- Playing in the dirt
- Watching Mister Roger's Neighborhood and fantasizing about how sweet it would be to have my own Trolley
- Making crappy-looking things with my Playdoh that resembled absolutely nothing
- Developing sore thumbs playing Super Mario Bros. on my Nintendo
Today, I'm going to be talking about my favorite of the four - the last one on the list. When I was little there was nothing on the planet I loved more than playing Super Mario Bros. on my Nintendo (except maybe fashioning my own primitive clubs and bows based on the ones I saw on the made-for-TV Ewok movies from the mid-1980s...I did that a few times and it was probably the coolest thing I've ever done, even to this very day). Anyway, I lived for Mario. I loved everything about it, except having to blow on the cartridge like a harmonica when it got all dusty. I would get up in the morning on some days, and play for hours upon hours upon hours until I had saved the Princess a dozen times over and died more times than I could count. My mother would be outside with my older brother, waiting on the school bus, and my four-year-old self would be plopped down in front of the living room television, staring at that familiar, brightly-colored 8 bit world. I distinctively remember hating the levels where Mario was under water, so much so that I refused to play them. I always paused the game and waited for my mother to beat them for me, then I'd take over again. Once, when she was outside with my brother on a really rainy morning, waiting on the school bus to pull up in front of our house, I got stuck on a swimming level and paused the game as usual. The strange thing is though, for some reason that I still don't quite understand, I decided it would be a great time to call 911 while I waited (maybe it was so they could send someone to save me from the "swimming" level - I really can't say). Anyway, that didn't go so well. The woman on the other end picked up the phone and asked me what my emergency was and I hung up the phone as quickly as possible and hid behind the old rocking chair that used to sit in my room beside my window. They called back a little later once my mom was back in the house, and let's just say my adventure with Mario ended really early that day.
What makes my story unique from any other kid my age who was making the little pixilated man run across his side-scrolling land, was the fact that I didn't understand the game. Well, I guess nobody did, but I didn't even understand the simple parts. When Mario would run across a fireflower and develop his fire-chucking ability, I thought, due to the poor graphics (which represented the best in video gaming at the time) that he was spitting fire at his enemies, so naturally, I called the little flowers, and the ability itself "spit." Weirder still, when the little dude in the cloud would fly overhead and throw spiked creatures at Mario, I referred to him as "bomb lady." I have no idea why I did that or how I got the notion that he was a girl, but I did it and I firmly believed it. The fireflower bit I could sorta explain, but this leaves me at a loss for words.
It's strange. The game was weird enough without my childhood mind inventing words to describe what was going on with Mario on the screen. Think about it, essentially, you play the role of a mushroom-powered plumber who spends his days journeying through green sewer pipes, picking up loose change, dodging over-sized bullets, smashing his head into bricks, and leaping over gaping holes in the ground. If the game hadn't originated in Japan, I'd swear it was created by some irate sanitation worker one day when he was tripping on acid. The Japanese are weird to begin with though, so I don't question it. I just play it.
Don't forget, you can play Super Mario Bros. right in your own browser from the Retro Games link to the right of this page - that is unless you're lucky enough to still have a working Nintendo and a copy of the game that still works after all these years (sadly, mine broke a number of years back, and the cartridge, if it still exists, is probably clogged with so much dust that it'll never work again). In that case, screw the internet. Using your keyboard to control Mario isn't nearly as fun as using a square controller from twenty-odd years ago. Go to it!
