In 2003, the Super Mario series had had two forays into the world of RPGs. First, there was Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and then there was Paper Mario and these two games were both quite different in a lot of ways and had their own distinct tone and style. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga gave us a third, equally distinct interpretation of an RPG for the franchise.

As always with the RPGs, the story is quite interesting. Princess Peach has her voice stolen from her by Cackletta, a visitor from the nearby Beanbean Kingdom and then Mario and Luigi venture there in order to retrieve her voice. Thing get more complicated as they progress. The change in location provides lots of interesting new additions, most significant of all are the Beanish people who live in the Beanbean Kingdom and aid the brothers on their quest. It’s interesting to be introduced to a whole different race and culture in the Mushroom World and there are even Beanish variations on common enemies, which are fun to see.

The story is full of entertaining humour (the game starts with Toad walking in on Mario taking a shower, for example) and I think it really benefits from having Mario and Luigi work as a team. I love Luigi and I always appreciate it when he is given more of a focus, as he is here. The two of them interact with each other quite often (speaking in an incoherent mock-Italian) and these scenes are always delightful. Luigi, especially, is very expressionate. I also really liked Bowser’s characterisation and, honestly, felt sorry for him at times, which was interesting. A new character, Fawful, is also introduced. Fawful speaks in broken English and is supposed to read like his text was poorly translated. A lot of people absolutely adore him, but I’m kind of indifferent.

Something else which I liked quite a lot was the mixture of classic Mario gameplay with more traditional RPG elements. You walk around on the over world map, jumping across bottomless pits and avoiding enemies like you would do in any other game. If you make contact with an enemy, a turn-based battle starts. When you attack, you can time your button presses to do as much damage as possible and when you are attacked, you can jump and counter attack, making it possible to avoid harm entirely if you are very skilled. It makes you feel a lot more involved in battles than you would in other RPG games. There are also a lot of puzzles to solve as you go on: most of them quite clever and some quite hard.

On the whole, it’s a game that I enjoyed. The story is full of fun little references to past games and features cameos from a number of other characters. You encounter a skeletal Kong at one point, there are posters for Wario and Kirby on the wall in one area, Geno (from Super Mario RPG) even makes a small appearance. These are just a few small examples and I won’t mention them all to avoid ruining the surprises, but it’s full of references and connection and it makes the universe of Super Mario games feel a lot more real and coherent.

If I had to fault the game it would be for two things: firstly, I think that the later bosses in the games are ridiculously long and difficult, which spoiled the end of the game for me and, secondly, I feel like things started to feel a but boring as they went on too. The actual finale is all very good (other than the bosses) but before things picked up, I was starting to feel a bit bored of wandering around the Beanbean Kingdom. But those are only two small points and this is still an excellent game. I should also quickly mention that it contains the remake of Mario Bros. from Super Mario Advance which is nice, but I will review that when I review Super Mario Advance.

Rating: 8.5/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

After the Mario Bros. Game & Watch (which I reviewed last week) Nintendo later released the Mario Bros. arcade game, which was then ported to numerous consoles. This is the game that most people think of when they think Mario Bros. and it’s one that was actually very popular.

As with many early games, it’s quite simple on the whole. The story goes that Mario and Luigi have gone down into the sewers to clear out some monsters that have appeared there and that’s about it. There are a set of platforms with pipes at the bottom and pipes at the top – enemies walk from the top to the bottom and you have to hit them from underneath the platform they’re on. This flips enemies upside down and you have to walk into them (and kick them off the screen) before they can flip back up. If they get to the bottom, they go through the pipes and come back out of the top.  There are four kinds of enemies: Shellcreepers (very similar to the Koopas in later games), Sidesteppers (a type of crab which have to be hit twice), Fighter Flies (which are harder to hit, because they keep jumping) and Freezie (ice creatures which can freeze platforms but which are much weaker and do not need to be defeated to win.) Every time you defeat all of the enemies, you go on to the next level, which will have a few more enemies and it just goes on forever.

It’s quite a fun game, particularly because you can have cooperative multiplayer, with one person as Mario and the other as Luigi – this is especially impressive considering when it was made. It’s also quite nice that this story kind of depicts the journey of Mario and Luigi from Earth to the Mushroom World. The main thing holding it back is that it’s controls aren’t really that great. Mario and Luigi both feel a little too slidey, This coupled with the fact that you don’t get much variety in gameplay means that I’m not enormously impressed with the game as a whole. It’s better than some other Nintendo arcade games though.

Rating: 6/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

When most people think of a game entitled “Mario Bros.” they probably think of the popular arcade game, but this Game & Watch was actually the first game to bare that title. Not only is this one of the Game & Watches which I had the most fun with, but it’s also the game that introduced us to Mario’s brother, Luigi. While at this point Luigi was nothing but an identical copy to Mario who wore green (and, in-game, that’s all black) he would in time grow to be one of the most loveable characters in the Super Mario franchise and it’s very interesting to look back at his origin. It’s also the first time that Mario really “spun off” from the Donkey Kong series, as there are no ties to those games other than Mario himself.

Anyway, the game itself has Mario and Luigi working in a factory where they must put boxes onto conveyor belts where things are added to them. The game takes place across two screens, but unlike other dual screened Game & Watches, this one is held so that the screens are side by side (rather than one on top of the other.) The left screen has Luigi on it and the right screen has Mario on it and you control each of them independently. Boxes appear at the bottom right, Mario has to catch them and put them onto the first conveyor belt, which brings them over to Luigi who has to pass them onto the second conveyor belt, which is above the first and then comes back to Mario. You pass them up through several conveyor belts until they get to the top and are tossed into a lorry. It’s very simple, but hugely addictive – it’s available with an easier and a harder difficulty level too. Also, like every Game & Watch, you can use it as a watch and an alarm.

This is one of my favourite Game & Watch titles and if you’re only going to try a small number of them, I strongly recommend that this be one of them! I find that some of the Game & Watches are too difficult to get really drawn into, but this one gets the difficulty just right and it’s really quite therapeutic to pass those boxes around for so long. A simple and elegant game.

Rating: 7.9/10

Buy it here.
Buy it here as part of Game & Watch Gallery 3.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)