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Square and Nintendo’s Super Love Child

Once upon a time in the halcyon days of the Super Nintendo, Square and Nintendo combined in a rare collaboration of talent to produce one of my favorite games: Super Mario RPG.  Since it was recently released on the Wii’s Virtual Console, I decided it was a good time to bring to light some of the reasons I think it was so great.

Super Mario RPG was the granddaddy roleplaying game that launched the franchise and brought us such gems as the Paper Mario games (which I’ve played the hell out of).  It’s a little different from the later games, as it’s an isometric top-down view with 3D characters, but the technical details aren’t really important in this.  The fact that this game introduced Mario and his friends to a different genre as well as some of the greatest moments in my videogame history makes this game rocket up my list.  I will fully admit that my feelings for this game are colored deeply by nostalgia and the age in which I first played it.  However, I believe that it is definitely worth purchasing and playing once again on the VC.

The story goes like this: Mario is once again forced to rescue his princess from the clutches of Bowser, who is apparently typecast as a villain.  During the expected thrashing that Bowser is receiving, catastrophe strikes in the form of a giant sword crashing down from the heavens.  Mario, Princess Toadstool (she wasn’t called Peach outside of Japan until the release of Super Mario 64), and Bowser are cast to the four corners of the small world that they call home, and Mario sets out to figure out what the heck is going on.

The world is colorful, and the characters that are added from outside Mario Bros. lore are well done.  Mallow is an annoying little ball of fluff, but he has an excellent back story and a good character arc.  I tended to not use him all that much in my party, however – I’m more of a crash-and-bash kind of guy in games like this.  Geno is an enigma, and he is cool as the other side of the pillow.  I think that they could have done a better job fleshing out his background, though.  Both of these characters could very easily be updated for something like a Paper Mario game, I believe – though they may be owned by Square.

All in all, the story is stellar, the gameplay is basic but solid, and the quirks and oddities in the weapons, items and enemies laid the foundation for the terrific Paper Mario series to come.  If you have a Wii, Super Mario RPG is a very good pick up for the Virtual Console.  If you don’t, I’m sure you can dig up a SNES emulator and ROM somewhere out there on the Internet.