Mario And Luigi RPG Retrospective — Part 7: It’s Not Wine

Banana woman directs us to go to the southwest corner of the map to the Chucklehuck Woods, where we can find a secret soda formula that can cure the queen of her All-Might transformation. Everything about these woods screams “wine.” The entrance is a dark manor house referred to as a “chateau,” there are tons of wooden casks, and the red-and-green pair that we meet here are Frenchmen. Despite this, the game adamantly refers to the beverage produced here as “Chuckola Cola.” I’m curious to know if this is the same in the Japanese version, given that while the Japanese are weird in their own way they are a little less prudish about booze.

That being said, it’s pretty cute how they justify carbonation by saying you tell the fruit jokes while it’s brewing. There’s a minor bit of lore with these little tourism info-plaques that draw one’s attention:

In the next two rooms we encounter a strange situation with an awfully familiar individual;

The green man’s name is Popple, a self-stylized “shadow thief.” He’s got a sort of 40’s gangster way of talking, and he’s recruited an amnesiac Bowser to be his sidekick in order to get the same plot device we’re after. This kicks off with a boss fight against the pair that introduces “reaction attacks,” where a character may get mad and immediately attack if you target the wrong target.

It’s a bit of a risk/reward. Popple has far less HP, so taking him out means less attacks per-round, but every time you make progress on that front you get hammers thrown at you. Your call as a player.

Once Bowser has been trounced, Popple flees the scene like a coward. The aforementioned red-and-green Frenchmen that he has bound and trussed then teach us bros hammer moves and set us free upon the woods to find our goal. The new moves are “mini-Mario,” where Mario is hammered into a tiny size, and “Luigi dunk,” which slams Luigi feet-first into the depths of the earth.

You’re actually free to just leave without getting these moves, but eventually you’ll smack into an obstacle you can’t figure out.

The core concepts here — entering small spaces and going underground — are useful enough that these moves will make a comeback in further installments. Like the high-jump and spin-jump, these open up the world Metroidvania-style for further exploration.

They also have the interesting effect of separating the Mario bros from their lined-up formation. When a character is moving solo, the B button will jump the other brother, but the only way to move him is to press start and switch.

The puzzles in the woods don’t require separating the pair outside of single screens, and they won’t let you leave without both.

They are mostly an exercise in splitting up and reuniting before heading to the next room. This will, however, make a comeback much later. Furthermore, the game has stopped funneling you forward through a predetermined path. There’s an area map now that shows the whole level, and leaves it up to you to navigate to the right rooms where the important stuff is.

I seriously love this gradual trickling of complexity. The game never stops teaching you its own rules.

Like HooHoo Mountain before, Chucklehuck Woods introduces a few gimmicks that can be interacted with using your new abilities. This barrel is important:

That green facemask on the wall will blast you with fire if you step on the switch, so Luigi needs to enter the barrel from below and stand on it to reflect the fireball. Mario can also jump on top of the barrel to reach high switches.

Like Mario swallowing too much water, the barrel is an interactible that changes the context of other actions. I believe it is also the source of a major glitch utilized by speedrunners, but we’re not here to talk about that.

Deep in the woods there’s this big Deku tree that tasks us with getting some additional plot keys before we can go further into the woods.

He does this strange thing where his sprite divides into three pieces that all move separately. I kinda like it. It’s a weird way to indicate how alien he is that effectively bypasses the limitations of the technology. It’s a real shame he got changed in the 3DS version.

This is a bit of a nested quest where we have to explore the corners of this area, fight some enemies, and do some random challenges. There’s a moment worth noting where we meet the Deku tree’s granddaughter, and she teaches about these marks on the ground, in case you haven’t thought to try digging on them. I suppose the intended interaction with these things isn’t immediately clear, but it’s a bit obnoxious because it’s one of the few explanations you can’t skip.

Out of all these games, I like the third’s iteration on beans the most. But we’ll talk about that next time, along with the end of this area.

~Hans

Mario And Luigi RPG Retrospective – Part 6: Do Your Job

After learning hammers, the next sort of half-area is the functional equivalent of Hyrule Field. We’ve left the tutorial for good, and are kind of free to go wherever we want. Except not really, because everywhere besides progression is locked off by organic mobility gates and/or absurdly high level enemies.

I’ve got some mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I like that it gives me the illusion of freedom, to make me feel like I’m going to the next area of my own free will. On the other hand, if the game is going to be level-based it may as well own it and just make me go exactly where I need to go. This is lowkey what subsequent entries in the series — most obviously Partners In Time — will do.

Exacerbating this mild bout of frustration is the fact that you’re only given a general direction of where to go. Like with most things in this game, the information is there for you, but only if you look for it. But the progression here is mandatory. You have a binary choice here; keep moving on with the game, or… don’t.

However this is ultimately very inconsequential, so I’m willing to leave this question without a definitive answer on whether I think it’s good or bad. It’s whatever.

Incidentally, this interim area also has an enemy that can be countered with the hammer or by jumping on its head, depending on the attack it uses. So the game introduces that idea here.

When we do make it to the town (the entrance to which is demarcated pretty clearly as “important”), we find out it’s been wrecked. There’s a few civvies that will provide context for this if we care to talk to them:

The only way to move forward is to enter the castle, so we go in and get roped into having to fix the plumbing. This game is kind of famous for being the only game where the Mario Bros actually do plumbing, and it’s pretty simplistic, but effective. It introduces and executes upon all its gimmicks internally, while mixing in combat encounters that dial up the difficulty a little bit but not too much. It even manages to flex continuity with how a port of the Mario Bros arcade game is bundled in on this cartridge. A solid area overall.

At the end of this area, we encounter this banana woman who gave us the task to begin with, and find out that our villain Cackletta has used the same disguise again to fool us into getting her hands on the plot device.

This is pretty contrived, but I think it serves its function well. The player now knows the villain’s motive. Having us play along with the plan’s fruition also keeps us away from that thing where the villain’s evil plot is more or less complete, and they’re just waiting for the protagonist to get there to have a final showdown.

The Beanstar, incidentally, grants wishes, and is therefore an article of tremendous power. We’ve gotten all the basics in place now, so we can move on to the boss fight: A cursed monarch.

There’s a unique mechanic to this boss, where before every attack she’ll take a few steps forward. If she’s gotten close enough to you, she’ll do this super fast and hard-to-dodge punching attack. It’s a little frustrating because it’s difficult to figure out what, exactly, is going on, and she does enough damage that you might get killed before you can work it out. I think this is one of the worse boss fights in the game for this reason; the game hasn’t really prepared the player to deal with contextual attacks like this.

On top of that, this boss is also one of those puzzle bosses. You need to attack her swole arms to make them deflate, like All Might, so the crown will fall off and you can use special attacks on the body (with the crown on, the body is considered a spiky enemy, and will damage you for jumping on it). So the player is spending all their time focusing on the arms and may never think to whack the body to keep her away from you physically.

And to top it all off, you can’t really grind before this fight; there’s a fixed amount of enemies in the sewer stage and the only exit is straight into this boss fight. You just have to throw yourself at the problem until you finally figure it out. It’s a pretty low point for the game.

As far as the plot is concerned, though, I like how Superstar Saga flexes fantasy and RPG tropes to keep the plot functional while also making fun where it needs to. After beating the shit out of the cursed queen, the Mario brothers are tasked with finding a cure for her plight, in the next level that we’ll talk about next week.

~Hans

Mario And Luigi RPG Retrospective — Part 5: Mountain Climbers

Last time, the green tutorial man fired the cannon that Bowser was stuck in and used him as a projectile to blast away the ICE agent that we defeated, effectively removing him from the picture. As soon as we enter the next area, we are accosted the police and assumed to have committed a crime. Fuckin’ typical.

When we get the misunderstanding cleared up, thankfully without violence, the cops tell us that the the prince mentioned in this screenshot is missing. So the Mushroom Kingdom is not the only one sans throne heir. The culprit is described as such…

I wonder who it could be. I guess this means we’re on the right track, huh? Not that we could have gone off it. Chasing Fawful leads to him dropping a roadblock that we can’t pass yet. Even the path to progression is blocked by an extremely classic RPG “broken bridge” scenario that we have to find the plot to move past.

The plot that is these two blacksmith brothers — coincidentally, red-and-green — can’t get their hands on the specific kind of ore from the mountain peak they need to make hammers. If you talk to some of the civilians, you’ll find out that some guy named Blablanadon — a pilot? A bird? The local cactus-folk imply he’s the one who takes people up the mountain, so I assume he can fly. Anyway, if you do your own investigation you’ll probably realize that his absence is why these guys can’t get their ore, which only comes from the top of the mountain.

The setup here is a little forced. The game kind of assumes that the player knows a hammer is the key to passing the roadblock we’ve been given. I think that this is kind of excusable gameplay-wise because we’re just forcing open gates to move forward, but it’s kind of nonsensical from a plot perspective. That being said, nobody ever said the plot was why we were playing this game. I’m sure that if the game took the time to make sure all this stuff was made clear I would be complaining about how much exposition is being shoved down my throat.

When we do get inevitably climb the mountain, it’s easy to see why all the cacti think the mountain is so hard to climb; none of them can spin jump or high jump. The level requires not only the bros. moves, but also introduces a few field objects that change the context of those moves.

Water fountains and tornadoes will make reappearances in the series, but I think this is the only time they’re introduced so unceremoniously. It works well here because you have so few options. This first water fountain, for example, is introduced in a very minimalist, player-first way.

First off, only Mario can be over-hydrated. You can step Luigi into the waterspout, but only Mario creates a gameplay reaction.

You’ll notice here that when Mario is fat, the A icon is crossed out. You can’t change it and pressing the A button will only produce a negative sound effect. If you read the sign, you can infer that the high jump, which jumps Luigi onto Mario’s head, will spew the water. If you didn’t read the sign it’s OK, because you can’t actually leave this area.

The ledge here can’t be scaled without the high jump, meaning you’re trapped in here until you figure out what the solution to the puzzle is. As an added bonus, trying to high jump out of here while Mario is all bloated will probably teach you exactly the solution to the problem. And in case all that wasn’t obvious enough, the sign does a bit of reverse psychology on you if you do choose to read it.

Superstar Saga loves to do this. Often the text hints in the game will tell you not to do something you’re supposed to do, so if you’re a child playing this game you’ll feel a little naughty for doing it.

None of this is to say that this part would be difficult, even for children. But there’s beauty in how the game gives the player the reins in finding solutions to the obstacles it presents. Not once is the player forced to sit through an expositional sidekick sitting them down in a non-interactive scene to walk them through how to play the game. In fact, Superstar Saga‘s “reverse psychology optional tutorials” kind of do the exact opposite; they optionally allow the player to seek an indirect hint that tells them to not do the thing.

If this game had been made in a post-Sequelitis world, I would absolutely think this was done as a satire of excessively obtrusive tutorials.

The area is divided up into two sections, each with a boss. The first an introduction to attacks that target both brothers; he has a sweeping laser attack that goes under all four of your feet and requires you to jump one after the other in one “dodge phase.” He also introduces the puzzle elements of some boss fights; he makes these rock columns that he’ll hide in, and you have to destroy them so he’ll become targetable.

This isn’t my screenshot; I forgot to take one while fighting him.

The second boss proceeds to play on these elements, as well as the features of the Rex enemy found in the next area (quite literally; the first field enemy in the next screen has a Rex inside it). Rex can be stomped on to make him short, like in Super Mario World. This makes his attacks easier to dodge.

The toupee-wearing Donald Trump dragon that serves as the level’s climax boss combines the Rex concept with the puzzle elements of the first boss. Initially, his height makes his attacks hard to dodge, like Rex.

Once stomped short, he will, like Donald Trump, eventually vomit up some crap from the depths of his throat.

Then, he will use that crap as his platform from which to spew his attacks.

You have to destroy the platform, or he’ll keep spitting stuff at you from this point-blank range at this hard-to-dodge height. Once the platform is destroyed, he grows tall again and the cycle repeats. This boss combines and remixes all these things that the level has taught the player over the course of the climb and I love it.

As for the plot, it turns out that Blablanadon guy we were looking for is a pterosaur. Didn’t see that coming, honestly. He was up here incubating an egg he found at the mountain summit, although I’m not sure how he knew this thing was an egg and not a rock with a face like the rest of ’em.

The Donald Trump dragon hatched out of this egg and turned out to be the polymorphed missing prince of the kingdom that those cops were looking for. After being turned back to normal, he does this kind of funny but also annoying thing where he flips his hair and bishie sparkle fills the screen.

I suspect this is intentional. The way this character is written is very boastful and everyone’s always talking about how badass he is, but we will spend a respectable portion of the rest of the game saving his ass. He’s like the Miles Gloriosus archetype.

Anyway, the prince directs us to visit his mom the queen, in the direction we were heading anyway, and gives us a plot key. Dino guy gives us a lift down the mountain and we get our hammers and the basic tutorial plus open-space to practice with the new toy.

It’s worth nothing here that the blacksmiths specifically say that the hammer is only usable by the lead character right now. You can try to use the hammer as the person in back, and the icons allow for it — but you won’t get any meaningful results.

The game doesn’t care, however, if you discover this early:

Surprise! If you’re thinking experimentally before you pass this flaming rock, which is the gameplay gate for proving you know how to use the hammers, you’ll learn that different actions can lead to different results in different circumstances.

I like that the game doesn’t deny you this little discovery. It won’t come in handy for a while, but you can learn about this as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Indeed, the fact that this rock is on fire and needs to be put out before you can hammer it is evidence that suggests you’re supposed to be able to discover this now.

Beyond this screen, the only way to proceed is to do the first level of a minecart minigame — once again, not mandatory after the first time — and, afterwards, a quick tutorial on using hammers in battle, followed by a single screen where that knowledge becomes mandatory to proceed.

As is Mario RPG tradition, you can’t jump on spiky enemies, so you have to use the hammer instead. Superstar Saga also has hammer counters; when spiky enemies approach, you use the hammer to beat them back instead of jumping on them.

That being said, I think this is the only game in which you can fail a hammer counter. If you hold the button too long in anticipation, Mario or Luigi will drop the hammer behind them.

It took an obnoxiously long time to get this screenshot.

It’s to be expected for a huge mallet like this whose hammerhead appears to be the size of Mario’s entire torso. Bowser’s Inside Story has a few enemies that flip this concept on its head, and we’ll talk about them when we get there, but for the most part hammer counters are super easy in the following games.

Anyway, I’ve been typing for a while now, so we’ll talk about the next area next week, same time same place.

~Hans