Rule 32: Enjoy the little things in life.

theindiegeek on: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

A long time ago, before the Wii and Paper Mario, before Tidus and Yuna, even before Squeenix, there was a little game called Super Mario RPG.  I say little, and yet the game was pretty big, and pretty fantastic.  A joint venture between Squaresoft (not Square-Enix) and Nintendo, this game was the grandaddy of all the Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi RPGs.

Let me start out by saying this is one of my favorite games of all time.  It is extremely entertaining, with funny and whimsical characters, great mini games, an engaging combat system, and quite simply it’s flat out fun.  In researching for the article, I fired the game up to see if it was still fun.  Lo and behold it was.

The story starts out with your typical (and by typical I mean every time) Mario beginning.  Princess Toadstool has been captured by Bowser and Mario has to to rescue her.  Shortly after giving Bowser the boot, and just before he’s about to untie Toadstool, a giant frickin’ sword comes down right through the center of Bowser’s keep.  Mario, Bowser, and Toadstool are tossed to the far edges (if an elliptical world can have edges).

Mario is convenient tossed right back into his house, and at the insistence of Toad (y’know the guy from Mario 2), he runs back to Bowser’s keep, which is apparently only a short ways away from Mario’s house.  This explain alot.  He gets to the keep and confronts the giant sword, only now it’s a giant talking sword.

After antagonizing Mario for a bit, the sword destroys the bridge, and given that the world is one giant ellipse, he starts out on his journey the long, aka other, way.  Along the way he finds out that because of the giant talking sword, wishes are no longer granted.  Well, shit.  So he pulls together a motley crew including Mallow, the not-toad magic user, the aforementioned Princess after rescuing her from child-like psycho Booster, the not-evil-just-misunderstood Bowser, and the awesome Geno.

Geno is a badass.  He is a doll, possessed by a higher being who tells Mario what’s going on with the Star Road (the thing that grants wishes that the giant talking sword, from here on out referred to as GTS, destroyed).  He is both an adept fighter and magician.  He uses guns and his spells do quite a bit of  damage.  I wish Geno was in other games, but to this day he has not made an appearance beyond his role in Mario RPG.

One of the awesome parts of the game is the extremely varied places Mario has to go on his quest, including but not limited to:  The Mushroom Kingdom, Kero Sewers, a town of mining moles, Yoshi’s Island, a child-like psycho’s (Booster) tower of fun and explosives, Marrymore, a town whose economy is entirely built around weddings, a pirate shark’s sunken ship, beanstalks to climb, a magical kingdom in the clouds, a fiery volcano, a casino, Bowser’s Keep, a town of reformed monsters, and a world of machines.

One thing I found very entertaining is the way the story is told.  Given that this is a fantasy world, a large number of things that shouldn’t normally talk do, i.e., tadpoles, arrows, machines, turtles, etc.  One exception to this rule is plumbers who like the color red.  That’s right, our boy Mario is a mute in this game, but that doesn’t prevent him from getting his point across.  Mario is apparently a mime on the side.  He conveys his story by a series of elaborate and hilarious pantomimes, and is often joined quite comically by his teammates.  A rather unique way to get a point across.

I believe that Mario RPG has recently arrive on the WiiWare network.  If this is so, you have no excuse for not playing it.  If you are lucky enough and your Super Nintendo still works (like me) you really owe it to yourself to find a copy and play it.  It’s truly a great game.

–theindiegeek