Mario is Getting Soft in his Old Age

Beating a video game used to mean something. In the old days, it may have caused agonizing frustration and a treasure trove of quarters or broken controllers, but it meant something. When you beat Donkey Kong and saved the Princess, you felt as though you actually accomplished something. Beating the eight robot masters in Mega Man 2 and then moving on to the insurmountable obstacle course that is Dr. Wily’s castle and blasting the old man to smithereens was a testament to true talent and hard work. But now video games as a whole are softening. Beating a game doesn’t leave one feeling as though they did anything worthwhile anymore. Instead it feels more like a chore, and last I checked video games were supposed to be fun.

To show my argument let’s take a look at one particular franchise: Super Mario Bros. The Italian plumber has been around since the days of Donkey Kong and is likely the most recognizable video game icon today. Donkey Kong was a difficult game, but really, that’s not a Super Maro Bros. game. For the plumbers first real games let’s look at first three self-titled sidescrollers (in this writing I will be referring to Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels as Super Mario Bros. 2 as opposed to the watered down version of Doki Doki Panic that was shipped to the U.S.).

The first Super Mario Bros. game was difficult. The jumping mechanics took some time to get used to, there weren’t exactly a lot of power-ups or extra lives, and later in the game the levels became pretty gruesome. However, it was conquerable. Each world consisted of three regular stages and then the castle. The pattern became a mental comfort to many due to the fact that if you ran out of lives in world five, you could just begin at the beginning of world five. And with the low amount of total levels in the game even the difficulty didn’t create too much of an obstacle.

Super Mario Bros. 2, however, was a different beast. This game was so tough that it wasn’t even released in the U.S. As a matter of fact, the first time it was sold by itself in the U.S. was in 2007 when it became the first imported title available for purchase via the Wii’s Virtual Console. I am a person who beat the first Super Mario Bros. with moderate difficulty. I can’t lie and say I breezed through it, but I did finish it. I conquered the game. Now, being a champion of that game, I have to admit that this game is impossible. This wasn’t made to be beaten; it was made to break the souls of individuals who would dare challenge it. I have only made it to the castle of world two. After tasting the sour milk that streams from this evil incarnate, I realized why it was never released here and why we got Super Doki Panic Bros. We were being spared. Japan was showing us mercy. Had the game been sold commercially in the U.S., I predict that suicide rates would have spiked for months afterward. Aggravated assault rates, too. But I digress.

Super Mario Bros. 3 was a return to form. It was challenging, fun, had an array of new powers and even more new levels. Not to mention the game had a new design that was more like a board game, allowing the player to select which path they’d like to take to the castle. The first world was a cakewalk and each one after that grew progressively difficult. World eight, the final world, was damn hard to beat. As a matter of fact, I’ve never beaten it. If I make it to the eighth world I feel like I moved a mountain. If I were to ever beat it on my own, I’d be tempted to retire from video games for accomplishing such a lofty goal.

But now everything has changed. The New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS was a throwback to the original Super Mario Bros. games. It was a sidescrolling platformer and had eight worlds to get through. However, the similarities might as well end there. This newest title was made to be cripplingly easy. First, they made jumps much higher and floatier than in the original games. This means that the player has more time to think about where they are jumping to and where they want to land. And on top of that, they included wall-jumping, which is fun for sure, but takes down the difficultly level a notch or two.

Second, they made it so you don’t have to beat all eight worlds. The worlds are positioned like a hopscotch board with the third and fourth worlds and the sixth and seventh worlds lateral to each other. So, in order to beat the game, you only need to beat six worlds instead of the whole eight. And, as a matter of fact, you have to work damned hard to unlock all eight levels because you need to do something specific to unlock one of the lateral worlds (such as you have to beat a level as mini Mario). So, all in all, there are somewhere between 10 and 20 levels that you don’t need to beat to finish the game.

Those are the two main examples, but there are a myriad of smaller details such as the general level design is a lot more accommodating, even for novice players. But, as much as I criticize this game, I understand why Nintendo did this. Making the game easier made it more accessible to a wider age group and general audience. That, of course means more money for Nintendo. And, honestly, even with the difficulty set at a low bar, I still really enjoyed the game. It was a lot of fun, even if a little hollow feeling. But this weakening of the series apparently wasn’t enough. For the New Super Mario Bros. Wii there will be a demo mode. This mode will allow the player to give up control to the computer when they get to a tricky part that they can’t get through. Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview at this year's E3, "In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, if a player is experiencing an area of difficulty, this will allow them to clear troubled areas and take over when they're ready. And yes, we're looking into this for future games."

My question is when are video games going to play themselves? When will the player just have to push a single button in order to beat the game? Apparently we don’t value challenging ourselves anymore. We don’t want to force ourselves to learn or adapt to difficult games. Screw growing. I guess all that’s necessary to gamers nowadays is to get immediate gratification, even if they didn’t actually earn it.