Bravo

Super Mario Bros. 2: A Cover-up...REVEALED!

In case you didn't notice when you were 7 years old, Super Mario Bros. 2 kinda sucks. The game deviated entirely from the original's formula of enemies, attacks, movement, health, and even level design. Instead of Koopa Troopas, we get Shy Guys, which look like psychotic Ewoks wearing Jason masks (fortunately these nightmarish chimeras can be injured by a thrown turnip or sundry other veggies). Instead of your Seattle hippie-style mushroom-based health regeneration scheme have to collect cherries seemingly nailed to thin air. And instead of Bowzer, the inimical lizard-tyrant at the end of the first SMB, you get Wart, a bloated, effete, burping frog that's deathly allergic to thrown vegetables as the final boss. And oh yeah, the whole game is a fucking dream. Snooze.

(LEFT) Super Mario Bros. 2. (RIGHT) Doki Doki Panic. Fuck you, Nintendo.

As it turns out, there's a reason for this: SMB2 isn't actually a Mario game. Wait what? Indeed, the U.S. Super Mario Bros. 2 game we were all playing was, in fact, a very slightly doctored version of a Japanese game called Dream Factory: Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. The levels are identical, the enemies are identical, and the playable characters are identical, except for the graphical sprites themselves. So while the Japanese were all enjoying their actual SMB sequel (now titled Super Mario Bros. All-Stars in the U.S.), we were gullibly swallowing some cheap Japanese knock-off. Seriously, did they think we'd never figure this out? Well, it took 20 years, I suppose.

The thing on the right is the effeminate final boss to SMB2, Wart. I guess that's an Asian crab on the left.

Truth be told, I didn't figure this out. Some guy in search of YouTube glory put together a whole exposé which I'm just summarizing here. Oh, you want to watch it---and I strongly suggest you do---well then here's the video. Credit goes to NJB '08 for this find.

Perspective

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were here and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant . . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time -- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike
sparks anywhere.

There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

--- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

Nostalgia

With the upcoming release of what will probably be another one of the most overanticipated and underenjoyed movies of all time, I thought it was interesting that I stumbled across this in Google's Patent search (which apparently exists).

Recognize that fella? That's fucking Megatron boy-ee. So you'd better recognize.

Getting excited about stumbling upon the patent filed for the Megatron "toy gun convertible into robot-humanoid form" fills me with both glee and a weighty sense of nostalgia. While it makes me happy to be reminded of one of the best cartoon during my childhood, I recognize that it's pretty fucking lame to have been so by looking at a patent from 1986.

In digging a little bit, I'm amazed to learn that new shows only ran for 3 years, between 1984 and 1987. I guess I didn't really realize that when I was 6, since watching the same episode 20 times in a month didn't make much of a difference to me.

If you remember, things changed considerably in the series when the first Transformers movie (The Transformers: The Movie) came out in 1986. In this screaming guitar solo-laced cartoon movie, Megatron and his Decepticons committed countless atrocities against the Autobots and their wimpy human friends. Basically all of the main characters were killed off, not to mention that this was the first time any character had ever died in any cartoon show. So to really drive home the point that 6-year olds shouldn't just naively assume cartoon robots that battle for global domination against an evil transformable-robot syndicate every day are immortal, the movie's producers included a scene in which Megatron shoots Autobot Ironhide point-blank in the head after telling him about the plan to destroy Autobot City. Ironhide's corpse was later recovered and given the honor of being laid to rest in the Autobots' deep-space mausoleum, which was later destroyed. That's really necessary. I guess just in case we had any doubt about the smoking hole in Ironhide's skull...or metal box that looks like a head.

The tattered corpses of Autobots Windcharger and Wheeljack, murdered without a doubt by Decepticons in The Transformers: The Movie.

It really isn't surprising that the same production company that made the first Transformers movie also made the G.I. Joe Movie, which contained the same measure of unexpected violent insanity.

So what will the next generation of Transformers movies look like? Well, it's been 20 years, so it probably won't have the voice of the now-deceased Orson Welles, though I bet the music will be just as bad (cue Nickelback). I imagine my impression of it will be different, too, since I didn't make a practice of going to movies drunk when I was 6 years old.

Here's my prediction: 1 part shitty Spiderman CGI + 1 part Godzilla action + 1 part Starship Troopers dialogue.

Stop swinging. Stop running. Stop talking.