(David) Play It!
April 27, 2009
This session we will visit two renditions of “Mario Bros.”! What makes this topic so noteworthy is the concept that people will take something that’s established and tear into it or modify it to make it their own. The term, as described in our class, is Bricolage: An act of transformation by which a new and original style is formed through plunder and recontextualization as a challenge to the hegemony of the dominant culture. The following examples certainly are new and original, and they borrow heavily or outright steal from the Mario series! The only thing that needs to be asked: Do they challenge the power and solidarity of the dominant gaming culture?
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=5768.0
Our first example is “The Mushroom Engine”. In this game, you play the entire thing backwards! You start at the end and walk backwards to the beginning, being careful not to cause any time paradoxes by collecting too many coins or by not reverse-killing a goomba that the game predetermines you killed. It’s as confusing as it sounds, and by the time you finish, your brain will be scrambled backwards!
What this title gives is something new through the use of something old. We all know Mario, and the games are very straightforward, jump and run to the end, and the forward level design in this game shows the very most straightforward of them. However, the axis of time is what’s off kilter here, and the challenge? It asks us, why do we accept the same conventions and gameplay for so many years and so many dollars, when we could be experiencing entire new dimensions of gameplay? Just imagine how different your games would be, Metal Gear Solid, Rockband, Halo, if you had to play them backwards? I am having a hard time even imagining it because the companies have enforced their policy of “forwards time” and linear gameplay so strictly on us.
http://zarat.us/tra/offline-games/eversion.html
The last example is a gamed called “Eversion”. It looks like a happy sunny Mario clone, and a poorly disguised one at that, suited for ten year olds, right? I can sum up the game in this phrase taken from their website.
“NOT INDICATED FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION”
That’s right. The game holds, if I may use a clichéd term, a dark secret. You have a power called “Eversion”, which allows you to move to parallel universes where things are slightly different: perhaps a bush is a bit more overgrown so you can stand on it, or a grass wall has decayed a bit so you can pass. You will use this ability to avoid obstacles and progress further and further, finding new areas to use your eversion power. The true twist unfolds bit by bit as the game goes on, but I won’t post spoilers!
What this game seems to challenge is both the happy go lucky atmosphere of the Mario series (along with their true rip-offs, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, too many to list really) along with, as with the Mushroom Engine, the straightforward nature of the games. There are always static bushes in the background, clouds, blocks, and so forth. What if they weren’t static pieces of background, and they actually mattered in the game? It sounds simple but it’s a revolutionary concept in gaming, which is, why don’t most objects in games do something?
I’ve beaten both games myself, and can highly recommend them for the surreal experience they give, particularly to fans of the genre. I’ve been playing Mario for years, have been getting bored of them for a few years less, and enjoying these games all the more immensely for it. I know they might be hard, and you might not have free time, but these games don’t ask for too much, so please beat them and post here!
As a note, Mushroom Engine is much shorter, perhaps half an hour, while Eversion might take up a full day for the casual player.
Both of these games sound really interesting…and really confusing! Nonetheless, I like the notion that these games choose to challenge the straightforward, laws of time abiding, nature of most video games. Isn’t that a part of what video games are created to do–challenge the natural laws that we, in reality, have no choice but to follow? A lot of people play video games to step away from reality (exceptions granted of course), and most games spurn reality to some extent, but it’s interesting to see a complete rejection of time, as you described in the Mushroom Engine.
If I had the time I’d immediately take up your challenge–and even with my limited time, I still may.