The Power of a Tubby Plumber
Posted under: I grew up playing Super Mario Brothers, its one of my early gaming memories, to me Mario is the king of computer games and represents a lot of why I find games fun… Sonic would have been a contender but he never really seemed to make it into the 3rd dimension so Mario wins due to lasting appeal and a varied wardrobe!
I got my girlfriend New Super Mario Brothers Wii for Christmas last year and we had played it a good bit up until this summer. We’ve started playing again and it just feels great. The SMB games just have this amazing feeling of engagement with the world. It feels so natural to move Mario, to run and jump, to shoot fireballs or iceballs and smash enemies. This isn’t the kind of engagement you feel in story driven games, instead you engage with the world and your place within it.
I had, until recently, felt that I was more the kind of person who enjoys story and narrative within games however getting back to playing Mario and game like Angry Birds, Plants Vs Zombies and Minecraft even multiplayer on Modern Warfare 2. These are the games that lately I’ve enjoyed the most and their all strong on mechanics, after all isn’t that what games are about?