#super mario: world building

[yoku-yukihime]

i drew motos because i think hes a cute little guy

[pianokantzart]

Listen, if and when we get a Luigi's Mansion Movie I don't want to hear a single pop song. I can grit my teeth and bear it in The Mario Bros. Movie, but the soundtrack for Luigi's Mansion had better be filled with so much creepy piano and dissonant chords and tremolo played on so many strings in such a minor key that Danny Elfman would be like "tone it down a little."

[art-appreciation-dog]

Some gorgeous shots from The Super Mario Bros. Movie

[roll-for-dexterity]

(Sometimes I hate using the mobile app because it messes up how I post things and then I gotta recycle the darn thing... > <' )

With my recent respiratory turmoil now having mostly passed, I feel like it was good to revisit an old piece because I've been craving some world building lately. And remembered how much I did not like how this turned out at the time, and then scrapped it and its post…

But after reworking the lore from a garbled mess to something I actually like, and can digest myself... and I decided to tweak it a bit and repost it under a second chance to hopefully fuel more world building posts like it.

Lore drop below the cut explaining some of what is here on the refrence page, and a taste of my D&D level of world building. (You know I need to make D&D Player stats for these guys at some point…)

Forge-Born: 'The de-facto nobility and keepers of authority of their side of Weapon World. Forge-Born vary in size and build, but are always large compared to a human; with 9 feet being the smallest, and just over 20 feet being the tallest. While being at the top would seem like a luxury, any Forge-Born would tell you it is not; as each familial house that is not royalty runs a certain 'bureau' that caters to the maintenance and order of their expansive empire. This, on top of the creation and upkeeping of the Weapon Bots they create; even the position of royalty is a tough position to envy. Each Forge-Born family is said to bear its own unique set of physical traits; from tusks to horns, or multiple eyes. This is especially good at discerning ones heritage among others. As per individual- the magics and true form of a Forge-Born can either stagnate in their similarity to that of their blood relatives, or vary wildly.’

Chera: 'A knight-like, but hardy species of robot. The Chera stand around 6 to 8 feet in height. While their builds may vary, they all don their own unique armor and hand held weapon; most often axes or maces, with a sheild in the other. Due to being naturally more hardy in build than Teners or Shino, Chera can be found serving in the military alongside Weapon Bots; with some weapons keeping them as close partners to stay grounded, or cover any weaknesses in combat. The horns of a Chera vary per person, with some individuals occasionally developing the same horns as one of their parents.’

Shino: 'Skulkers of dark alleyways, and taversers of silence, the Shino are natural experts of espionage. On average they stand around 5 to 6 feet tall, with a slim and flexible build keeping them in shape to slip away from any trouble they get into. While the Shino do make great assassins and spies- but actually have better career variety than that. Many tend to live peaceful lives among Tener's as farmers, or even work high blue collar jobs. One constant however, is the fact that everyone agrees to have never seen a Shino's face behind their face masks before. While it is a familiar,  yet intriguing mystery- no one has ever dared to take a peak…’

Tener: 'A small Toad-like species that stands around 4 to 5 feet tall. True to the pun of their namesake, Tener's are the 'connectors' that make the kingdom function. Like their Toad counter parts they can take up almost any job, and live in most places making them as important as any societal leader. Mostly however, they can be found working jobs that keep the kingdom afloat such as farmers or shop and inn keepers. Even Weapon Bots say that even the smallest Tener can be a huge powerhouse. Also it is of note that when under exstreme emotion such as shock or surprise, their unique hats tend to spin.’

[hyperfixatingonbowuigisohard]

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: I LOVE “it took one look (and forever lay out in front of me)” SO MUCH

(Link bellow)

So I deadass Sketched fanart for it lmao

So yeah😅

[nailtagyuri]

when i was 12 this was the coolest most mindblowing shit ever i was genuinely so obsessed with it I'd read it very day like the bible. I would die for a version of this with the post 3D world content over my country

[maquyo0studios]

Butler Mario OC: Kimoko

A royal butler that serves next to maquyo as this servant has an eyeing lore of many many dirty secrets that he holds with no question.

[portkill]

come home.

[bluebowser]

It's awesome to see people so genuinely excited about Mario stuff, lol. My hyperfixation has truly been validated today.

[suppermariobroth]

Development files for Super Mario 64 that have surfaced in 2020 contain the original file names for the models of the game's areas, where the model for Wet-Dry World is called “11ZLDCITY.bin".

While there has never been an official confirmation for this, it is extremely likely that the "ZLD" stands for "Zelda". The doors in the downtown portion of Wet-Dry World use a unique texture that appears to be an early, less detailed version of the doors from the Forest Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (note the matching wood grain patterns on the boards).

An early demo for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time featured an empty city with low-polygon buildings, which is absent in the finished game (Hyrule Castle Town in the finished game uses a pre-rendered background instead). It is possible that there is some connection between the early city area and Wet-Dry World, whether it was merely cross-project asset reuse or if Wet-Dry World was actually meant to have an overt Zelda theme at some point in development.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source

[janmisali]

Super Mario Bracket: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG vs PRINCESS PEACH

"It's all about speed!"

Sonic the Hedgehog

SEED: 12 (49 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Captain Lou

SPECIES: Hedgehog

DEBUT: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

NOMINATION EXAMPLE: look, you knew what you were doing when you let anyone with a mario wiki entry in this thing. I feel its my civic duty to at least give people the possibility of reviving that 90s mascot wars energy and let sonic the hedgehog win most popular mario character. I'm not a furry but I believe in their beliefs

[Super Mario Wiki article]

"You think so, huh? Well, only one way to find out, right? Let's play!"

Princess Peach

SEED: 21 (27 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Ashley

SPECIES: Human

DEBUT: Super Mario Bros.

NOMINATION EXAMPLE: There's way more to her than meets the eye. In many games, she is a passive character that basically exists to be saved by Mario and provide an end goal to the game. This is a shame, because in games where Peach is the main character, like Super Princess Peach, the gloves truly come off. She gets her own powers (like floating and hitting sideways), attributes (like her umbrella), personality, lore and world- and level building. I think she is heavily underused and underappreciated by Nintendo, and that they could do way more with her than just being "it that needs to be saved" or "female character that plays exactly like Mario in multiplayer games".

[Super Mario Wiki article]

[link to all polls]

[bellshazes]

dreaming up a syllabus for an imaginary course on metanarratives about gameplay, which i think would go something like:

unit 1: who do you think you are i am - auto-documentary & games

Vlogs and the Hyperreal, Folding Ideas

The Slow Death of Let's Play Videos, Meraki (to ~10:00)

World Record Progression: Mike Tyson, Summoning Salt

ROBLOX_OOF.mp3, hbomberguy

Life as a Bokoblin: A Zelda Nature Documentary, Monster Maze

optional: Braindump on the History of Let's Plays, slowbeef

unit 2: what like it's hard? - intro to challenge narratives

Chapter 26: Games as Narrative Play: Two Structures for Narrative Play, Rules of Play

A different kind of challenge run: Minimalist 100% (BOTW), Wolf Link

Surviving 100 Days on Just Dirt, Mogswamp

Can You Beat DARK SOULS III with Only Firebombs, the Backlogs

Is it Possible to Beat Super Mario 3D World while permanently crouching?, Ceave Gaming

The Pacifist Challenge - Beating Hollow Knight Without Collecting Soul [CHALLENGE] - Sample

optional: How to 100% Snowpeak Ruins in under 15 minutes, bewildebeest

unit 3: nelly you don't understand, i AM the narrative - form and function

The Future of Writing about Games, Jacob Geller

Can You Beat GRIME Without Weapons?, the Backlogs

Mushroom Kingdom Championships, Ceave Gaming

My Life as a Barber in Hitman 2, MinMax (Leo Vader)

MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod, PowerPak

optional: Mega Microvideos, Matthewmatosis

the theme and structure is mostly intended to introduce at least one critical or historically contextual work followed by examples of the type of narrative in question.

in unit 1, this is the idea of "How do people talk about their own experiences in the context of YouTube and playing video games?" across three rather different kinds of documentaries. unit 2 is intended to take that lens of who is telling what tale and dial in on challenge running, where i first noticed the way some videos turn the story of overcoming a challenge into its own narrative that is distinct from but related to the narrative events of the game itself. unit 3 circles back to the bigger picture with a variety of examples that, to me, are maximally metanarrative, the emergent story of the player-narrator now functionally replacing the game's embedded narrative.

bonus unit: broken narratives

Glitch & the Grotesque at the MLA, Sylvia Korman

Watching time loop movies to escape my time loop, Leo Vader

The Stanley Parable, Dark Souls, and Intended Play, Folding Ideas

Breaking Madden, Jon Bois

The TRUTH about the Pizzaplex in FNAF: Security Breach, AstralSpiff

this one is highly underdeveloped, but i'd love to work out something more robust building on randomizer challenges that produce intentionally bizarre, semi-ironic "lore," and bois-esque endeavors to break games so hard the story itself crumbles. but that's really out of scope so i'm just including the links to things i couldn't bear to get rid of. more rambling abt the challenge runs I chose under the cut.

Challenge runs represent one of the most obvious places to start, due to being extremely plentiful and having a hook that makes a "here's how I did X thing in Y video game" format almost unavoidable. Minimalist 100% is an underrated and sweet straightforward example that I mostly include as a baseline for reporting-out style narrative; here are the facts, here's what happened, this is the thing that it is. Mogswamp's 100 Days on Just Dirt is similar in style, but the physical measuring of days is a delightful and, more importantly, external narrative device.

Now oriented, we get a taste of Ceave Gaming's narrative approach to Mario challenges with the no-crouching run, and while we still aren't at the degree of player-characters being constructed for the narrative's sake, the spirited belief in crouching sets the stage for other rhetoric in more extreme cases we'll see later.

The Backlogs' entire body of work qualifies here, but GRIME is the strongest inspiration for putting this list together. I include the DS3 firebombs run because what was initially a factual description of how his wife's use of firebombs inspired him to play differently in the original DS1 firebombs run has developed into full-blown multi-game narrative arc with the Firebomb Goddess (his wife, who also voices the character) compelling his in-game character to achieve his destined quest. Grime takes that even further,

In-Game Documentaries

I include Life as a Bokoblin mostly as a contrast to My Life as a Barber - there is a level of fictionalization and roleplay involved in the Zelda in-game documentary that highlights exactly what I want to single out when I am talking about metanarrative, the story about a story.

[foone]

So in the Soviet United States I'm on the committee in charge of Big Sculptures and Big Buildings. See, it's an atheistic state, right? And we think a big (no pun intended) part of religious belief is the size of churches. It's easy to believe in a mystical sky man, if what you're really believing in is a big building. Big buildings are real, and can be seen and touched, after all. God cannot.

So yeah. We're trying to both combat religiosity and encourage the proletariat by building our own, non-religious buildings and statues and such.

The committee is mainly working on the Palace of Gamers but my personal goal is a sculpture to speedrunners. The current leading design in the competition is Mario doing a backwards long jump up the endless stairs in Super Mario 64.

Some think this is a silly unimportant thing to build a monument to, but sport is an important part of life, including setting records. And we're a modern country looking to the future: we need to show the world the benefits of Soviet science through our domination of the speedrunning world.

We can only guess at how many speedrunners have had to drop out of grinding for records, as they live in the capitalist parts of the world which make them worry about having to "earn" the right to live through working for some overseer who has them make endless hamburgers for mere scraps. In the glorious workers paradise that we are building, our workers are not forced into pointless underpaid busy work, they can utilize their talents to the best of their abilities, and get the record for Mario 64 any% under six minutes.

[delightfullyquirkydoodles]

Okay, buckle up, friends and neighbours, because it's time for:

THE DOOPLISS DISSERTATION

(Obviously, you should take all of this with a HUGE chunk of salt, since I'm not only an internet-poisoned fandom blogger, but also a former English major with a penchant for over-reading.

Still, I spent a long time writing this, so I'd appreciate it if you gave it a read.)

So before we talk about Doopliss himself, I feel like we should talk about Creepy Steeple, since a lot of the topics I'm going to be touching on relate to the actual building.

Neither the original Gamecube version nor the Switch remake really bothers to explain what Creepy Steeple actually is.

None of Goombella's tattles say anything about the building's intended purpose. The name vaguely implies that it's a church of some kind -- in Japanese, it's called Odoron Jiin, or "Astonishing Temple" -- but that's still not very helpful.

Still, for the purposes of this analysis, I'm going to assume that it's meant to be a church.

This brings me to the Steeple's stained glass window, which shows a scary-looking Doopliss standing over some piranha plants.

From a design standpoint, I'm guessing that this detail was added to give the location a spooky vibe, but from an in-universe perspective, the implications are wild.

Like, who designed this? How long ago? And why? What the heck is it supposed to represent?

Unsurprisingly, the game offers no real answers, but I have a couple of theories.

The first is that the people of Twilight Town (or their ancestors, or something) created the window in Doopliss's honor.

Stained glass windows often depict saints or angels, so maybe the Twilighters used to worship him? Like, maybe Creepy Steeple was once dedicated to him and then, for whatever reason, the worshippers decided to leave?

It's not super likely, but I didn't want to rule out any possibilities. This is a weird freaking temple. Literally anything is possible, as far as I'm concerned.

My second theory is that Doopliss designed the window himself. He seems like a guy with a lot of spare time, so it's not too much of a stretch to say that he came up with the idea and then spent weeks building it by hand.

He could have also bullied the Boos into constructing it for him. I dunno. I just have this mental image of him pulling pranks on them and generally being a nuisance until they caved.

The bottom line is someone wanted to Doopliss's face to be front and center. And if that someone is Doopliss himself, then hoo boy, there is a lot to unpack here.

Maybe I'm projecting, but it feels like Doopliss is wrestling with some major self-esteem issues.

Despite being an incredibly powerful shapeshifter who somehow cursed an entire town, he seems very childish. He spends all his time watching TV and coming up with new jokes. He throws tantrums when he loses. He wears a party hat, of all things.

Based on that, I'd say that he's probably starved for attention. He's probably pretty lonely living in Creepy Steeple all by himself (doubly so if my theory about the Twilighters is correct).

I'd even go so far as to say that his scheme to turn the Twilighters into pigs is motivated by this need for attention. I mean, what better way to get people to notice you than to cause a town-wide panic?

I feel like the disguises he uses over the course of the main story also support this theory.

Though Mario, Zip Toad and Professor Frankly are quite different from one another, they all have one important thing in common: they're famous. Mario's a world-renowned adventurer, Zip Toad is a well-known actor and Frankly is a tenured professor whose students love him.

Doopliss even alludes to this after stealing Mario's body, telling him, "You're so popular around here! I just love being you!"

By transforming into beloved figures, Doopliss can get the attention he craves.

I also think that this is why he joined the Shadow Sirens. Sure, Beldam abuses him almost as badly as she abused Vivian, but at least she notices him. That's better than nothing.

The most conclusive piece of textual evidence is found in the epilogue. In her letter to Mario, Goombella explains that Doopliss has joined Flurrie on-stage in her production of "Paper Mario".

Obviously his shapeshifting abilities make the play a lot more realistic, but why would he bother participating in it at all? This guy was a villain for most of the game. Why would he suddenly decide to join up with one of his enemies?

Because, as far as I can tell, he's not a villain. Just a guy who's sick of being ignored.

I dunno. Doopliss's motivations have never been super clear, but I feel like there's more to him than meets the eye.

If you have any thoughts or ideas of your own, feel free to comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

[griefninja]

I think I get why there is such a divide between D&D only people and D&D is the worst game ever people. People have joked about "they aren't ttrpg fans, they're D&D fans," before, but I think that's legit true. D&D is used to scratch a different part of the brain than most ttrpgs. D&D is like Among Us or Lethal Company. Is isn't necessarily a fan game to play on it's own by yourself. It's a lobby, a physics engine, that you and your friends can use to facilitate spending time together and make jokes. It can also be a vehicle for youtubers to entertain you by using it as a vehicle for entertain. That's the purpose of those youtube videos like "this build let's you deal 10,000 damage turn one at level 3," and "melt your DM's mind with the the game breaking mechanics of rope!" That's NOT meant to be taken seriously. It's ment to be a joke you and your buddies laugh at. In the same way that showing everyone in the lethal company lobby the game breaking glitch you saw a video about is meant to be funny. This way that D&D is used in practice is extremely different from other systems that aren't trying to make a physics engine for jokes. They're trying to make a system for generating a good story. They see those D&D videos and wonder "what are they thinking trying to tell a narratively satisfying story with bad mechanics like that?" The answer is they're not doing that at all, actually! If it is possible for a "D&D Killer" to exist, it's not going to be a game that focuses on narrative, like other systems. It's gonna be a physics engine joke machine, like D&D. I think this is what Brennan Lee Mulligan was trying to say in that interview when he said he "likes D&D as a combat simulator, because he and his friends are already trained improv performers that can make their own story. It's not that he's just a dumb dumb who doesn't understand ttrpgs. It's that he finds a physic engine type system easy to just exist in and make up whatever narrative his friend's want in. Homebrewing cyberpunk technology or hyper detailed sex mechanics in D&D sounds idiotic to someone who plays specific ttrpgs for specific narratives, but to someone who mods lethal company to have a super Mario sunshine world where you get chased around by Hatsune Miku monsters it makes perfect sense to take the thing you like and to push it to ridiculous extremes.

[snawful]

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga Cut Enemies

I have already made a few posts about a couple enemies I found (a beanish Hammer Bro and Pea-pod Goomba) and Jinx from SMRPG being hidden in the prototype build, but I just recently discovered several more (pretty bizarre) scrapped enemies.

First there's a two-headed Chain Chomp with the body of a regular dog. It, like a lot of these scrapped enemies, don't have any animations.

An enemy that resembles Diskun (Famicom mascot) but with angry eyebrows.

A Lakitu being whipped by its cloud.

A bizarre enemy made of shells.

A flounder enemy with a boot print on its side.

A regular Chain Chomp that slightly resembles how they look in Paper Mario.

A potted Piranha Plant (these weren't much of a thing in the Mario series until 2005 with Mario Kart Arcade GP and later Super Mario 3D World).