As one of the most invasive species in the world, it was only a matter of time before cats found their way to the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom.
And when they arrived at the 2013 “Super Mario 3D World”, the cats, just as they did when they came as stowaways on boats to new worlds, immediately claimed their dominance among members of the local population. It is fitting, of course, that this cruel animal – cats, recent studies have estimated, are responsible for more than 1 billion bird deaths a year in America – were it not simply subservient to Mario, Luigi, Peach and other stars of the “Super Mario Bros.” games.
No, cats would double the game at will, resulting in one of the biggest, but least played, “Super Mario” games of all time. To date, Nintendo reports that “Super Mario 3D World” has sold 5.86 million copies, a considerable amount for a normal video game, but disappointing for a major Nintendo brand, especially one starring Mario and Luigi. For comparison, the Nintendo Switch showcase “Super Mario Odyssey” recorded over 20 million in sales.
Cat details abound in this cute and versatile addition to the “Super Mario Bros.” franchise. Mario’s villains are reinvented with straight, triangular ears, and the levels are designed to be scaled and attacked. This results in a design that is as vertical as it is horizontal and is also sprinkled with many cat-friendly corners. While it is delightful to see Mario and Peach wearing a cat suit – yes, they make cat noise – the game has always worked so well because its levels are designed as if they were made up of cat trees.
Go up, go right, now go down – ooh, look, a hiding place! Mario games, over the years, have become more and more about exploration as much as running and jumping, and “3D World” celebrates the player’s tendency to ask questions: Can I run here? Can I strike this? Can I go after that? The answer here is almost always yes.
When “Super Mario 3D World” was released, there were many things against it. On the one hand, it arrived on the ill-received and under-sold Wi U console from Nintendo. Second, it was released around the same time as Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, so regardless of howmeowz-ing (sorry) this portion of “Super Mario” was destined to be overlooked and underestimated.
Fortunately, the burgeoning re-release market, which Nintendo strategically explored with the re-releases of “Mario”, “Zelda” and “Pikmin”, restored one of the nine lives of “Super Mario 3D World” (puns are almost out of my system , I promise).
And now, in 2021, it’s exclusively the Switch with even more to ponder, complete with a new feed-size game in “Bowser’s Fury”, in which a giant Bowser, similar to Godzilla, rains lava on Mario and his unlikely partner, Bowser Jr. The latter is disturbed by the existential anger suddenly passing by his father and asks Mario for help.
Bowser is in the midst of an existential crisis driven by anger in “Bowser’s Fury”.
(Nintendo)
If you take a moment and think about it, everything starts to get a little dark.
Little Bowser Jr. is clearly upset that pop has become totally abusive. Anger, in 2021, is easy to come by, and fighting a paralyzing emotion seems more up-to-date than likely anything in any previous Mario game so far. Mario immediately gets sympathy, and it all serves as a reminder that as Nintendo games get longer, prettier and smarter, we also start to take a look at the philosophy of “Super Mario Bros.” games.
“Super Mario 3D World” has long been my second favorite in the 35-year series, for reasons I will continue to unravel, behind only the 2017 Switch masterpiece, “Super Mario Odyssey”. With the help of a magic hat, “Odyssey” allowed Mario to become other characters and objects, and finally he began to see himself as more than a gifted plumber in endless battles with Bowser.
Bowser, of course, was never really a “good” enemy – his frightening fascination with Princess Peach promoted sexist stereotypes of damsel in distress. In recent years, however, he has been more of a troll. In “Super Mario 3D World”, Bowser starts kidnapping a group of colorful fairy-like creatures called Sprixies, apparently just because of that. (I can practically hear him shout, “If you think kidnapping a princess is offensive, wait until I kidnap an entire group of them!”)
To become an academic for a moment, I have long considered “Super Mario 3D World” inspired and a response to the internet, specifically how it is affecting our responses to the world around us. Take, for example, your use of online culture beloved cats meme, or its overabundance of tubes, which send Mario and his friends flying from deserts to grassy plains, from haunted houses to icy cliffs, faster than a Google search. Although Mario was able to transform himself into other animals through powerful costumes, the raccoon-like tanooki costume never seemed to be born of a trend in the same way.
Then there is Bowser, back with his castle and his nasty old car, a grotesque thing that is all purple and spiky and looks like an escaping ice cream cone and sweet corn. Nobody would direct it, but it would look cool on an Instagram photo. Bowser is basically an online bully, harassing Mario and co. Simply because they live differently. It’s easy to imagine that he spends his time without kidnapping reading Reddit, at least that’s my explanation for his irrational fury with everything in “Bowser’s Fury”.
In fact, “Bowser’s Fury” is a Mario game that seems perfectly suited to our social media chaos where everything is worth and inattentive, where Mario and Bowser Jr. may be climbing towers and sliding down grassy slopes with a flock of cats pink, blue and green, only to be interrupted out of nowhere by Bowser’s silly tantrums. Bowser will eventually disappear – he will come back at random intervals – but ignore him as much as we can and he will aim for a fireball behind 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 raise all his mentions with fireballs to ruin everyone’s day. But add some upgrades and, faster than Mario can tweet “send pictures of cute pets”, he will transform into a giant cat.
Cuteness abounds in “Super Mario 3D World”.
(Nintendo)
This, while not only turning Mario into a total cat maximalism of the Internet, will allow him, with a few jumps at the right time, to start fighting the huge Bowser, while releasing more of this feline paradise from Bowser’s clutches (at the part: Nintendo’s attention to detail in Lake Lapcat is adorable, as there are cat hieroglyphs scattered everywhere to suggest an ancient cat feline civilization).
Compared to the main game of “Super Mario 3D World”, which, although on rails, manages to feel relatively free in its representation of comfortable running, kicking and attacks, “Bowser’s Fury” is an open noise and action, and experiment in which we move freely between locations instead of entering and leaving levels. Combined, however, they show us that there is one thing that a bully and a troll cannot stand: adorability.
Cuteness wins, yes, but with “Bower’s Fury” taking the franchise to more emotional realms, let’s hope that some vulnerability, if not complete therapy, is next to the ever expanding world of “Super Mario Bros.”