And some musings on how things have changed since 1996
A few months ago, my older brother, Murray, texted me with some very important information:
“You have to get a Nintendo Switch! They re-released Mario RPG, and it’s exactly what the original game was supposed to be like!”
The original 1996 version of “Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars” for the SNES did not fall short of its vision by any means, and was an instant classic. However, it had the same limitations as any game that was released in the first half of 1996: the graphics and sound capabilities of the consoles were simply not very advanced yet.
The mid-90s were essentially the turning point between pixel graphics and polygonal graphics, and Nintendo was about a year or two behind Sony when it came to 3D graphics. “Mario RPG” was one of the last big releases for the SNES before the N64 debuted in North America a few months later. The 3D graphics that did exist on the Playstation were a bit rudimentary– the figures for “Final Fantasy VII” are notorious to this day for looking blocky and awkward (although nostalgia has also made that style rather endearing to many gamers).
Before “Mario RPG”, every game I had ever seen basically looked like a flat side-scroller or top-down map with a tiny pixellated figure. “Mario RPG” changed this by using a diagonal viewpoint and various pixel shading effects to achieve the look of 3D characters and settings on the SNES — which was highly ambitious! The illustrations used to promote it almost looked like they had been constructed out of modeling clay and then photographed, which inspired me and my brothers to actually sculpt miniature figurines of the characters from the game out of Sculpey.
The other thing that I found innovative and attention-grabbing about “Mario RPG” when I was eleven years old was the fact that it had a real story line. Most Mario games were engaging in the gameplay department but had no story to speak of beyond “your Princess is in another castle.” Cartoons, books, comics, and even the infamously bad 1993 Super Mario movie somewhat filled in more of the setting and characters of the colorful, psychedelic Mushroom World, but “Mario RPG” turned things on their head. New characters were introduced, and they had back stories and plot twists of their own. The stakes of the adventure were higher– it wasn’t only about rescuing the Princess, it was about making it possible for everyone’s wishes to come true in the future! There was an existential threat to defeat in the world unlike any in the previous games I’d played. Bowser wasn’t the biggest enemy in town any more– he was actually working with Mario in this story! And although the plot was dramatic, it had countless moments of humor, whimsy, and strangeness. It was campy and cartoonish, with fast-paced, quippy dialogue.
The gameplay was completely unlike anything I had ever seen before, and essentially was the beginning of the Action RPG genre. It blended the turn-based strategy elements of the “Final Fantasy” RPG series with the emphasis on timing that was typical of platforming games. Although the Action RPG genre has since mostly overtaken more traditional turn-based RPGs, especially on major consoles, this was very new and exciting to me in 1996. “Mario RPG” was the jumping off point for a new style of 3D platforming seen in “Mario 64”, as well as the gameplay style of “Final Fantasy VII”, which featured mini games and action elements that previous installments of “Final Fantasy” didn’t have.
I loved this game so much that I begged my mom to make me a Princess Toadstool costume for Halloween after it came out (at this point, “Peach” was still “Toadstool”). My mom used that as an opportunity to teach me about everything from pattern alterations to how to use her 1960s Singer sewing machine. Part of her motivation was simply wanting to pass that knowledge on (she majored in Fashion Design in college). Part of it was also to encourage me to be more independent since she felt too short on time to constantly be making custom outfits for me and my brothers despite being a stay-at-home mom. Murray had been making extremely specific requests like that for at least a decade at that point, and she was tired of it. She also didn’t particularly approve of the video games, comics, and cartoons that we were into (similar to the way adults now think Gen Alpha media and trends are “brain rot”). By 12th grade, I knew how to drape my own fashion designs, and eventually I could sew for New York Fashion Week runway shows and make costumes for period dramas. It all started because as a child, I wanted Renaissance Faire costumes and I wanted to cosplay before the word “cosplay” had even become known outside of Japan.
Today, it’s unlikely that a child would have the need to learn how to sew in order to get the costume they want– everything is available readily and affordably online. An 11-year-old now would be able to ask their parents to buy a Princess Peach costume off of Amazon and have it in a few days for a low price instead of spending a month learning how to select sewing materials, make a test muslin, alter a pattern, cut the real fabric, sew it together, finish the edges with lace seam binding, sew the hem by hand (my mom still held to mid-20th century fashion industry standards– machine sewn hems were unacceptable), then figure out how to make the accessories out of paper and sculpey…
That is how long ago “Mario RPG” debuted, and how much the world and my life have changed since then. The technology and culture of 1996 truly feels closer to that of 1967, when my mom sewed her own prom dress in high school and computers were only for universities and the military, than it feels to today.
Decades after the original “Mario RPG” debuted, the Nintendo Switch re-release is an immersive throwback to that time, keeping almost every single original detail intact but also adding a few additional elements.
Most notable is the updated soundtrack and graphics, of course. When I was in middle school, a friend saying that “some day we’ll have N64 graphics on GameBoy sized screens” sounded like science fiction. Today, that idea is so well-established that there’s people who can’t remember a time before we had that.
The graphics in the “Mario RPG” re-release look exactly like the claymation-like concept art that was used to promote the original. I don’t remember the original being overly blocky or low-resolution because my childish imagination could fill in details, the same way I can visualize things when I’m reading, but when I look at the two side-by-side now, it’s amazing how much the new one fulfills the aspirations of the original.
The biggest difference I noticed in gameplay with the re-release is the addition of a gauge in the lower left hand corner that keeps track of “timed hits” (the action part of this Action RPG) and rewards the player with either a warm up from Toad (in the early part of the game) or with a powerful Triple Move (after Geno joins the party).
The “Mario RPG” re-release is the perfect way for any ’90s kid to feel like they’re ten years old and watching technology change at an exponential pace again, and a way for younger gamers to experience a classic game without the limitations of 20th century technology. Looking at the original and re-release side by side really shows how much technology has changed at a pace that made everyone’s head spin over the last few decades.
I truly hope that Nintendo and Square decide to give this same kind of re-release treatment to another mid-’90s classic: “Chrono Trigger”.