It’s no secret to anyone who follows me on Twitter that I really got into the Mario Marathon last week.
Hell, I think even my wife got tired of the constant, “They’re up to blorgteen thousand dollars so far!”-type updates, but what can I say, I was genuinely excited to be watching what was happening. On the outside, these guys managed to raise over EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for Child’s Play over four days by sitting around playing video games, which is absolutely amazing in its own right, but even beyond the telethon aspect of it, there was something else in particular that really managed to catch my eye, too.
There are a lot of Mario games that I haven’t even played yet!
- Super Mario 64
- Super Mario Sunshine
- Super Mario Galaxy (both 1 & 2)
…and that’s not even counting the ones that they didn’t include in the telethon like Super Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG – apparently with the exception of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I pretty much stopped playing this series after Super Mario World for the SNES. The why is actually pretty simple – I never owned a Nintendo 64 or a Game Cube, instead jumping to the PS2 so that I could spend my time roughing up the ladies of the night in Grand Theft Auto. Fortunately, with the Virtual Console on the Wii, though, at least now I still have a chance to revisit some of these old possible classics without buying two entirely new systems to do so!
And so on this particular 4th of July holiday weekend, Sara and I made a purchase and had a little Mario Marathon of our own…
Now we didn’t even get into the other games because frankly we just didn’t have the time, but so far we’ve really been having a ball with this first one on the list … once each of us managed to get the controls figured out, anyways! It’s even got a pseudo-two-player option so that we both could participate without jumping on each other’s heads like we tend to do in Mario Wii, which was really nice. I think I would estimate that between the two days alone, we probably spent a total of 16 hours glued to this game, exploring galaxies and taking turns working our way through the stars together.
It was kind of like opening a new chapter for me in the universe that is Mario, with the very first games explored by my 7 year-old self and friends, then introducing Lori to Super Mario Bros. 3 and eventually Super Mario World. Now I’m venturing into even further strange and new versions of Mario with my wife, and before long, in the next couple of years I’m sure I’ll be introducing another generation yet to this adventurous duo of plumbers as well!
Very cool.