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bookofdanielvol2In October I won $50 the intermission raffle at a local wrestling show (yes, really) and used that to cover most of the price tag of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and rolled credits on it last week. I enjoyed it a lot - some great levels, with the Wonder Flowers being a nice hook just to keep playing to see what each one will do, and offering some new and unique challenges. I liked the levels having difficulty ratings, and didn't really miss the removal of the timer. I actually think - and it's surprising to me, as old-school a gamer as I am - that having lives have also become somewhat superfluous (I ended the game with 99 in stock), and wouldn't be too surprised or even adverse to seeing that removed in the next game. The new powerups were also fun to play with - I didn't get as much out of the Bubble Flower powerup, though many seem to like it, but enjoyed the Elephant and Drill forms quite a bit. And, of course, the Fire Flower is ubiquitous.
Some have claimed it to be the best 2D Mario game, or even best Mario game in general, since Super Mario World, and you know, it just might be.
Incidentally I also got the Target-exclusive bonus, the little shadowbox display, so that's a cool piece for my game room.
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The main game I've been playing the past week is the Super Mario RPG remake. I wasn't sure I was going to get this one at first - I played the original SNES version when it was new and have gone back to it a few times over the years - but ultimately caved. I've been enjoying the Switch version, and I'm not quite done with it yet (I'm up to the volcano, but also have some of the side activities to do still), but overall it has given me slightly mixed feelings.
It certainly looks great, with the little cinematics for certain story scenes and the starts of boss battles especially standing out, and the new music arrangements sound great too. Gameplay is mostly the same as the original, but I'm not sure about some of the additions. Things like splash damage and the triple-team moves just make what was already a mostly-not-difficult game even easier, and the triple-team moves in particular just kind of feel tacked on (the battle system just wasn't built around the idea of having characters team up for attacks like, say, Chrono Trigger was). "Special enemies" can get a little annoying when you're trying to complete battles quickly. And the script changes, few though they are, are a bit glaring. I suppose they wanted Mario to exist in his own universe without making real-world references, but the game's humor broke the fourth wall enough already that things like Mallow saying that Mario shouldn't "go in swinging like Bruce Lee" worked fine. And renaming Frogfucius to the generic-sounding "Frog Sage," the Scrooge Ring to "Flower Ring" (equally generic) and Mack (the Knife) to the far less clever "Claymorton" just serves to remove a bit of personality. And it's not like they took out the cross-franchise cameos (Link, Samus, Magitek armor), so I don't really see the issue with what was removed.
I think my biggest qualm, though, is that I'm not really sure a remake needed to be done in the first place. The SNES version holds up just fine, so I would've just as soon seen them reissue that on Switch Online and then put the effort into making a brand-new sequel to that (which, hopefully, has the possibility of happening anyway).
So, overall, I'm not sorry the new version of Mario RPG exist and I'm enjoying my time with it, but I definitely have a lot of mixed thoughts on it. Maybe, time permitting, I'll sometime soon go back through the SNES version again (it's been a long time) and see if any of these thoughts change.
While I appreciate the large selection of characters, considering that in this game they all play the same (well, except the Yoshis and Nabbit being invulnerable to enemies but not being able to use powerups), I do think there might have been a few too many - mainly I don't know that we really needed two Toads and four Yoshis; one of each would probably have been fine - but I did switch around fairly often mainly between Mario, Luigi and Daisy, sometimes also switching to Peach or the yellow Toad for badge challenges and Nabbit for backtracking into levels I'd missed something in.
The new Mario voice actor, Kevin Afghani, did a fine job; if I didn't already know I doubt I'd really have registered that it wasn't Martinet anymore. Kind of sobering on my end that he's as young as he is (born 1996, per IMDB) - I have save files on multiple Mario game carts that are older. Smart move on Nintendo's part, though, since they potentially could have him in the role for decades.
While I rolled credits I didn't get 100% completion yet - and I'm not sure that I will, since I'm not a die-hard completionist in that way - but I may at least go back and get the one or two Wonder Seeds I missed, and maybe some more of the Flower Coins.Some have claimed it to be the best 2D Mario game, or even best Mario game in general, since Super Mario World, and you know, it just might be.
Incidentally I also got the Target-exclusive bonus, the little shadowbox display, so that's a cool piece for my game room.
---
The main game I've been playing the past week is the Super Mario RPG remake. I wasn't sure I was going to get this one at first - I played the original SNES version when it was new and have gone back to it a few times over the years - but ultimately caved. I've been enjoying the Switch version, and I'm not quite done with it yet (I'm up to the volcano, but also have some of the side activities to do still), but overall it has given me slightly mixed feelings.
It certainly looks great, with the little cinematics for certain story scenes and the starts of boss battles especially standing out, and the new music arrangements sound great too. Gameplay is mostly the same as the original, but I'm not sure about some of the additions. Things like splash damage and the triple-team moves just make what was already a mostly-not-difficult game even easier, and the triple-team moves in particular just kind of feel tacked on (the battle system just wasn't built around the idea of having characters team up for attacks like, say, Chrono Trigger was). "Special enemies" can get a little annoying when you're trying to complete battles quickly. And the script changes, few though they are, are a bit glaring. I suppose they wanted Mario to exist in his own universe without making real-world references, but the game's humor broke the fourth wall enough already that things like Mallow saying that Mario shouldn't "go in swinging like Bruce Lee" worked fine. And renaming Frogfucius to the generic-sounding "Frog Sage," the Scrooge Ring to "Flower Ring" (equally generic) and Mack (the Knife) to the far less clever "Claymorton" just serves to remove a bit of personality. And it's not like they took out the cross-franchise cameos (Link, Samus, Magitek armor), so I don't really see the issue with what was removed.
I think my biggest qualm, though, is that I'm not really sure a remake needed to be done in the first place. The SNES version holds up just fine, so I would've just as soon seen them reissue that on Switch Online and then put the effort into making a brand-new sequel to that (which, hopefully, has the possibility of happening anyway).
So, overall, I'm not sorry the new version of Mario RPG exist and I'm enjoying my time with it, but I definitely have a lot of mixed thoughts on it. Maybe, time permitting, I'll sometime soon go back through the SNES version again (it's been a long time) and see if any of these thoughts change.
