Blatant Manipulation

Since today was the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. original Japanese release, I busted out my NES to celebrate and tried to run through the game the way I always do: No warps, whole thing, front to back! Then, I felt strongly as though I wanted to report on the experience.

I was a little rusty off the hop but got back into the old rhythms soon enough. First man lost was to a flying fish in 2-3, but rather than killing the momentum early I kept a good pace afterward and built up a few extra lives.

World 5 then proceeded to clean me out. Momentum was dangerously low, lives were being lost to very silly mistakes. Somehow I persevered and with a healthy amount of luck I ran the entirety of World 6 on one life.

World 7 granted me one extra man due to coin collecting, which I lost by the final castle anyway. 7-4 is a little notorious to me because it’s one of those areas that you need to run through in the correct pattern or be doomed to repeat forever. Of course I could not remember the second area’s pattern. I tried a few things unsuccessfully, and when the timer hit 99 and the music picked up pace I panicked and started running more or less at random.

Somehow, almost upsettingly, this worked and I barged right on through. I have no idea what I did right but I quickly finished off the world.

So, 8-1 and one life left! Also, I’m tiny mario! Would I sally forth, carried onward by unbelievable luck? Nope! The last Mario was used up about thirty seconds into the level, and that was that.

Happy Mario’s Birthday, everybody!

taste of his own medicine

 

This is a completely true story, and I will have you know that I worked very hard on his expression in Panel 2. Conrad used to get this extremely impish little smile on his face whenever he was up to No Good, and I needed to bring that across.

Apparently I did not work so hard on whoever is supposed to be sitting next to him. Is that a hair net? Looks terrible. [Sept.4, 2013]