Sean Akizuki's Fantasy Critic

The Prospector I normally don't go to the movie house -- not especially in the dawn of digital media! I gave the Super Mario Bros. Movie a shot. I watched the movie as a middle-aged man. Back in 1993, there was also the Super Mario Bros. live-action film -- which was a commercial failure . Maybe, I'm too harsh at it. The 1993 live-action film has a cult following -- something similar to Santa Claus: The Movie . However, I'd still pick Santa Claus: The Movie any day over the live-action Super Mario Bros. film. Maybe, my harshness towards the 1993 film was because Haim Saban and DiC had the much better Super Mario Bros. Super Show .  It's not that long of a film. There are times I wish that Lou Albano and Danny Wells were still around. Sadly, they're gone since the film had a similar charm to the Super Mario Bros. Super Show . However, I'll give credit to Chris Platt and Charlie Day for giving their all to voice the Mario Bros. one way or another. Jack Black (who ...

Aside from Saban understanding Marvel better than Toei - it's probably good that Toei didn't produce a Super Mario Bros. Anime in Japan. Super Mario Bros.  was a Japanese production but the concept was done in an American territory. Super Mario was partly based on the late Mario Segale - Nintendo's landlord . It feels awkward that Super Mario is a Japanese invention but it takes place in AMERICA. I prefer to play Dragon Quest Heroes with the American voices because it feels authentic. The same goes for why Saban Entertainment doing the Mario with the Super Mario Bros. Super Show . It's unlike  Power Rangers where licensed footage is used. This one has all its footage made from scratch by DiC Animation with music provided by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy.  The show deviates from the video game while keeping the theme that they're AMERICAN plumbers. The show mixes elements from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 . For those unaware of it, the cursed game known as S...

I remembered one movie I begged my parents to take me to but never did. Back in the 1990s, there was the Super Mario Bros. movie which was loosely based on the Super Mario Bros. game. An interesting thing was that it was in 1993 was shown on May 28, 1993, when Haim Saban acquired the rights from Nintendo to make the Super Mario Bros. Show . 1993 was also the year when one of my disliked franchises Power Rangers showed up. I may have some dislike for Power Rangers . However, this is one film that I could bash a lot harder. I still fee that maybe the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie was at least ENJOYABLE. This one seems to be what I'd call a hideous licensed film. I guess I'm always going to have my dislike for MOST American adaptations based on Japanese franchises. The movie tried to have a more mature approach. I don't know if it's really a good idea to do so. It took away the familiarity of the games. For example, Mario and Luigi are no longer twins like they were i...

I could remember I was among those children who didn't have a Super NES while we eventually had the first Playstation. Back then, Super Mario World was highly coveted by many. I was thinking that the Exceedraft episode could've used the game as an advertisement. Instead, it focused on the Gundam Knight game - something I never heard of until I saw that particular episode where the child was whining about him as the uncool kid who doesn't have a Super Famicom. So, I was thinking about how I was able to finally play the game through a PS2 emulator called SNES Station (which isn't legit). But it was more or less the "real deal" in contrast to the abomination made by the Hummer Team - something I had, thought it was legit, and later discovered it was a fake. It was a game that I really nearly did a lot of stupid stuff for.  Unlike the first three games (or four, if you still consider The Lost Levels ) - this was the very advertising power of the 16-bit Super NES. ...

While playing Super Mario World before - I was thinking about the bootleg by Hummer Team and the Nintendo official game. There was the claim that Yoshi himself couldn't be introduced due to hardware limitations. I don't know if it's even a valid claim considering that Super Mario World the bootleg edition had Yoshi after all - except that there was only ONE KIND of Yoshi.  One game worth mentioning is Adventure Island 2 and Adventure Island 3 . Consider that the protagonist Master Higgins rode four different kinds of dinosaurs each with a different function. Okay, none of them ate the enemies but still, you can't deny that he rode the dinosaur, right? The bootleg Super Mario World had Yoshi eat up enemies. So, what could be the much bigger reason behind Yoshi's non-introduction? If the claims for hardware limitation are true then here's my theory. Super Mario Bros. 3 invested too much in different suits making it impossible. If the game itself didn't ...

There's no doubt that Super Mario is indeed a beloved franchise. However, like every franchise, there is ALWAYS something stupid that will happen every now and then. One such game that is totally an imbecile about designs and innovation is Super Mario - the Lost Levels . It was a game that was only released in Japan. The game Doki Doki Panic was repackaged as Super Mario Bros. 2 presumably due to the fact that Lost Levels just felt too hard for the American audience. How bad is the game? Well, there are a lot of very uninspired and very difficult-level designs. I may have played some really hard games like Megaman 2 and Megaman X6. Still, those two are more reasonable (that is, if you're playing the Anniversary Collection and the Legacy Collection ) than The Lost Levels . Personally, it took me some time to finish Megaman 2 due to it being an early, hard NES game but its design is still far more reasonable than what The Lost Levels had to offer at more than one level. So...

As said, it seems that every Super Mario game is either a stage play or a TV show on its own. I mean, check out everything with Super Mario Bros. 3 (which had its 30th birthday yesterday) and you will find out several stuff that really shows it's a stage play. The curtains open, the checkered floors, casting shadows where there's supposed to be no shadows (though the SNES update corrected that) and the exit stage right where you got the cards. But I didn't mind anyway -- Super Mario's cast are what they are -- they are actors  who are set to different roles one after the other! Super Mario 3 started to establish a retelling of the Mushroom Kingdom story and may have ignored events in the first three games -- Super Mario Bros., The Lost Levels and Super Mario Bros. 2 (which was a remake of Doki Doki Panic) for an entirely new retelling of a story. The script focuses on King Bowser bringing his seven Koopa children which leaves us wondering if they were simply adop...

Super Mario Bros. 2 -- one game that has a lot of memories. It wasn't your typical Mario game. No fire flowers, no Bowser and yes if you knew it -- it was just a dream at the end of it! Though there's one theory of mine that every Super Mario game is a stage play or a TV show -- depending on how Shigeru Miyamoto wants to cast his actors in an entirely new story since almost every Super Mario game hardly has any continuity to each other. Super Mario Bros. 2 is no different since it was just a dream yet the sequence also suggests it's a play. The ending may mean that Mario is tired after the extended play. So tired he still dreams of every character involved!  What shocked me was that it was based on a Japanese game made by Nintendo called Doki Doki Panic . A game called Super Mario 2: The Lost Levels was released but the difficulty was that high. Nintendo's solution was to rehash their Japanese-only game named Doki Doki Panic for the western audiences. So, a new...

I may not be playing new school Super Mario games anymore nor am I interested in spending my earnings on a Nintendo system (whether handheld or not) but I still want to recall the time I used to have a Nintendo system. I wrote about how the Super Mario cast are actors  but now I could compare them to Looney Tunes' characters for this reason: it's close to impossible to create a Super Mario Bros. timeline. Try to notice how events in the Super Mario games happen like with typical Looney Tunes' humor. When your character dies they die in a very cartoony way and yet they somehow survive. They stomp on enemies and they become flat as paper. There's also plots like Bowser falls down into the lava or hole for the Nth time but keeps surviving. Isn't that like how characters in Looney Tunes get blown up or fall into lava yet they keep surviving. You can think of Bowser's defeats like how Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd get defeated. You can think of the Super Mario Br...

There's one thing you could notice is that Super Mario Bros. 2 (which was a remake of Doki Doki Panic) and Super Mario Bros. 3 had formats similar to stage performances. You could notice that many elements in Super Mario just feel out of hand with reality and that everyone's a theatrical troupe.  Let's get real, shall we? Super Mario Bros. 3 the NES edition prior to the Super Nintendo remake in the Super Mario All Stars cartridge showed shadows where they shouldn't be cast. It looked like a theatrical set. What made it into the remake was the Exit Stage Right. You can't deny that it looked like a play and Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed it's a play. I guess it's a storytelling method or two, all the Mario games are just stage plays and props. The way the Super Mario games happen tend not to connect with each other for most of the time. A good example is that not only is Bowser killed over and over again (and his returns have no explanation whatsoever) bu...

Super Mario Bros. 2 widely differed from the very first Super Mario Bros. game which I can remember playing this game.  Instead of playing as Mario (Player 1) or Luigi (Player 2), this was a one player game which allowed you to choose between Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach each with different abilities.  Mario was the balanced one, Luigi had a very high jump, Toad can quickly pull out turnips and Princess had the ability to glide into the air. The story deviates from Super Mario Bros. considering the events happen in Dream World, where the Subcons were imprisoned.  The four must join to liberate the Dream World from the game's main antagonist Wart (a giant frog perhaps named after the misconception that frogs caused warts) who has plagued it. The gameplay was radically different as each character started out "fully grown" but they can shrink if they only have one heart left.  You can get "secret mushrooms" in some areas per level to get more hearts.  When dea...

Back when I was still a Nintendo fan (sort of) while I only rented the SNES from stores, I would recall this experience called Super Mario All Stars which I now play on an emulator.  The game consists of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World.  Which I can recall only 1-3 but not the Lost Levels. So what the game basically did for the NES games was to enhance them with SNES graphics, have a minor retooling of the jump button and attack button for the SNES players.  And I was thinking that it was a nice recoloring and I was having fun playing enhanced versions of the NES games I used to play (except for Lost Levels).  Playing an enhanced version of Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2 was a nice thing. For the remake, Super Mario Bros. 3 had minor changes aside from the obvious better graphics.  Since the story revolves around the seven kingdoms with transformed kings, some of them even used differ...

Well there was the Super Mario Bros. Super Show which I remembered watching as a child back when the NES was still popular, too bad I didn't have a Super Nintendo back then or is it good? Anyway this was one of the shows I thought was pretty popular. It follows loosely from the computer games but it is a way better trip than that damn awful Super Mario movie (avert thine eyes from it). Well it's not your trip to Mushroom Land all the time but it features King Bowser (called King Koopa here) with Super Mario Bros. 2 villains namely Mouser, Triclide the three headed snake, Birdos, Shy Guys and some of the standard villains like Koopa troopers and Goombas in their quest to take over various realities. Which King Koopa here becomes various story book characters and the Super Mario Bros. must stop him from rewriting history with the Princess Peach and Toad while of course, King Koopa does still have his on/off crush on the Princess Peach. In short, it was really a combination of ...

I just thought though that before, I used to think that Peach and Daisy were the same person until much later I did some research and verified they weren't.  In the original Super Mario game, the princess wasn't named until the second game and she was named Princess Toadstool.  So I assumed that Toadstool was the surname, Daisy was her first name or whatever.  It just got confusing especially that in earlier Mario games (the good old NES days), we find out that Princess Peach had brown hair like Princess Daisy.  It wasn't until Super Mario All Stars was developed that the error was corrected, Princess Peach had blonde hair so further clarifying that Peach isn't Daisy.  And also, later Mario games featured Daisy as a separate character rather than another name for Peach, further clearing away the confusion for good.  So there I got my answers to that old age question to Daisy and Peach.

I simply want to tackle on one of the biggest "the evil villain wants to marry the hot chick who hates them the most in the Universe" namely Bowser.  Why?  It seems that every game, it has Bowser wanting to marry Peach.  So the fact is that Peach is the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom so maybe it's a reason of conquest.  Whatever, the obsession was becoming more and more creepy by the minute, by the second... oh wow Bowser needs to get a life from just wanting to marry Princess Peach! Well here's how it goes: First game- Bowser kidnaps Peach wanting to marry her.  He makes several false Bowsers to fool Mario but he fails as Mario rescues the princess. Third game- While the main plot was where he turned several kings across the world into various creatures, he for a final scheme kidnaps Peach. Super Mario World- Well he kidnaps Peach at the beginning.  Not really surprising. Super Mario Sunshine- His eighth son Bowser Jr. is introduced.  Bowser ...

I have to admit that I once liked the Super Mario series but as time passed, the princess routine is getting redundant. I mean, can't they stop portraying the princess as someone who frequently gets caught by Bowser?! I kind of think that Super Mario Galaxy is just too redundant with the princess theme. Okay it had the cool concept of Bowser trying to take over the Universe but I wish he had a more devious thing than just kidnapping the princess. Need I say more?

I remembered those Super Nintendo days and honestly speaking, Mario was a popular game that many people had a fuzz about or I have to mention that my mother had to belt me for spending too much time with Super Mario back then. Ever since then, the game had a good-bad memory. Today, I seem not to think about the franchise anymore. There were at least four Super Mario games I had completed. They were Super Mario 1, 2, 3 and World. Super Mario 2 was the hardest game of all while it featured the ability to use Toad and Princess Peach. Super Mario 3 goes back to the old routine of saving the princess while our heroes dress up in new power-ups. Super Mario World was a fun game with all the secrets but the saving the princess routine is getting old. Yoshi was a fun character but sigh, some fans just didn't take him too well. However later on, I ended up getting our first Playstation and so I never played Super Mario 64. On the other hand, a cousin of mine owned a Gamecube but disc...