The more you eat the less good they are.

Posted on by Nathan

 

Does this comic break my informal rule of No Dialogue In The Artwork? Kind of, although I often make exceptions for what I consider to be song lyrics. Three things:

1st, I was concerned that the Oompa-loompa’s expression alone (combined with the narration) wouldn’t be clear enough for people to make the association to their judgmental songs. Maybe I’m under-estimating my audience, but I felt like in this case the text added rather than took away.

2nd, I once had a film professor who was going on about the Dogme 95 movement. The movement had a lot of rules for how a film was to be made (natural light only, no guns to move the plot forward etc.) but the prof pointed out that what was more interesting about these films was they way they selectively chose to break their own rules. I happen to think he’s right, so that’s why it’s fun to do something unexpected from time to time.

3rd, and this has nothing to do with the “rules” but look at that green hair! I’m really proud of that hair. [October 2, 2013]

Blatant Manipulation

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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!