Super Mario Quotes

“The other [video game] franchises let you experience the adrenaline and horror of war, or deep fantasy worlds, or pro sports. A Mario game lets you pretend to be a middle-aged chubster hopping onto a turtle shell.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“Nintendo not letting itself make a browser Mario game has not stopped a flash flood of in-browser Mario games. Super Mario Flash, New Super Mario Bros. Flash, Infinite Mario, and the amazing Super Mario Crossover, which lets you play the original SMB games using characters from Castlevania, Excitebike, Ninja Gaidan, and more. (If you like that, try Abobo's Big Adventure.) There are free (and unlicensed) Mario games where he rides a motorbike, takes a shotgun to the Mushroom Kingdom, decides to fight with his fists, is replaced by Sonic, replaces Pac-Man in a maze game, and plays dress-up. They receive no admonition from Nintendo's once-ferocious legal department. Why not? Iwata's explanation is commonsensical: "[I]t would not be appropriate if we treated people who did someone based on affection for Nintendo as criminals." This is also why no one has been told by lawyers to stop selling Wario-as-a-pimp T-shirts.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“But Zelda was never about plot. Indeed, one's head could explode if all the games were considered one story, since Link is always meeting Zelda and villainous Gannon for the first time. Imagine trying to explain why James Bond has stayed forty years old for forty years, while changing faces and hair color. Better to accept the story as a constant retelling, and don't dwell on continuity matters. Mario has made a cottage industry of jokes about how Bowser had only one playbook—kidnap the princess—and this time it'll work! He's utterly incapable of coming up with any other plan. Aside from that one time he obtained a degree in hotel management.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“Erring on the side of caution paid off. Japanese retailers liked that one high-tech company finally took responsibility for its errors and fixed them for free. (Nintendo continues to do so today, to the point of reapplying kids’ stickers onto a new console if the old one has to be replaced instead of repaired.)”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“Trying to attract another underserved audience group—females— brought Super Princess Peach, a game where Peach finally avoids being princess-napped. Bowser kidnaps Mario and Luigi instead, and it's up to her for once to save them. The second-wave feminism lasts as long as it takes Peach to acquire a magical talking parasol. Peach's powers manifest through her emotional states. When she is calm she can heal herself, when she is happy she can fly, when glum she can water plants with her tears, and when angry she literally catches on fire. Using emotions as part of basic game play is a daring concept, and feel free to sub in "insulting" or "outrageous" or "awesome" for "daring." The concept might have been taken more seriously if not for touches like the pink umbrella, and Peach having unlimited lives—core gamers hate being unable to die.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“The lizardlike villain became Bowser once again.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“used 32-bit processing to make their 3-D characters and environs. Even the controller was amazing, shaped like a trident head—room for three hands! Gamers could hold it one way to use the analog control stick, which the N64 popularized for the modern gaming age. If they preferred the direction pad, they could hold it another way to access that. Four yellow “C” buttons in a diamond on the right would work as a third control mechanism, or let players swerve a floating camera around. There was an expansion port for a memory card (not that many games would ever use it, thanks to saves available in each cartridge). That slot could also be used for a “Rumble Pak” to force feedback into the controller, which soon became a mandatory feature of every game controller. The entire thing was designed around the launch game Super Mario 64. So what was holding up this marvelous console’s release?”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“Imagine Mario as a gay hustler?”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“The RPG series “Dragon Warrior” is by Japanese law, not allowed to be released on a weekday, since too many people take off school or work to start leveling up.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“When Time magazine had said the Person of the Year for 1982 was the computer, it didn’t imagine the very next year there’d be an overpopulation problem.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“If Nintendo was “just another flash-in-the-pan toy company”, this was quite a long flash.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“Sega capped off 1993 by introducing the Sonic the Hedgehog balloon into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the first such balloon based on a video game character. (True to form, Sonic went too fast, and crashed into a Columbus Circle lamppost.)”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

“Super Mario” has become the default nickname for any Mario.”
― Jeff Ryan, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America