Good-bye 2-D platforming, hello 3-D polygons and analogue sticks.
The Nintendo 64 emerged in 1996 as one of the most powerful consoles of its time, producing 3-D visuals that not even the Playstation or Sega Saturn could produce. At a time when franchises were attempting (and often failing) to make the jump to 3-D, along came Super Mario to save the day yet again.
Mario’s 16-bit debut serves as an introduction to Nintendo’s most legendary console and fleeting farewell to 2-D Mario platforming. And Yoshi.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 90s. In this era we saw many things; we saw the true start of the (in)famous 16-bit console wars, the slow decline of arcades, the invention of CD-ROM media and the start of a tradition with mainline Mario titles. Thought it was nice the NES had three great Mario games? You are not going to see that again for a very long time. Make that nineteen years to be exact. Take a good long look over this fourth Mario Mania entry, because the 2-D Mario platforming ship is sailing and it feels like a bittersweet moment.
The finale of the NES trilogy is truly a classic to behold.
The year was 1990. It is about a year before the Super Nintendo makes its debut, but the NES is enjoying brisk sales of both hardware and games. The previous year Nintendo released its first handheld system, the Game Boy, and unleashed the addiction known as Tetris. This was, however, in North America. As I eluded to in Mario Mania #2, a Famicom player often had a different, exclusive set of hardware to play with than his counterpart in North America. The Japan-only accessory, the Famicom Disk System, was one of them.
Two games in one part! Can you guess which one I like better?
Different things usually happened with Nintendo in two completely different continents. While the NES arrived in 1986 in North America, Japan was already in its third year of Famicom glory. Nintendo’s then-released Famicom Disk System introduced the battery back-up save feature, eliminating the need for long over-drawn password saves. Games like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda greatly benefited from this innovation. It was also this year that Nintendo saw fit to release a sequel to Super Mario Bros, appropriately titled Super Mario Bros. 2. This was a completely different Super Mario Bros. 2 than the one North Americans got in 1988. So what in the world happened?
Matt takes an extensive look at Mario’s first console outing, Super Mario Bros.
I have a pet peeve that goes along the lines of this sentence: “It’s good, for its time.”
Matt takes an in-depth look at each Mario game.
You don’t have to tell me that I am a year late. I already know that. Mario’s 25th Anniversary has already come and gone, and Nintendo’s other big franchise is celebrating its 25th this year: namely, the Legend of Zelda. Yet you already know that by now, so you are probably asking this question right now: “Matt, what the hell? Why are you doing a Mario retrospective when you could be writing about Zelda?”
