by Nelson
I was pretty committed to my Super Nintendo. Even in its waning days when some of my more fortunate friends were already starting to get their N64s, my love for the wondrous gray box was steadfast. That may or may not have had something to do with the fact that it tended to take a while to sell my parents on system upgrades due to their insistence that the new ones should play the old games they’d already bought me. But regardless, I got more mileage out of my SNES than any other video game system I’ve ever owned. Its wondrous library was more than enough to keep me occupied even if I did have to go over to a friend’s house to play Wave Race ’64.
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was probably the last SNES game that I got totally absorbed with, but it was also the one I got the most absorbed with. I was already a fan of Super Mario, despite his cruelty to turtles, but this entry was unique. The only RPGs I previously played were Zelda 2 and Dragon Quest way back in the day, but I was too young and embarrassingly terrible at them.
This time was different, though. I was older, and I was playing a game that, in many ways, was designed to introduce players to the role-playing game format. The mustachioed legend was just the guy for the job. The second I made it to the Mushroom Kingdom, I was completely in love with it. For the first time ever, I was getting to meet and interact with all those cool little mushroom headed folks who inhabited the place. I even got to chill with The Chancellor.
Mushroom Kingdom aside, Mario RPG doesn’t offer the typical royalty rescue mission gamers are accustomed to. It starts off with the routine “Bowser kidnaps the Princess” plot, but that gets quickly resolved when Mario finally decides not to bother with going through 8 worlds full of enemies and takes the direct route straight to Bowser’s Castle. Matters get complicated when a gigantic sword descends from the heavens, slams through the castle’s roof, and sends the three main characters flying in different directions. The big sword is one of the new bad guys in town, the Smithy Gang, and Mario’s gotta take them out because, well, they’re bad guys with aspirations of world domination.
From there, we get to meet a slew of brand new characters – including Mallow, an orphaned cloud guy searching for his real parents, and a possessed doll named Chucky Geno. The doll gives us the score; Smithy and his band of baddies have shattered the “Star Road,” and it’s got to be repaired or else wishes can’t be granted. Obviously, the Star Road has evolved a bit since Super Mario World. In World, it was a souped up warp zone that offered the chance to get that sweet Blue Yoshi, but I can roll with the wish granting thing. By the time I made it to a town populated entirely by mining moles called Moleville, the game could’ve centered on the pursuit of a cheese sandwich, and I’d have stayed on board.
One of the things that I enjoyed the most about Seven Stars was the amount of personality it injected into the bad guys you had to take out. You had giant hamsters obsessed with food, guys with “the face of a totem pole” who want to marry Princess Toadstool, and even a pirate shark in constant search of a good fight. Since Smithy is the big bad, the other villains end up looking far more redeemable in comparison. Some of them go into business and open up casinos. After you beat the pirate shark, you earn his respect, and he’s happy to have you drop in for visits; Toadstool’s would be groom chows down on the cake and leaves the chapel happy despite Mario crashing the wedding, and, best of all, you get to add the mighty King Bowser Koopa to your party, and it’s awesome, and one of his attacks is to literally throw Mario at the enemy, and that’s even more awesome.
Most video games are packed with optional bonus content, but the scandalous truth of the matter is that I had a tendency to use cheat codes and may have even been known to have implemented a few extra helping methods once or twice, but I certainly don’t still remember the “Start and Stay as Hammer Bros Mario” Game Genie code for Mario 3 or anything like that. Not at all. Nevertheless, I earned the abundant secret treasures packed in Seven Stars. I helped Toadofsky compose his masterpiece; I met The Gardener and got the Lazy Shell; I even tracked down the elusive Crate Guy’s Casino where I spent a few hours playing blackjack and learned as a young man that I should never ever ever gamble for real money.
From the lands you travel through to the people you meet, Mario RPG was absolutely jam packed with character. So much so that, when Santa cut me a break and brought me an N64 against my mother’s wishes, I kinda/sorta found Mario 64 to be a little disappointing. I missed getting to go to different towns and help folks navigate their way through a dangerous rain of evil arrows with paralyzing effects. I wanted to grab a quick shower in the suite at the Marrymore Hotel before heading into the final showdown. I longed to walk the streets of Monstro Town and play Find the Flag with the Three Musty Fears, and, most of all, I missed playing as the King of the Koopas and using the world’s favorite plumber as a weapon.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand that pretty much everything I loved about this title came as the result of Nintendo co-developing it with the Final Fantasy guys, Square. The two companies had a falling out shortly afterwards, and, as a result, Super Mario RPG has never received a true follow-up, even after Square and Nintendo patched things up years ago. The Paper Mario games and the Mario & Luigi Gameboy Advance saga are spiritual sequels, but, while they do incorporate a lot of the elements of the Super Nintendo game, they’re just not the same. There weren’t any pirate sharks or talking swords and no evil version of the Power Rangers to beat up. The more time goes on, the more convinced I become that Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was a once in a lifetime videogame. We may never get another one like it.
Doubtfire 