As one of the world’s most invasive species, it was only a matter of time before cats made their way to the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom.
And when they arrived at the “Super Mario 3D World” of 2013, just like when they came to new worlds as stowaways on boats, cats immediately confirmed their dominance among the locals. It’s fitting, of course, that this evil animal – cats, recent studies estimate, are responsible for more than 1 billion bird deaths per year in America – would not simply be secondary to Mario, Luigi, Peach and other stars of the ‘Super Mario Bros. ” spell.
No, cats would control the game, resulting in one of the best but least played “Super Mario” games ever made. To date, Nintendo reports that “Super Mario 3D World” has sold 5.86 million copies, a hefty sum for a normal video game, but disappointing for a major Nintendo brand, especially one starring Mario and Luigi. In comparison, the Nintendo Switch showcase “Super Mario Odyssey” has sold more than 20 million.
Cat details abound in this all-round adorable addition to the “Super Mario Bros.” franchise. Mario villains are re-imagined with upright, triangular ears, and levels are for climbing and pouncing. This results in a design that is as vertical as it is horizontal and is also dotted with lots of cat-friendly corners. While it’s lovely to see Mario and Peach put on a cat suit – yes, they make cat noises – the game has always worked just as well as the levels are designed as if they were elaborate cat trees.
Climb up, go to the right, now down – ooh, look, shelter! Mario games have become more about exploration than running and jumping over the years, and “3D World” celebrates the player’s tendency to ask questions: Can I run here? Can I slap this? Can I find out? The answer here is almost always yes.
When “Super Mario 3D World” was released, things got pretty rough. First, it came on Nintendo’s poorly received and poorly selling Wi U console. Second, it came out around the same time as Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, so no matter how one-meowz-ing (sorry) this episode of “Super Mario” was, it was destined to be overlooked and underexposed.
Fortunately, the booming reissue market, which Nintendo has strategically exploited with “Mario”, “Zelda” and “Pikmin” reissues, has restored one of the nine lives of “Super Mario 3D World” (the puns for cats are almost out of my system, I promise).
And now, in 2021, it’s coming exclusively to the Switch with even more to think about, complete with a new chunk-sized free-walking game in ‘Bowser’s Fury,’ featuring a giant, Godzilla-esque Bowser lava raining down on Mario and his unlikely partner, Bowser Jr. The latter is distraught over the existential anger that suddenly flows through his father and asks Mario for help.
Bowser finds himself in the midst of an existential anger-driven crisis in “Bowser’s Fury.”
(Nintendo)
If you think about it for a moment, it all starts to get a little dark.
Little Bowser Jr. is clearly angry that pops have turned completely offensive. Anger, in the year 2021, is easy to imagine, and battling a crippling emotion feels more of the moment than probably anything in any previous Mario game to date. Mario immediately feels compassion, and it reminds us that as Nintendo games have gotten longer, more beautiful and smarter, we have also begun to take a look at the philosophy of the “Super Mario Bros.” spell.
“Super Mario 3D World” has long been my second favorite in the 35-year-old series, for reasons I’ll continue to unpack, after only the Switch’s 2017 masterpiece “Super Mario Odyssey”. Using a magic hat allowed “Odyssey” allowed Mario to become other characters and objects, and finally began to see himself as little more than an overwhelming plumber engaged in endless battles with Bowser.
Of course, Bowser has never really been a so-called “good” nemesis – his scary fascination with Princess Peach fostered sexist, damsel-in-distress stereotypes. In recent years, however, he has been more of a troll. In “Super Mario 3D World,” Bowser gets things started by kidnapping a bunch of colorful fairytale princess creatures named Sprixies, seemingly just because. (I can almost hear him scream, “If you think kidnapping a princess is offensive, wait until I kidnap a whole group of them!”)
For a moment to get academic, I have long considered that “Super Mario 3D World” is inspired by and an answer to the Internet, especially how it affects our reactions to the world around us. See, for example, the use of online cultures meme-loved cats, or the plethora of tubes, sending Mario and his friends from deserts to grassy plains, haunted houses to icy cliffs, faster than a Google search. While Mario has long been able to transform himself into other animals through powerful suits, the raccoon-like tanooki suit never felt the same way born from a trend.
Then there’s Bowser, back with his castle and his obnoxious vintage car, a grotesque thing that’s all purple and has spikes and looks like an ice cream cone with exhaust pipes and candy corn. No one would drive this, but it would look neat in an Instagram photo. Bowser is really just an online bully who harasses Mario and co for living differently. It’s easy to imagine spending his kidnapping time reading Reddit, at least that’s my explanation for his irrational anger at everything in ‘Bowser’s Fury’.
In fact, “Bowser’s Fury” is a Mario game that seems perfectly suited to our anything-goes-but-short attention span world of social media chaos, where Mario and Bowser Jr. can run up towers and slide down grassy slopes with a bunch of pink, blue and green cats, only to be interrupted out of nowhere by Bowser’s silly tantrums. Bowser will eventually disappear – he will return at random intervals – but ignore him as much as possible and he will aim fireball after fireball at us until we are forced to respond.
Most of the game is essentially Mario and Bowser Jr. trying to clean up Lake Lapcat (yes, that’s what the world is called), when suddenly Bowser arrives to all get up in their entries with fireballs to ruin everyone’s day. But collect a few power-ups and faster than Mario can tweet “send me cute pictures of pets,” he’ll turn into a giant cat.
Cuteness is abundant in “Super Mario 3D World.”
(Nintendo)
This, while not only turning Mario into full-blown Internet cat maximism, will allow him, with a few well-timed jumps, to fight back against the oversized Bowser, all the while liberating more of this feline paradise from Bowser’s grip. (aside: Nintendo’s attention to detail in Lake Lapcat is wonderful, as there are cat hieroglyphs everywhere that hint at a once-ancient feline civilization).
Compared to the base game of “Super Mario 3D World,” which, while on rails, feels relatively free in its portrayal of snuggly running, claw, and jumping, “Bowser’s Fury” is wide-open noise and action, an experiment in which we choose. move between locations instead of going in and out of levels. However, when combined, they show us that there is one thing a bully and a troll can’t stand: worship.
Cuteness wins, yes, but as “Bower’s Fury” takes the franchise to more emotional realms, let’s hope some vulnerability, if not full therapy, is next for the ever-expanding world of “Super Mario Bros.”