|
Friday 10 March, 2006
I've rescued Luigi and I have 45-6 stars.
I'm not really interested in getting ALL the stars, though some of them have been quite fun.
Anyways, I was playing the other day when I found a green/white mushroom. It popped out of nowhere.
Green/white mushrooms are 1UPs. In other words, you get an extra life! Whoop de doo. The funny thing is that I don't really care. The whole idea of "lives" is completely useless and wasted in this game. It serves no real purpose beyond being some sort of mild annoyance.
Basically:
1) Whenever you die, you get to restart without any penalties. (you can only save after getting a star or doing something "important" like unlocking a mini-game)
2) Whenever you start the game, you have 5 lives. This is independent of the number of lives you may have had when you last saved.
The second point is what surprised me the most (when I noticed). I had spent some 20 minutes hunting down 1UPs and feeling really proud. I had stocked up on opportunities to keep on playing! I was making progress! Then I saved, powered down...and lost it all.
I really wonder why some games, like this one in particular, still hold on to familiar, yet now-irrelevant, game design elements. Is it because somehow, a Mario game would not be Mario if it didn't have "lives"? What really defines the Mario-ness of a game?
Interesting food for thought... (and I'm having deja-vu about Metroid...must check those GameLogs).
|
