I, Mario

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: October 23rd, 2006

Real quick — GameSetWatch brought this to my attention, and I think it’s pretty darn cool. (At least on paper.)

I, Mario is a community driven, brutally realistic re-imagining of the Super Mario universe that was sparked by a hypothetical writeup on the OC ReMix boards by interesting and probably Irish guy Shael Riley.

Check out the I, Mario Wiki and the Official I, Mario Forum for thought provoking concept art, discussion, and an ever growing design. Don’t hesitate to get involved if you have something to add! I’d love to see this project go all the way, though there are numerous potential roadblocks on the horizon.

There’s an interview with Shael over at GSW that does a better job explaining things just begging to be read.

Digest and discuss!

EDIT: Upon digging deeper into the wiki and forum, I’ve found just as much misguided, fan-fictiony garbage as cool, thought-provoking concepts. But it’s still early on, yeah?

(Source: GameSetWatch)

Posted in Community, Interviews, Remakes

http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

I will start the discussion off with these inflammatory comments:

While the concept of a twisted, survival-horror Mario game featuring realistic representations of the Mushroom Kingdom’s bizarre creatures and landscapes has a (whole) lot of potential, I have serious doubts that a fan community will be able to do it real justice.

Also, this will never ever EVER become an official game. Ever.

DISCUSSION BEGIN
KNau

At first I thought it was an interesting little pet project, sort of “wouldn’t it be funny if…” But seeing how much time, effort and thought people have put into it…now it just seems kinda creepy. Like, erotic Sailor Moon fan-art level of creepiness.

BMcC is right, even with an “indie friendly” attitude, Nintendo wouldn’t touch this with a 40 foot pole.
BeamSplashX

“Peach, you gotta stay alive!”
“No Mario, the most important thing is the MISSION!” (cue minute-long blood coughing-up scene, ended with blood vomiting)
“PEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH!”
(Peach’s head explodes and a parasite comes out, and if you don’t press the right buttons soon enough, it’ll rip off Mario’s face)

I am SO taking over this project.
chad

yeah, it’s pretty difficult to match indie wiki-style game making with hyper realism. It’d be better to explore the realism in terms of emotional impact, rather than graphics. That might be more interesting, actually– doing the exact same project except only using actual mario sprites, combined with massive, obsessive, byzantine controls and … you know, I can’t even finish this sentence. This project is pretty much bottom of the barrel, as far as conceptual games that need to get made. It’s been pretty much talked about as much as it needs to have been. Everyone has seen those bizarre Fist of the Northstar mario drawings that are out there, right? Just by the way.
Sergio

Eh, I had this idea. But I don’t see how it could really make a good game, just a good concept. Regardless, I wish them luck.
Teeth

It’s not even a good concept.
anonymous

some people just like complaining anonymously about any shit that they come across.

I am one of those people.
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

Come now, guys… I didn’t mean for this to turn into trashing their project. If you look close, there’s some good stuff in there!

Chad: I believe I know what you’re talking about, but could you linky-link please?

Sergio/Teeth: That’s another thing. I think a ton of people have had some version of this concept pop into their heads at some point, myself included.

Thing is, there isn’t a single game company out there going, “If only we had more CONCEPTS!” And even if you took the raw concepts of the greatest games out there, they wouldn’t be any good without great Design and Execution.

The problem with fan games is often that fans and wannabe designers are better at *talking* than *creating.* (But I’d love to be proven wrong!)
Teeth

My personal stance is I absolutely loathe the adultifying of perfectly decent IPs. I hated that modern He-Man artwork you may have seen recently, for example. Why should everything have to have a dark, mature angle to it? Prince Of Persia? It’s ridiculous.

As pointed out it’s not some fantastic genius leap of the imagination to go “oh, there’s a fairly innocent IP, let’s darkenify it!”. What you’re left with is a bunch of people who *think* they’re cool for coming up with the ‘mature’ Mario concept. Plus all of this is totally ignoring the fact that it’s totally incompatible in any way with darkenification.

American McGee did the same with Alice but Jan Svankmajer got there first and did it with some actual style. So he gets nil points too.

These guys need to give up now, delete the wiki and go and drink some beer in the sun under a blue sky and forget they were ever part of the project.
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

Aaah COLD, man. :)

But, yeah, I hate that too. They actually address that complaint on the wiki saying the Mario universe would naturally be dark if imagined realistically, which I think is a more interesting angle than just darkness for the sake of darkness.

I mean, in the Super Mario story he’s a real Italian-American plummer who gets sucked into this bizarre world where he has to fight to survive.

I just thought of this: *I, Mario* may be an opposite reaction to the original’s whimsical portrayal of this kill-or-be-killed scenario, but it’s likely the original, in its fanaticalness, was itself a reaction to harsh Japanese folklore and modern history.

…Maybe?
mushu

Does nobody remember the Super Mario Brothers movie?
Tony

God, is indie gaming a joke or what? i played the snes already…so i don’t need retro gaming. and i don’t care about a “realistic” mario. Indie and copyright infringement shouldn’t mix.
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

Yeah, Tony, Indie Gaming’s a joke ’cause there’s an indie game you don’t care for.

Mushu: I remember, but only in the sense that I remember it *existing*… Didn’t it take a ton of “creative” liberties, though?
chad

here’s that link I was talking about (I saw it most recently linked off insertcredit): http://www5c.biglobe.ne.jp/~kurekure/oebi/mario/mario.htm
I think it’s important to remember, also, that a lot of the things that we consider bright happy kids’ stuff has just been scraped down and sanitized over the years. The little mermaid? dies alone and heartbroken. Fairy tales were dark, very dark, in their natural state. Fairy tale kids are constantly being burned alive, eaten, anything. I think this project (like others) is an attempt to revisit the history (our history) of games and to make sense of the early forms, similar to the way that fairy tale scholarship uses the tales to learn more about our larger history. Still, though, I don’t think this project is doing it right.
Teeth

By all means retell a Brothers Grimm fairytale or something like that with all of the gory bits intact. Please, tell them to go ahead. That would be fine by me.

Mario is only a plumber in the first place because the original jump-man sprite was so low res that they didn’t have room for a mouth, so it turned into a moustache. Maybe, if we’re going for the roots of a sanitised fairytale, they should retell the story of a man whose mouth became a moustache. Perhaps the mushroom kingom is the fevered imagination of a desperate man who is unable to eat.
Teeth

For the love of the Gods somebody post a new news item ;)
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

Haha, as you wish. I’m sick of this post too.

I thought there’d be some interesting discussion in there somewhere, but the subject’s just too… hateable, I guess. I dunno.

I’ll post something new tomorrow. Something that won’t piss *everybody* off. :)
BeamSplashX

Sonic is a blue hedgehog because he’s cybernetically enhanced and covered in chemicals and the government killed his family and erased his memories and sent him to the former Soviet Union TOM CLANCY HAS STOCKS IN YOUR SOUL.
Oddbob

One of the things I love about Mario is that it is unashamedly Mario – its deftly and consistantly designed (for the most part) to exist in its own Mario-esque world, from the sprites to the world maps to the level layout. If you take that away, then you take out the very thing that makes it Mario.

I’d not so much ask why anyone would want to do this (its a given for me anyway that you wouldn’t want to unless senility kicked in) but what exactly would it add to the Mario universe or franchise? Its not especially original, its not exactly subversive, doubtlessly nowhere near art judging by what I’ve read before my eyes crossed over…so whats the point other than an ego wanking exercise for all involved?

Whilst I’m here, I’d like to propose Rainbow Islands: The Killing Rainbows, New Zealand Atomic Bomb Story and, and…I’ll shush.

“Sonic is a blue hedgehog because heâ€™s cybernetically enhanced and covered in chemicals and the government killed his family and erased his memories and sent him to the former Soviet Union TOM CLANCY HAS STOCKS IN YOUR SOUL”

This is all true! :-)
SMB Mario

Hello, everyone! It’s a me, Mario! Wheee!

Now where the fuck is EoS?
negative zero

wat a weird topic
http://dynamiclinq.blogspot.com Likwit_Snake

Lol weird indeed :p
dessgeega

sonic is an ecoterrorist. but the point stands.
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

*Yikes.*
chad

I liked your point, teeth– about the jumpman sprite. I had read that a while ago (about how he’s wearing “overalls” to distinguish his arms from his body, etc–) and I think that is exactly the sort of thing we should be talking about. That’d be a real postmodern video game, one that rexamines the actual sources of our current video game culture, and though every other discipline has moved past postmodernism, it may be that videogames need to get through for themselves to make it to whatever comes next.
Facade

I’m assuming most, or none, of you took the time to read the forums. I can see why many of you would cringe at some of the ideas, or rather, disorganization of ideas. That is the goal of the wiki-database, to organize the data…but it is very difficult, so it isn’t near completion yet.

Someone mentioned (along the lines) that we won’t accomplish anything due to us being fans and that we’ll only be great at debates. In the past, yes I agree with that statement, as is obvious by the disorganization of the forums, but the next month (approx.) is a turning point; we are working on creating an actual website and getting new forums that will be more organized (there will be public and developer (private) forums).

To comment further on the new website, there will be a section to address many issues that people have with the project, to explain why we do things certain ways and not yours (per se). As for our current “developer” (if you will) members, we’re working on organizing ourselves to increase our productivity to further address the issue of “not accomplishing anything / debate-syndrom”; however, as stated elsewhere, we aren’t in a hurry to finish this project, it is a hobby. To reference American McGee, he said something along the lines of his developer group taking forever to decide on anything in the game, but it was worth it to ensure the high quality they were targetting for.

To briefly comment on the darkness of the game, like said earlier by someone, by us making the game “realistic” it “naturally” gains a darker tone. We aren’t creating this game simply by saying, “Hey Bob, lets make Mario dark!” We’re doing this with as logical of an approach as possible, considering that we’re tying logic to Mario… Anyways, as said before, the darker tone comes naturally as we explain how creatures (and whatnot) have certain abilities (be it innate or aquired): ex. One issue we’re working on is if Chain Chomps are mechanical or animal-esque. Are they created or do they create themselves through natural breeding? These issues arrise when changing Mario to a more realistic theme. This game is still based on the first game, in essense, it is a recreation of that game…but in a more “realistic” setting. It is not illogical killing rainbows and the sort… >_>

P.S. No offense, but I must say some of your radical examples on how Mario becomes “realistic” is very ammusing to me…if anything, they motivate me to continue on. Who knows, they might motivate me to make a witty ‘I, Mario’ webcomic to mock the game. At least by having us mock our own game, no one will be able to depress us and stop us…at least that is my take on how to handle it. Anyways, I always appreciate the attention towards our project, have a splended day/night (depending of time zone of course ^_^).