching all the visual cues,
the changing in the colored lights on the floor, knowing
when to jump to hit those the crystals in the
middle of the hands, and then Bowser. It felt like,
you know, it was an appropriate level of challenge for
this game to feel like, you know, like it didn't

(01:52:34):
take me money tries to kill Bowser. I might have
done it. I might have even done it one at
least this last playthrough I did because I've done it before.
But like, it's the best feeling to like stomp on
this guy you know who I've killed countless times since
my childhood. But there it's it's a great way to
go out because it's it goes out with like a
literal bang in a way that's like, uh, you know,

(01:52:57):
I like a game with a victory lab I don't
need again to have the challenge be this you know,
monumental thing at the end that you know, I barely
beat by the skin of my teeth. Sometimes it's really
fun to go like, you know what, you put me
through the paces during the game, so now I get
to kick your butt and have fun doing it, like
see Super Metroid right, classic ending there, you know, just

(01:53:19):
that kind of thing where it's like, yeah, turn me loose.

Speaker 1 (01:53:22):
Victory lap is the perfect way to describe it. I
had not that's yeah, you know your Mario stuff man,
great guests for this episode. It yeah, it's it does
feel really exhilarating. It's great to smash them up. And
you know, is it my favorite final Mario sequence? No,
I mean the Galaxy sequence is really tough to top.

(01:53:42):
But that's also comparing three D to two D, apples
to oranges, it's almost not fair. It was a lot
of fun. Then you get your you know ending, and
then Prince Florian will take you back to the start
and say, you know, there's more wonder seats to collect,
maybe more secrets to discover. Why don't you do that?
I know I have several more to collect. I am

(01:54:03):
mixed on whether or not I'm gonna go back to this,
to be honest. I mean, like I said, I've still
got the Titan of World and then Yoshi's Super Mario
World too. Yoshi's Island is.

Speaker 2 (01:54:13):
What we need too.

Speaker 1 (01:54:14):
Yeah, I've I've still got plenty to go back to.
I've still not even played a Galaxy Too or completed
Galaxy Like, I beat the game, but I didn't get everything.
You know, I've got so much to do Mario wise, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:27):
Galaxy two is phenomenal. I mean, you've got some fun
times ahead of you for those for those three. Yeah,
I'm the same way. I got to the end of
it and it was like I've I've had my fill
this again. This is this is candy as a game.
It's not. It's not you know, hard fought stuff. But
there's plenty of games where I've gotten to the end
of it and gone like, well, I've done it. That's
my playthrough. It was hard, and now I'm done, and

(01:54:50):
I'm and I'm setting it down. This is the perfect
Like I don't know, maybe I'll pick it up and
play a level. You know, it's a minute and a
half of you know, fun in little bite sized chunks
that add up to a game. So it left me
wanting more, maybe not from Super Mario Wonder, but leaves
me wanting more for Super Mario Wonder Too or whatever

(01:55:11):
this team does next. Like it's again, give me one
of these every couple of years, and I will be
a happy.

Speaker 1 (01:55:16):
Camper here here, well said, and I could not agree
more with that. I know we didn't go through every
single stage. Quite frankly, I think that would have been
a boring podcast and way too long. But I enjoyed
this talk greatly. It's nice to sit down and just
gush about a game every now and then and take
off the critical hat and just talk about what games

(01:55:37):
should be at the end of the day. Fun a
good time and this was great. I had a lot
of fun with this. It's going to be fun editing this,
especially with the music. Very excited for that. But if
you haven't played Super Mario Wonder it's been over a
year since it first came out in October of twenty three,
get on it. Give it a try. It is a
great time. It's a lot of fun. Not the hardest

(01:55:58):
thing in the world, but a very fun guided experience. Now,
as we always do at the end of the episodes,
I want to talk a little bit about the guests,
show and projects going on. Doug, You're a new guest
on the show. Folks have not heard about your show.
Nostalgium Arcanum, arcanum or arcaneum.

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
I say Arcanum, but I don't know. It's a bunch
of Latin. I shouldn't have picked for a name anyway,
because it's too hard to spell and remember. But yeah,
I'm happy to tell you about the show. Rick has
been on the show. I's talking about Final Fantasy nine
and we've done It's not a video game show per se.
We've done many video game episodes, but it's a nostalgia show.
So it's whatever thing the guest is, you know, super

(01:56:39):
nostalgic for from their youth that they're still kind of
obsessed with all these years later. The refrain I usually
hear from guests is, you know, I wore out the tape,
which one means they're old enough to have experienced whatever
it was on a tape as opposed to some other medium.
But like that's kind of the vibes, like you know,
oh yeah, I've seen this movie or listen to this

(01:57:01):
album or whatever a thousand billion times and it still
moves me to this day. So that's what it's about.
So yeah, I guarantee you if there's a pop culture
topic that you're into, there's something for you there. We've
done at this point, gosh, probably over one hundred and
forty episodes something like that. So there's gonna be something
there that you'll gravitate towards.

Speaker 1 (01:57:19):
I hope totally to give listeners an idea. Two of
the non video game things that I considered but already
had episodes on were George Carlin just should not have
listened to as young as I did, but I did,
And of course the same one that I think everybody
of a certain age group could pick Pokemon. Lots of
stuff on Nostalgium Arcanum to listen to, and it's a

(01:57:42):
lot of really good stuff as well, especially if you
want to get out of the rut of just listening
to video game podcasts, which you know some of us
in these circles fall into. Now, another thing that I
like to ask guests to talk about is the newest episode,
either just released, just recorded, however, you'd like to promote
the new goings on over in your neck of the woods.
So what's new in Nostalgia Marcanum.

Speaker 2 (01:58:03):
Let's see. So this is going to come out on
March tenth.

Speaker 3 (01:58:06):
Oh okay, wait this this episode I'm asking you You're sorry, no, no,
this episode will technically be out on March sixth, so
a little in advance.

Speaker 2 (01:58:18):
Okay. So then the last episode that was just released
was on Total Recall, And so if you want to
hear two middle aged dudes do a lot of Arnold
Schwarzenegger impressions, that's your spot. Yeah, god damn it, a
lot of that.

Speaker 1 (01:58:34):
That was pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:58:35):
So we did, thank you very much. So we have
that coming up. We have some fun things. So for
on March tenth, Mario Day, we're going to do a
retrospective on the music of nineteen ninety one, and then
after that for Saint Patrick's Day, we're doing Leprechaun in
the Hood.

Speaker 1 (01:58:51):
Oh nice, all.

Speaker 2 (01:58:52):
Kinds of really different stuff. And then for I think
People in your Cohort coming up on April seventh is
a goofy movie. And I feel like every kid I
talked to it that a nineties kid is like, oh shit,
a goofy movie. So I'll put that out there that
that is a common episode.

Speaker 1 (01:59:06):
I do love that movie. That's a great I had
a lot of fun with that. As you can tell
a lot of different and varied tastes on nostalgia, Marcanum
really something for anybody that's tuning in. Definitely check that out.
You can find all of Doug's links in the description
to the podcast on social media's and to the podcast
on podcast apps. You can also find links to our

(01:59:29):
stuff as always, the Instagram, the Twitter, the Blue Sky,
the Discord, et cetera. Not sure how much longer I'm
going to be using Twitter, but that's neither here nor there.
You can also reply it's a wonderful place. Oh yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 (01:59:45):
You can also all run by a megalomaniac nazi, so
you know it makes me mad enough time, I know
there's truly not.

Speaker 1 (01:59:54):
You can also rate and review the show if you
would be so kind, helps us with the algorithm, et cetera,
et cetera. Oh, TikTok and YouTube now I make those
now YouTube shorts and TikTok, so you can find those
two and as I said, all of Doug's stuff as well.
Nostalgia Marcanum. That's about it for this episode, Doug, Thanks
for coming on. It was a last talking to you
for the first time on this show, second time on

(02:00:16):
any podcasting medium. This is a lot of fun. I'm
hoping to work with you more.

Speaker 2 (02:00:21):
I would love to, man, this is chat. It was
a great chance to go back and play Super Mario
Wonder again. And yeah, you're welcome on my show anytime
you like.

Speaker 1 (02:00:30):
Listeners beware. Well, folks, thanks for sticking around, Go play
super Mario Wonder and until then, I'm Rick. I'm your host,
signing off for now. Take care,

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Creative and Wonderful | Super Mario Bros Wonder (Ep. 135)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Creative and Wonderful | Super Mario Bros Wonder (Ep. 135)