Super Mario Brothers

One of the simple joys of my life is playing Super Mario Brothers, the original classic hit from the glory days of the NES. I use the word “simple” on purpose, not as a kind of slur meaning “stupid,” as it is used a lot of the times nowadays, but as a term of endearment. It is a simple game with simple mechanics and simple design. I think maybe this is the appeal to me now as a man of 37 years living in the decidedly complex and ambiguous haze that is the real world. And yet, ironic as it may seem, most people living in this odd and disturbing world seem to prefer their imaginary worlds to be even darker and more unsettling than reality.

I think that it is a hallmark of this modern age to always be expecting a sort of gritty and dour complexity to our art and pop art. One need look no further than to shows like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, or watch films like The Hunger Games or the much-vaunted Dark Knight Trilogy to see that the worlds reflected back to us from the ideosphere of modern storytellers and creators are all at their core very similar. Indeed, all of these worlds are in one way or another very grim and bleak, and the characters in them, even if they are heroes, are very morally and psychologically complicated and tormented in some way.

So it goes with most of the very popular video games out there today. In fact, it is hard for me, whilst walking down the video game aisle in a store, to differentiate one grim, heavily-armored future space soldier in a dystopian post-invasion Earth from another. I have played some of them offhand a few times, and, while the gameplay was fun, I was mostly turned off by the worlds they presented. Never before have so many shades of dull brown and gray-green been used to so minimal an effect. I found it amazing that all of this cutting-edge technology was being used to simulate rusted-corrugated-steel shacks and barren trees and water-rotted wood. I mean, if I wanted to go play in a third-world environment, I would go to my scenic hometown of Waycross, Georgia (Hi, Mom!) and take the back roads behind the gravel pit by Chrystal’s Flea Market, and have a country ball. There’s enough crappy lean-to action back there to keep you busy for at least a few hours.

But my Mushroom Kingdom, ah! my wonderful Mushroom Kingdom! It is a world of the mind that I like to visit from time to time, just like the world of Marvel Comics or the world of Star Trek. It has its perils, and lots of them, but it seems like a beautiful place. There are no rotten lean-tos to be seen, only that powder-blue sky accented with that random, wonderfully-repetitive cloud, with its pixelfied cowlick on one side. This is no dystopian hellscape; it’s a Wonderland. Sure, the princess has been captured by Bowser, but no big deal, says that wonderfully casual and jauntily Carribean main theme that you hear most of the time in the game. It’s cool, bro, just listen to this happy jam and have some fun. You’ll get there. Thanks for playing, kid.

In short, it was a welcoming game. It was a friendly game. Our heroes were good-natured, wide-eyed, smiling, goofy pals. Mario and by extension his pallete-swap of a brother Luigi, were squat little cartoon gourds in overalls and painter’s caps, with pixels for eyes and tiny black skidmarks of pixels showing us where their mouths should be, but they had all the exuberant, bug-eyed energy of those early Mickey Mouse cartoons where everyone dances and plays the piano and sways to the music even when they are standing still. They even made us laugh when they failed and they fell off screen while facing us with that Oh-No-Mr.-Bill face of theirs. Oh no! Better luck next time, kid! Thanks for playing.

copyright 2013 Brian Stacy Sweat