Reading, Writing and... Gaming?

In my brief tenure as an English teacher, I found that some middle school students have been less than enthusiastic about the learning process. Maybe all of the reading turns ‘em off. Maybe they find the subject matter difficult.

Or maybe they’re just bored to tears.

Enter “stealth education.” That is, circumstances where the student finds the learning process highly enjoyable and wants to continue of his or her own accord. The Liemandt Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on improving education, sees great potential in the concept, and is ready to put their money where their mouth is: They’re hosting a contest where teams of up to eight college students create a video game that teaches math and science. The prize is a cool $25,000.

This was taken at the Liemandt Foundation's latest "Lemonade Day," which has nothing to do
with what we're talking about. But it IS hella creepy.

Contestants certainly have their work cut out for them, as previous attempts at “edutainment” have been, shall we say, a few steps below brilliant. (Mario Teaches Typing will forever haunt my restless dreams, and I’m convinced that Mario is Missing was some sort of sadistic programmer’s joke taken to tragic extremes.) The finalists have already been flown to San Francisco to showcase their games and are waiting with baited breath for the judges’ decision.

Let’s just hope the winning entry is better than, say, The Typing of the Dead.

This is not what your mother meant when she said "use your words."

Top Games of All Time #5: Super Mario Bros. (NES)

While browsing through Video Games or Bust the other day, I read a post where the the author, Wade, spoke about his favorite game of all time. It got me thinking: What are MY favorite games? So I concocted a list of what I feel are the five greatest titles of all time, from the dawn of gaming through today's 80 gig, high definition monsters. For the next few days I'll be revealing my choices, culminating with a chance for you, the readers, to weigh in on YOUR most beloved titles. Feel free to agree or disagree with my choices, or even leave a list of your favorite games of all time, in order, as a comment!

Now, without further ado, Matt's fifth favorite game of all time: Super Mario Bros. for the NES.

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The third entry into the series might have been bigger and better, but the original Super Mario Bros. started the Nintendo revolution.

The title screen that's permanently burned into the psyche of thousands of 20-somethings.

From its instantly recognizable, peppy soundtrack to its brilliantly simple controls and play mechanics, Super Mario Bros. screamed instant classic from day one. Designed by the immortal Shigeru Miyamoto – who would go on to create many other system-defining titles like The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong and Kid Icarus – the original Super Mario Bros. shows the player everything he or she needs to know in the very first level, then expands upon those abilities as it progresses through World 8, when the action hits a fevered pitch. Novices and NES power players alike seemed to never get enough of the red-clad plumber and his brother, stomping gomba after gomba and terrorizing the turtle population of the Mushroom Kingdom on their endless quest to rescue the elusive Princess Toadstool (later retconned to the airheaded Prince Peach).

The first level.

One might assumed that a game which only progresses from left to right couldn’t have much depth, by Miyamoto’s Mario could discover a gaggle of hidden goodies, from extra coins, mushrooms and 1-ups to concealed steps, instant vines leading to “Coin Heaven” and even the coveted Warp Zones, which allowed industrious players to skip levels they didn’t feel like trudging though or had already completed. The secrets of Super Mario Bros. were the buzz of school yards, playgrounds and cafeterias for years afterward and, whether they cared to admit it or not, a hot topic for many adult fans as well.

This is an image we're all familiar with.

Because it was included in some way or another in many incarnations of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s basic gaming package, most NES players had access to Super Mario Bros.; therefore, Mario and Luigi’s first super adventure is what introduced many players to the vibrant world of Nintendo, or even video games in general. Super Mario Bros.' impact on gaming can be seen even in today’s 3D titles, and Mario is arguably the king of the video game mascots, securing just as many (if not more) Nintendo fans as he did during the glory days of the NES.

I salute you, Super Mario and slightly disrespected brother Luigi, for giving me hundreds of hours of fun and enlightening so many to the ways of the Nintendo.

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So what are your favorite games of all time? Leave a reply with your top three in order of greatest to third greatest to have your voice heard here in a future post!

Lackluster Super Mario Costumes for Lackluster Children

I ain't afraid of no six month
long costume hunt!

When I was a kid, we didn't go down to the local Disguise Hut and purchase prefabricated Halloween costumes; we MADE them, gosh darnit. You wanna be a Ghostbuster? Then it's time to hop in the car and spend the next 2000 hours finding a child-sized jumpsuit and making ecto-goggles out of your dad's safety glasses and two plastic cups. You wanna be Guile from Street Fighter II? Then it's time to scour the tri-state area for some kind of hair spray that will make you blond for a day but you can wash it out and it won't stain your clothes, as well as a pair of camouflage pants that look Flash Kick appropriate. You wanna be a cross dresser? I do too sometimes; it's really confusing. Er, for Halloween, of course.

In my experience, it was best to start making your costume in May of the year before you wanted to wear it.

In 1990, the year Super Mario Bros. 3 was released, my brother Ian and I dressed as Mario and Luigi, respectively. While no pictures of this event exist because my parents thought that the whole Nintendo thing was just a phase, or probably they just didn't have a camera, I assure you that it was mind-blowing. The quest for green pants in a child's size negative 12 went on for days: A determined eight-year-old Matt and his slightly less determined mother camped out in the tent section of Playtogs Warehouse and when the store closed we resumed our search in the "slightly irregular" section, braving the dark stillness of after hours. Eventually we found a pair of green jeans that was approximately 16 sizes too small, and though I can never have children of my own now, I was glad to complete my costume. Add a set of cardboard raccoon ears and a tail that we cut and colored ourselves and you've got the most epic Halloween anywhere ever. It was so epic my parents for got the damn camera.

At the store next to where I work occasionally (when they feel like giving me hours), is some kind of Halloween shop that opened a few weeks ago. Inside there's the typical array of cheap, gaudy costumes and life-sized foam dead people you can put on your lawn to frighten the neighbor children, even on Halloween. As I walked around, something on the back wall caught my eye: Super Mario costumes.

It'sa me.. Mario?

I suddenly flashed back to those cold, lonely nights I spent weeding through the urine-soaked bottoms of the bargain bins for anything that resembled green pants or a green hat. I shivered a bit as I thought, "There they are in one package!" albeit kind of cheesy looking.

It'sa me, Luwiggy-o!

It took me a month to find all that stuff when I was a kid! But I'm pretty sure my Luwiggy (as I call him) costume was much cooler, though I'd know for sure if SOMEONE HAD TAKEN A PICTURE. This one kind of reminds me of Luwiggy's Mansion.

I wonder if this kid makes squeaky noises when he gets hit, like in the 1989 Super Mario Bros. cartoon.

For children with no ambition, here's a Toad costume. I prefer to call him "Tod" though as I'm falling down thousands of pits when playing as him. Tod's the worst Super Mario character ever. First he and his people get themselves turned into bricks, then his stats are frelled in Super Mario Bros. 2 to the point where when he jumps, the player thinks his pockets are filled with hundreds of pounds of rotting veggies and dead trouters. Well, at least he can pick things up quickly, so he's got a great future in the cigarette butt retrieval industry.

Robo-Yoshi, here to kill us all.

This one actually looks pretty good and would be difficult to make yourself. But I wouldn't allow a child of mine to get it because it apparently forces the wearer to do the robot dance every second they have it on, as evidenced by the unfortunate child in the picture.

OBLIGATORY FEMALE COSTUME

Even though the princess was the best character in Super Mario Bros. 2 because she floats like a butterfly and stings like angry young royalty, much of today's gaming youth don't remember her like that. Ever since she changed her name to Peach for no good reason, she's stopped fighting bad guys and spent her time playing boardgames and tennis. There's a feminist rant in here somewhere, but I think I'll just point out that young girl gamers who are really into the Mario series would be better off dressing as the red man himself and showing the world that women can be strong too, even after having their starring role in Super Mario Bros. 2 reduced to captured princess again just one game later.

As I examined these costumes for way too long and creepily took pictures of them, I thought to myself that they don't look BAD, they just look a little... generic. I imagine that the kids coming to my door wearing these costumes on Halloween will be kind of generic too, you know? (Unless you're Isaac Quintana's thankfully un-color blind son; then you're awesome. Who's Isaac Quintana, you ask? He's not an insider, a journalist, or a programmer, but he is a fine and insightful writer.)

There's a great thrill of finding all the components to a costume yourself. Anyone who's done it knows that Halloween is just more fun if you've dug through the bargain bins and cut and colored your own costume. But I want to let you in on a little secret - The best Mario Bros. costume of all time isn't the one I wore in 1990, nor is it available at a Halloween store or even in the pages of Nintendo Power, this decade or any other. No, it's right here:


My God! The late '80s puked all over that poor child!

My parents didn't have a camera around when Ian and I were the Super Matt Bros., but they did take a photo of me wearing the most embarrassing outfit/best Mario-themed costume of all time: a neon blue Super Mario 3 shirt, lime green biker shorts that clung to my thighs like spandex (because they were), a hat only a painter could love and socks pulled up to approximately nipple height. I'm not sure why Mom and Dad let me go out in public like this. Maybe they were laughing at me behind my back, or maybe they knew that two decades in the future, I'd post this image on my glorious blog for the world to see.

I'm pretty sure it's the laughing at me behind my back thing though. Oh well, at least with an outfit like that, I could join the gangs of Rival Turf!.

So to all those kids out there looking to bum some candy from their begrudgingly obliging neighbors this Halloween, start making your costume now. It'll never be as good as the one with the Godforsaken biker shorts that I came up with, but you'll stand out triumphantly in a sea of store-bought Marios, Luwiggys, Tods and Robo-Yoshis. Have fun, be safe, and OH GOD IN HEAVEN MOM AND DAD LET ME WALK AROUND LIKE THAT IN PUBLIC.

Happy Halloween!

Nintendo Cartoons Perpetuate Weirdness

It's not until I viewed the cartoons of my childhood with an adult lens that I realized how truly bizarre the world of Nintendo is when its attempts to tell a coherent story on the small screen. When you're playing a video game - especially on the godly Nintendo Entertainment System - storylines don't have to make much sense. Take the plot of 1990's Bad Dudes, by Data East: "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"

Then the player says, "Uh, sure, as long as I get to beat up hundreds of palette swapped ninjas." See? Instant story.

Now imagine trying to make a Bad Dudes cartoon. Would they try to save the president every week? How do you keep the series going? Either the president would have to be kidnapped every Thursday, or the Dudes would have to fail in their mission to save him a bunch of times. That's neither very good for the country nor a positive reflection on our favorite dudes' badness.

In the '80s and '90s, video game based cartoons like Pole Position, Darkstalkers and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show faced a very similar problem: How do you take off-the-wall, paper thin video game plots and turn them in to weekly or even daily cartoons? The answer was simple: Emulate shows like Thundercats and Voltron by having the heroes beat the villains every time, but somehow, the villains come back just as strong in the next episode.

The results were a mixed bag, but for the most part, anyone unfamiliar with Nintendo would think these cartoons were written by someone who is very familiar with the Wacky Weed. Let's take Captain N: The Game Master for example. Here's the intro:



So 15-year-old Kevin Keene is the savior of video land, which apparently only includes Metroid, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong and Castlevania. Screw Mario Bros.; that game was overrated anyway!*

*No it wasn't.

Kevin's mother continues to badger him to "clean up [his] room" as he's sucked into a 15 inch television set, just like in real life. Then he's given the ability to "pause" the action around him, jump several stories high and shoot enemies with his Zapper gun as long as he's got enough energy. If you've never played a Nintendo game, this makes no sense. And even if you have, you're likely to be more than a little confused when characters like the abnormally vain Simon Belmont and the inexplicably green Mega Man start, uh, doing ANYTHING.

Kevin battles against an obviously African American (and decidedly more kick ass than in the game) Mother Brain, a light blue King Hippo who's nothing like his Punch-Out!! counterpart, and a very angry Donkey Kong. Also, the soundtrack features high-pitched, off-key singers belting out classic radio hits like "Walk Like a Man." My brain was reduced to a thick pea soup within three weeks of watching this tripe, and I was, and still am, a Nintendo maniac. Anyone had never been ensnared by the NES's hypnotic grip who caught a few episodes of Captain N must still in therapy right now.

Despite the inconsistencies and mind-numbing craziness featured in Captain N: The Game Master and the other video game based shows, I've got plenty of fond Saturday morning memories of my video heroes come to life on TV. Take a minute to reminisce with these awesome intros for the Super Mario Super Show and the Legend of Zelda if you lived through them. And if not... well, I'm sorry I just hurt your brain.

Super Mario Super Show intro featuring the late Lou Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi



The Legend of Zelda intro, from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show (Fridays)



The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 Opening

If You Give a Gamer a Camera...

...he'll ask to make gamer movies.

As an undergraduate I had a duel major. The first was English, which may or may not be surprising. The second was Communications: Media Studies. Basically, the college gave me a high quality, near professional grade camera and told me that as long as I wrote hundreds of essays about Tennessee Williams, Henry James and R.L. Stine for my first major, I could use the camera to film whatever I wanted. All I had to do was adhere to some odd criteria like "video must use rack focus at least twice," "video must depict a jump cut" or "video must incorporate embarrassing photograph of Richard Nixon."

While everyone else was filming criminally acted how-to videos and their cat asleep on the washing machine for 25 minutes straight - all with Intellivision quality sound - I was filming stuff with street fights, guns and allusions to video games - all with Intellivision quality sound. Fresh from the archives, here's a few short films that are sure to inspire a mighty sense of Mario madness! Or the madness might come from the fact that you wasted your time.

Probably the second one.


Outer Heaven

A Metal Gear Solid parody circa 2002. Note that the gun featured at the end of the video is based on Konami's Hyper Blaster design.





Anti Drunk Driving PSA, Nintendo Style

Filmed to compliment a presentation by Sarah Shepherd. She also came up with the "drinking isn't a game" concept, which is why she advertises for a big company now.





Ultra Omnisphere 3000

This is basically my finest accomplishment, meaning that I peaked at the age of 19. And I love this video enough to be okay with that. Featuring my entire family doing silly things and a boatload of references to Silent Hill, Super Mario and more, Ultra Omnisphere 3000 proves that even if you take the player away from the games, you can't take the games away from of the player. Fun fact: The main male character was inspired by the late "As Seen on TV" spokesman, Billy Mays.

Back to School Week: The Learning Game Vol. HA HA FOOLED YOU It’s Super Mario Time!

HOOLIGANS

As of noon on September 9, 2010, there were at least 25 hooligans roaming the streets within a mile and a half mile radius of my home. I know it’s not Yom Kipper yet and according to the local school district’s website, these kids should be in school today. How am supposed to post the last volume of The Learning Game with today’s students blatantly skipping school to smoke cigarettes, knock over statues and terrorize dogs?

I’ll post the final volume of The Learning Game tomorrow, when these hoodlums decide that school is where it’s at. For now I wouldn’t feel right talking about education when so many of our youths are blatantly ignoring it. But fear not; sweet, sweet content is just a scroll away. As I’ve know since I was a small, annoying child, Super Mario fixes everything!

OR DOES HE!?

The Other Side of the Flagpole

You think it’s fun to stomp on our heads. You think it’s fun to kick us around. You think it’s fun to steal our coins, eat our mushrooms and pull up our flowers. Well you know what? I think you’re all SICK. Did you ever stop to think how we feel? Can’t any of you people think for yourselves?

Do you even know what you’re doing to us? I assure you, this is no game. All of our poles are ruined, because that fat man keeps tearing down the flags! We had to install many a spinning fire stick security system around our precious flagpoles, but he keeps jumping over them at the right time and stealing the flags anyway. Not even our best question mark blocks hovering randomly in the sky can stop his demented lust for our flags. No castle is safe from his thieving ways either! He just walks right in and starts stealing money and breaking things. You can forget about building anything out of bricks too, because that red ruffian comes by and smashes them all, looking for money! I bet he spends it on drugs, too! Anyone as obsessed with mushrooms and eating flowers as he is has to be a druggie!

And for the love of Zelda, do you have any idea what it’s like to tell a child that his father was murdered by that sinister mustachioed man?

By Silent KV

“Mommy, why hasn’t Papa Goomba been home for the past three weeks?”

“I’m sorry, son, but your father isn’t in another castle like I’ve been telling you. He’s… dead!”

“Dead!?”

“Yes son! It’s true! He was – oh, I can barely say it! – he was stomped to death by Super Mario! And then that evil man robbed your father’s flat corpse of all 100 of his points!”

“Daddy! Nooooooooooo!”

Maybe if you knew the real deal about that Super Mario guy and his brother, what’s-his-name, you’d think twice about killing our people and ransacking our homes. We’re not the villains here, he is. Him and his brother, what's-his-name.

Everything was fine before he showed up. We lived as a tight knit community. We all had steady jobs: some of us walking back and forth on the same piece of terrain all day, and others periodically popping out of pipes, throwing a fireball, and ducking back inside. Then, after a hard day’s work, it was back home to relax by walking back and forth in the same room until daybreak. Everyone enjoyed their existence and had no reason to complain.

But then one day, a fat, sinister shadow befell the land. The man in red had arrived. We were helpless against his futuristic technologies; we had never seen a creature that large move with such agility. For example, if he’s walking, he can stop and go in the opposite direction without having to bump into a pipe first! And he can go faster than just walking; he can run! How could we even begin to compete with advanced military strategies like that?

It'sa me, MURDER-O

Knowing he was physically superior to us, he began ruling over us with an iron fist. His first move was to have is girlfriend, Princess Toadstool, imprison our kind and handsome leader, King Koopa. With him out of the way, he and his brother were free to begin stealing our money and killing us any time they wanted.

So I beg of you all; please stop assisting this man’s heinous crimes! He’s brainwashed you all into thinking that we’re somehow bad, and yet, what proof has he ever given you? When, besides the few times our fearless King Koopa has escaped from the Princess’ evil grasp, have any of us attacked you? Well, besides the Hammer Brothers; I guess sometimes they get a little careless with their tools.

We all just want to go back to our normal lives! We want to be able to walk aimlessly again, and pop in and out of pipes without fear! Please, I implore you! Don’t let the man in red seduce you to a life of crime!

Why can we all just be goombas?