Mario
is like the Leonardo da Vinci of Nintendoland. His tubby little behind
can run faster than Kenyan ringers in a marathon. He drives like Jehu
while flinging turtle shells with deadly accuracy. He even fought side
by side with dinosaurs and created the first water-powered jet pack.
Somewhere behind those glossy, dead-looking blue eyes of his, there's
a pixelated brain that will no doubt one day lead to the creation of
the Hydrogen Flower and the final demise of the Mushroom Kingdom he
fought so hard to protect.
But
it wasn't enough- he wanted to pass his knowledge onto the children.
Hopping on Yoshi's back, Mario hopped his way to Nintendo's USA branch
headquarters in Redmond, Washington. With a spin jump and the usual
annoying little sound effect to accompany it, he dismounted the bulimic
velociraptor and walked in. Past the cranky receptionist, and the walls
and walls of envelopes addressed to Nintendo Power and covered with
greasy crayon etchings, he made his way to the elevator. He reached
into the front of his overalls and pulled out the "M" shaped
key given to him by the man in the bowtie all those years ago.
"Take this key,
Mr. Mario. I have to go away for a while."
"A-where you going, Mr. Howard?"
"...see you on the sea of stars, Mario."
Mario
exited the elevator and approached the desk of Big Boss. "Who goes
there?" the back of the chair demanded in a quiet yet gruff voice.
"It's-a-me,
Mario," the plumber replied. "I gotta me an idea. I wanna
make-a me a video game." It was times like this he wished that
he didn't have the mind of Albert Einstein in the body of a comically-accented
plumber. Then maybe he would be respected for his 350 IQ and not his
record-breaking long jump and vegetable toss-
Thick
laughter roiled forth from the CEO's throat and he swiveled the chair
to look down at the tiny Italian. "You've had plenty of video games,
boy. Are you saying that you're ready to be our Megaman?"
Mario
shuddered at the thought of being made to run a gauntlet of Koopa traps
to save yet more distressed royalty. "I wanna make-a a game for
the bambinos." He caught himself, "The children. Something...
educational."
"That's
a great idea. A wonderful, selfless and noble idea!" The CEO turned
to the side, profile to plumber. "Which we will have no part of.
We are far too occupied with the X-VB project." A red hologram
issued forth from the desk.
"Mama
mia, what is that!" Mario exclaimed at the sight of the child with
a bizarre visor affixed to his face.
"It's
the next level, old friend." The stench of a cheap cigar wafted
about the room like a soap factory on fire. "Total immersion. The
X-VB will create a sophisticated illusion of depth that will usher in
a new era of interactive gaming." He smirked slightly. "A
virtual world, if you will, that will entrance the player so they'd
never wnat to leave."
"Why's
it-a so red and black? It kinda hurts-a my eyes."
"Well,
if the Virtual Boy were done in full color it would have exponentially
increased resolution, but cost that much more. As it stands, we need
kids to be pretty stupid in order to want one." He stood and walked
to the window, pulling the blinds open. He stood as a dark shadow in
front of the blinding Redmond sun. "Educating children would be
like shooting ourselves in the foot."
*PLURP!
A
fireball thudded against the desk and Mario stormed off to the elevator
again. The CEO looked over his shoulder and said to the closing doors-
"By
the way, you might consider learning tennis while you're on
this little excursion."
***
Mario's
search eventually took him to the doorstep of a largely unknown third-party
developer. There, the plans for the Death Star Virtual Boy
sprites ripped from Super Mario World were compressed to 8-bit and paired
off with existing 8-bit enemies. The finished effect is best shown on
the opening screen, where Mario rides Yoshi up to the Koopa museum (a
la the fortress/haunted house/castle stages of Super Mario World) and
being greeted by the Bowser sprite from Mario 3. My, he seems spry today,
the way he scampers, hops and gads about as only a redheaded anthropomorphic
turtle in hysterics can. After he walks back inside, Yoshi trots merrily
along after him in one of the more suspect 'kidnappings' of the series.
Seems more believable to me that Yoshi is joining forces with his fellow
lizards to overthrow and probably eat their oppressors. And shit them
out like Easter eggs. He is caged in the next scene, which makes the
cut from then back to Mario outside make it look like he stood there
for a week or so.
Bowser's
museum is like a half-assed version of his castle's layout, with several
doors with statues in between. The statues of Bowser are no big suprise,
but he also has statues of invincibility stars and Yoshis and other
things that are generally bad for him.
Basically
all you do is pick a door, fight through a short game inspired by the
original Mario Bros. game, only with a difficulty level appropriate
for the mentally deficient, or people without arms for that matter.
You can't die in this game (or in Mario is Missing for that matter.)
When an enemy hits Mario, he ducks down for a couple seconds until he's
sure it's safe. Mindless task completed, you're rewarded with an artifact.
Then you jump into the retrofitted warp pipe and pick a time period,
hoping to holy hell that it has anything to do with your chosen item.
Once
there, you play through a crappy imitation of a SMB1 level. You don't
realize how much the possibility of dying added to Mario games until
you play this. Koopas and Nipper Plants in shades (WHAT?) just make
Mario cower a little, and the Hammer Brothers that appear don't even
throw their weapons. Your real enemy is a God Damn Bird (see also Karateka
and a million platform games.) If you select the wrong place to put
your artifact, you get a long-winded error message (in the style of
above right) and a little red bird swoops in and carries your item away.
You know what that means? You get to go back to Koopa's Museum and do
it all over again!
In
the end I do have to give the NES version of Mario's Time Machine a
better rating than its SNES adaption, because it didn't have a lame
Mode 7 Mushroom-collection sequence between levels.