xSuperMario64x
a very tired Bug 🪲💤
I'm sure everyone knows by now that the Super Mario series is basically my favorite thing of all time, and I find myself talking about it a lot on here. So I figure, why not make a dedicated thread for random thoughts on the series in general? I certainly have a lot to say about it haha!
I'm sure I'll be posting here the most, but everyone is free to post their own thoughts too!
I already have quite a few thoughts that I'd like to share, feel free to skip as it's pretty long (I really love to ramble lol):
1. Earlier today (actually yesterday probably) I took note of the fact that the Ghost Guys from Luigi’s Mansion look almost exactly like Beezos, and from this I observed two things. First of all, the pre-release content suggests that Ghost Guys were supposed to look quite a bit different, as it shows them without their mask and with little yellow eyes peering through a hole on the front of the cloak. I wonder if maybe Nintendo was hinting at what a shy guy might look like without a mask on haha.
The other thing I realized, is that beezos do, in fact, appear in Super Mario RPG! You know what that means? We’re gonna get to see it in the remake coming later this year! The SMB2 universe is coming together once again; we’ve got shy guys, snifits, ninjis, and now beezos. All we need are the other fools, like tweeters, cobrats, hoopsters, albatoss, and whoever else I’m missing.
2. The other day I was playing Super Mario Odyssey. I actually ended up playing for about 3 hours, and I can’t remember the last time I spent that long of a play session playing that game. I spent the first hour just running around Peach’s Castle (what the game refers to as the “Mushroom Kingdom”), mostly playing as a goomba and having that funny little fedora dog follow me around. Speaking of goombas, I saw the really cute one (Goombette) sitting behind the castle and I suddenly felt like I really wanted to draw her. I may have to do a little doodle of her sometime soon hehe.
Anyways, that’s not why I got on the game in the first place. I got on there to go to Bowser’s Kingdom and observe the nature and behavior of the stairface ogres. I’ve been thinking, I’m fairly positive that he technically isn’t a stone creature, but he sure as hell acts like one, so I think just this one time I can make an exception. I was actually inspired to do a bit of research about the oni, which is a demon of Japanese folklore and serves as the inspiration for the appearance of both the stairface ogre and the stone tox box. What really got me was the part about them wielding metal clubs and going around smashing people with said clubs for fun, like that’s some big rock boy vibes for sure. I also learned that if someone’s soul has turned wicked beyond redemption then they may actually turn into an oni while they’re still alive (they usually turn into one after they die if they’ve been cruel/evil), so that’s pretty wild. I know that the stairface ogre looks more like a nurikabe, but his mannerisms definitely harness the spirit of the oni. Round these parts we love a good wall dude with crazy fangs who likes to smash things haha.
One thing I noticed about this guy is, despite having the ground where the mallet will crash down turn red (much like the whomps in SMG2), if he ends up hitting Mario with his mallet, he only takes 1 HP of damage. See, in Galaxy 2, if you get crushed by a whomp or thwomp or tox box, they immediately take all of your HP and you lose a life. I think the stairface ogre needs to step up his game if he wants to be on tier with the true rock boys. I also noticed that there’s another way in which he manifests rock boy energy: the grunts. He makes a lot of funny noises when he spots Mario and then proceeds to try to smash him with his mallet. Honestly, now that I think about it, in Galaxy 2 the thwomps and tox boxes don’t say anything at all, they just do their smash sounds and that’s it. But then you have the whomps who, quite literally, cannot keep their mouth shut (I’m sorry that was awful lol). But yeah, the stairface ogre shuffles around and goes URGNRUGN and it’s pretty funny.
The last thing I wanted to mention is how diligent they are in their singular duty to smash anything that steps onto their small territory. They will literally stand there, mallet in the air, and wait for someone to even touch with their pinky toe the territory that they guard. They don’t pace around like whomps do, they obviously don’t roll around like tox boxes. I suppose they’re more like thwomps, but somehow even more menacing, with the way they stare into your soul and make an impish face at you, just waiting for the perfect moment to pulverize you. They simply wait, motionless, and as soon as you step onto their grounds they immediately come after and target you, hoping to give into their rock boy nature and crush you under the tremendous weight of their wooden mallet. That’s what I mean when I say that they really act like a stone creature, they may not actually be one but their spirit is admirable and I still very much like them.
3. I feel like Rex deserves a lot more attention than he gets. I learned yesterday that they actually appear in some of the Mario & Luigi games, as well as Super Princess Peach, so I guess that’s nice. But they give off big yoshi vibes and I just wish they could show up in more modern games. I’m thinking about drawing one, maybe hanging out with Yoshi hehe.
4. I don’t know if this really means anything, but I’ve noticed lately that when I’m going down these rabbit holes looking at Super Mario stuff, Kamek happens to show up a lot. As a kid I always talked about how much I hate magikoopas, and honestly I still kinda do because they’re really annoying to deal with in the games they appear in. But I’ve noticed lately that they’re starting to grow on me. I think I really appreciate their mischievous nature, it’s endearing in a way. Plus the idea that they can float and teleport and shoot geometric shapes at you with their scepter is just great. It probably helps that this new character I came up with recently, Artemis, is a magikoopa and she’s slowly but surely becoming yet another comfort character of mine.
Anyways, I mentioned Kamek specifically. Of course he just recently was added to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, he was actually in MKTour but that appearance marks 25 years since he was originally supposed to make his debut in MK64. I bring this up because I was researching a bit about this earlier, and then literally about 5 minutes later I got recommended a short on Youtube that talks about the exact same thing. Also should mention that when I look up stuff he happens to pop up, like reading about Horror Land or MP9 or Mario & Luigi Paper Jam or Dr. Mario World, or whatever. He just shows up a lot. Perhaps he is stalking me lol. I can picture him in NSMBWii, where you go to fight a koopaling and he shows up and goes “nyeh heh heh!” in that cute little voice.
5. Speaking of Dr. Mario World, I discovered something truly shocking. I was looking through the list of assistants, since I had learned in the past few days that both the scuttlebug and broozer were assistants in that game, and I found that one of the assistants is Mr Whomp King himself. Yeah, not like some normal rock dude, this guy is the head honcho and he’s apparently also a medical assistant. I’m just imagining, like, Dr. Waluigi walking in and being like “oh I hope it’s okay if I bring in an assistant today!” and then this 85 ft tall wall dude comes crashing into the exam room. What does he do anyways? Maybe he does chiropractic work. Who needs a spine realignment when the king of stone-encrusted behemoths can smash you with his face and put all of your bones out of alignment?
Discovering this was a very pleasant surprise for me, since as far as I had known, the Whomp King only appeared in WF/Throwback Galaxy and Creepy Cavern (and even the latter I didn’t know about until sometime late last year). What in the world was he doing in Dr. Mario World anyways? Some absolute genius on the dev team for that game decided to put him in there, just for the hell of it. That guy deserves a Nobel Peace prize. Anyways, I was also kinda sad to hear about it because Dr. Mario World was a mobile game, and it started in July 2019 but was discontinued in Nov 2021. Not that I was ever really interested in the game–if I wanted to play Dr. Mario I would simply play the original on the NES–but the fact alone that this guy was in the game would’ve been enough for me to check it out, just out of curiosity and pure astonishment.
I still think the idea of him being a doctor’s assistant is hilarious and completely ridiculous, but I appreciate the gesture too, because I feel like he deserves a lot more attention than he’s been given. As weird and wacky as the Whomp King is (well, in all fairness, his whole kind is probably the most wild thing to ever come out of the Super Mario games), I’ve always thought that he’s an interesting character with a lot of potential for character development. I know Nintendo would never do something like that, because they really just see him as another one-dimensional boss character that no one really pays any heed to, but I’ll still hold out some hope for him.
[Also finding it hilarious that I’m putting so much effort into writing about the rock (and rock-adjacent) boys lol]
6. Off and on I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for Mario Party 9, and I won’t even lie, it’s pretty bland and uninteresting. I listened to a few of the board themes from that game, and then for comparison I went and listened to the ones from MP3 that I hadn’t heard before (Spiny Desert, Chilly Waters, and Blooper Sea). Surprise surprise, the boards from MP3 have more variation in their melodies and actually interesting chord progressions. One specific music track from MP9 that irks me is the one from whatever board King Boo resides on (my boy deserves better honestly). It’s so very monotonous to listen to. That’s why I compared it to Horror Land, a board which actually has a really interesting musical track. It’s thematic and it really gives a sense of uneasiness and spookiness that characterizes the board. I feel like the one from MP9 is somehow trying too hard to be spooky, and also not trying hard enough.
I could say something similar about the music from Magma Mine. It seems like it’s trying to go for that lava vibe while also keeping a more playful/humorous nature (unlike Bowser’s Magma Mountain from MP1), and yet the melody line is just so repetitive that it becomes uninteresting very quickly.
my passion and love for this series is unparalleled
I'm sure I'll be posting here the most, but everyone is free to post their own thoughts too!
I already have quite a few thoughts that I'd like to share, feel free to skip as it's pretty long (I really love to ramble lol):
1. Earlier today (actually yesterday probably) I took note of the fact that the Ghost Guys from Luigi’s Mansion look almost exactly like Beezos, and from this I observed two things. First of all, the pre-release content suggests that Ghost Guys were supposed to look quite a bit different, as it shows them without their mask and with little yellow eyes peering through a hole on the front of the cloak. I wonder if maybe Nintendo was hinting at what a shy guy might look like without a mask on haha.
The other thing I realized, is that beezos do, in fact, appear in Super Mario RPG! You know what that means? We’re gonna get to see it in the remake coming later this year! The SMB2 universe is coming together once again; we’ve got shy guys, snifits, ninjis, and now beezos. All we need are the other fools, like tweeters, cobrats, hoopsters, albatoss, and whoever else I’m missing.
2. The other day I was playing Super Mario Odyssey. I actually ended up playing for about 3 hours, and I can’t remember the last time I spent that long of a play session playing that game. I spent the first hour just running around Peach’s Castle (what the game refers to as the “Mushroom Kingdom”), mostly playing as a goomba and having that funny little fedora dog follow me around. Speaking of goombas, I saw the really cute one (Goombette) sitting behind the castle and I suddenly felt like I really wanted to draw her. I may have to do a little doodle of her sometime soon hehe.
Anyways, that’s not why I got on the game in the first place. I got on there to go to Bowser’s Kingdom and observe the nature and behavior of the stairface ogres. I’ve been thinking, I’m fairly positive that he technically isn’t a stone creature, but he sure as hell acts like one, so I think just this one time I can make an exception. I was actually inspired to do a bit of research about the oni, which is a demon of Japanese folklore and serves as the inspiration for the appearance of both the stairface ogre and the stone tox box. What really got me was the part about them wielding metal clubs and going around smashing people with said clubs for fun, like that’s some big rock boy vibes for sure. I also learned that if someone’s soul has turned wicked beyond redemption then they may actually turn into an oni while they’re still alive (they usually turn into one after they die if they’ve been cruel/evil), so that’s pretty wild. I know that the stairface ogre looks more like a nurikabe, but his mannerisms definitely harness the spirit of the oni. Round these parts we love a good wall dude with crazy fangs who likes to smash things haha.
One thing I noticed about this guy is, despite having the ground where the mallet will crash down turn red (much like the whomps in SMG2), if he ends up hitting Mario with his mallet, he only takes 1 HP of damage. See, in Galaxy 2, if you get crushed by a whomp or thwomp or tox box, they immediately take all of your HP and you lose a life. I think the stairface ogre needs to step up his game if he wants to be on tier with the true rock boys. I also noticed that there’s another way in which he manifests rock boy energy: the grunts. He makes a lot of funny noises when he spots Mario and then proceeds to try to smash him with his mallet. Honestly, now that I think about it, in Galaxy 2 the thwomps and tox boxes don’t say anything at all, they just do their smash sounds and that’s it. But then you have the whomps who, quite literally, cannot keep their mouth shut (I’m sorry that was awful lol). But yeah, the stairface ogre shuffles around and goes URGNRUGN and it’s pretty funny.
The last thing I wanted to mention is how diligent they are in their singular duty to smash anything that steps onto their small territory. They will literally stand there, mallet in the air, and wait for someone to even touch with their pinky toe the territory that they guard. They don’t pace around like whomps do, they obviously don’t roll around like tox boxes. I suppose they’re more like thwomps, but somehow even more menacing, with the way they stare into your soul and make an impish face at you, just waiting for the perfect moment to pulverize you. They simply wait, motionless, and as soon as you step onto their grounds they immediately come after and target you, hoping to give into their rock boy nature and crush you under the tremendous weight of their wooden mallet. That’s what I mean when I say that they really act like a stone creature, they may not actually be one but their spirit is admirable and I still very much like them.
3. I feel like Rex deserves a lot more attention than he gets. I learned yesterday that they actually appear in some of the Mario & Luigi games, as well as Super Princess Peach, so I guess that’s nice. But they give off big yoshi vibes and I just wish they could show up in more modern games. I’m thinking about drawing one, maybe hanging out with Yoshi hehe.
4. I don’t know if this really means anything, but I’ve noticed lately that when I’m going down these rabbit holes looking at Super Mario stuff, Kamek happens to show up a lot. As a kid I always talked about how much I hate magikoopas, and honestly I still kinda do because they’re really annoying to deal with in the games they appear in. But I’ve noticed lately that they’re starting to grow on me. I think I really appreciate their mischievous nature, it’s endearing in a way. Plus the idea that they can float and teleport and shoot geometric shapes at you with their scepter is just great. It probably helps that this new character I came up with recently, Artemis, is a magikoopa and she’s slowly but surely becoming yet another comfort character of mine.
Anyways, I mentioned Kamek specifically. Of course he just recently was added to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, he was actually in MKTour but that appearance marks 25 years since he was originally supposed to make his debut in MK64. I bring this up because I was researching a bit about this earlier, and then literally about 5 minutes later I got recommended a short on Youtube that talks about the exact same thing. Also should mention that when I look up stuff he happens to pop up, like reading about Horror Land or MP9 or Mario & Luigi Paper Jam or Dr. Mario World, or whatever. He just shows up a lot. Perhaps he is stalking me lol. I can picture him in NSMBWii, where you go to fight a koopaling and he shows up and goes “nyeh heh heh!” in that cute little voice.
5. Speaking of Dr. Mario World, I discovered something truly shocking. I was looking through the list of assistants, since I had learned in the past few days that both the scuttlebug and broozer were assistants in that game, and I found that one of the assistants is Mr Whomp King himself. Yeah, not like some normal rock dude, this guy is the head honcho and he’s apparently also a medical assistant. I’m just imagining, like, Dr. Waluigi walking in and being like “oh I hope it’s okay if I bring in an assistant today!” and then this 85 ft tall wall dude comes crashing into the exam room. What does he do anyways? Maybe he does chiropractic work. Who needs a spine realignment when the king of stone-encrusted behemoths can smash you with his face and put all of your bones out of alignment?
Discovering this was a very pleasant surprise for me, since as far as I had known, the Whomp King only appeared in WF/Throwback Galaxy and Creepy Cavern (and even the latter I didn’t know about until sometime late last year). What in the world was he doing in Dr. Mario World anyways? Some absolute genius on the dev team for that game decided to put him in there, just for the hell of it. That guy deserves a Nobel Peace prize. Anyways, I was also kinda sad to hear about it because Dr. Mario World was a mobile game, and it started in July 2019 but was discontinued in Nov 2021. Not that I was ever really interested in the game–if I wanted to play Dr. Mario I would simply play the original on the NES–but the fact alone that this guy was in the game would’ve been enough for me to check it out, just out of curiosity and pure astonishment.
I still think the idea of him being a doctor’s assistant is hilarious and completely ridiculous, but I appreciate the gesture too, because I feel like he deserves a lot more attention than he’s been given. As weird and wacky as the Whomp King is (well, in all fairness, his whole kind is probably the most wild thing to ever come out of the Super Mario games), I’ve always thought that he’s an interesting character with a lot of potential for character development. I know Nintendo would never do something like that, because they really just see him as another one-dimensional boss character that no one really pays any heed to, but I’ll still hold out some hope for him.
[Also finding it hilarious that I’m putting so much effort into writing about the rock (and rock-adjacent) boys lol]
6. Off and on I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for Mario Party 9, and I won’t even lie, it’s pretty bland and uninteresting. I listened to a few of the board themes from that game, and then for comparison I went and listened to the ones from MP3 that I hadn’t heard before (Spiny Desert, Chilly Waters, and Blooper Sea). Surprise surprise, the boards from MP3 have more variation in their melodies and actually interesting chord progressions. One specific music track from MP9 that irks me is the one from whatever board King Boo resides on (my boy deserves better honestly). It’s so very monotonous to listen to. That’s why I compared it to Horror Land, a board which actually has a really interesting musical track. It’s thematic and it really gives a sense of uneasiness and spookiness that characterizes the board. I feel like the one from MP9 is somehow trying too hard to be spooky, and also not trying hard enough.
I could say something similar about the music from Magma Mine. It seems like it’s trying to go for that lava vibe while also keeping a more playful/humorous nature (unlike Bowser’s Magma Mountain from MP1), and yet the melody line is just so repetitive that it becomes uninteresting very quickly.
here's the music from Boo's Horror Castle. I suppose it fits the atmosphere of the level well, but musically it's very uninteresting and monotonous.
and by contrast, the music from Horror Hand is quite busy and really gives into the spooky and whimsical setting of the board.
my passion and love for this series is unparalleled