Perhaps the foulest lie perpetrated by the mainstream media is the idea that there are only three Super Mario Bros. games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Anyone with a serious commitment to the Truth knows there are actually seventeen SMB titles, released between 1985 and 1996. It’s long past time we as a society stop ignoring the last fourteen NES Mario games simply because they aren’t “convenient” or “officially released by Nintendo” or “original works, as opposed to unrelated games with Mario’s image crudely hacked in.”



So, in the interest of closing this unforgivable gap in the Mario canon and human knowledge in general, here is an accurate retelling of the first of the neglected sequels, Super Mario Bros. IV (which bears a passing resemblance to a Japan-only game called Armadillo). The opening screen informs us that Mario’s girlfriend, Sheryl, has been kidnapped by something called the “Black Bean Gang” – presumably a vicious band of coffee smugglers. Also, Mario has started going by the alias “Billy the Shell,” for some reason.



Did Mario attempt to infiltrate the Black Bean Gang as “Billy the Shell”? Was Sheryl kidnapped to ensure Mario/Billy’s silence after his superiors found out he was working for the CIA’s coffee crimes division? Seems like the simplest and most likely explanation.

The game itself opens with Mario desperately looking for a member of the Black Bean Gang somewhere in Texas. Such is his desperation that he instinctively curls up into a ball and bounces on top of some enemies, killing them. Love pushes us to strange and unsuspected limits.



Ball Mario isn’t the only new transformation introduced in this game: there’s also Kangaroo Mario, Bird Mario, Fish Mario, and… Female Skinny Dipper Mario?

Another innovation is that at the end of each level, instead of looking at the camera and flashing a peace sign, Mario celebrates by splitting into several tiny hamsters wearing cowboy hats and running off-screen. This seems like it might be a useful ability to have during boss fights (perhaps the hamsters could crawl into inconvenient body orifices to throw them off), but no, it only happens here.



Anyway, once Mario locates and murders Texas’ local Black Bean Gangster, he finds a letter from the leader of the gang among his belongings. In the letter, the leader informs his subordinates that he’ll be visiting Monument Valley next, so Mario follows him there. The same situation repeats after every boss battle, with each new letter taking Mario to a different location. It’s very thoughtful of the leader of this crime syndicate to keep his “boys” (as he calls them) constantly updated of his whereabouts like that, but we have to wonder why he uses stationery from his son’s kindergarten school.

The Black Bean Gang, incidentally, is mostly made out of animals with machine guns, plus some sort of cyborg vaguely reminiscent of Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Each boss fight is preceded by a short cutscene of Mario walking into identical little houses, but then the interior shifts to some sort of vast satanic temple. What exactly are they putting in that coffee?

(Side note: It is unfathomable that the pig with the sunglasses isn’t the leader of the gang.)



And then there’s the aliens. Occasionally, Mario runs into small squid-like creatures and, upon touching them, is abruptly transported to some sort of cosmic backdrop, like in that scene from Dr. Strange. We’re then informed that the squid is a “Martian,” who offers (in conspicuously good English) Mario a ride in his spaceship. This allows Mario to bypass certain levels, but the game never explains why the aliens are willing to help our plumber protagonist. What do they get out of this deal? It would be dreadfully unimaginative to say that “they’re probing his butt,” but they are, in all likelihood, totally probing his butt.



After seeing Monument Valley and (as the narration puts it) “facing temptation” in Las Vegas, Mario’s quest takes him to San Francisco. It’s unclear if he faced any temptation there. Next, he “hops the border” to Mexico, gets lost in the Amazon, and visits the beautiful pyramids of Lima. The final levels are set in New York City, which, as you know, is mostly just a giant circus on top of a labyrinthian subway system. The leader of the Black Bean Gang turns out to be a creature called Fatmadillo, described by the game as “the obese bad guy.” It’s good that they pointed out his weight problem, because you might have missed it from his name or from just looking at the way he’s drawn.

And because every great villain needs a complex motivation, after Mario defeats Fatmadillo we finally find out what drove him to crime: he was an incel.



Oh, right, Mario’s girlfriend. This whole continental tour was supposed to be about rescuing her. As a matter of fact, Mario is so excited to be reunited with Sheryl that he turns into an unholy mess of floating body parts.

Sheryl was thankful to be saved, but apparently not thankful enough to live with that, because she was never seen again. Perhaps she hooked up with the pig with the sunglasses. As for Mario… keep an eye on this website to see where his unlicensed adventures took him next.

