Super Mario Bros 3. World 5, level 3.
 |
The shoe is civilization.
|
Experimentation equals reward.
If you jump on Goomba’s
head; he dies and falls off the screen, taking
his shoe with him. But if you bop the block he is standing
on from underneath,
Goomba is ejected
from the shoe and Mario can hop in.
First of all, Mario looks adorable
as he hops along; like he is doing a tiny little
sack race. Secondly,
the shoe allows
Mario to jump on previously
un-stompable badies: Spinies
– splat! Piranha
plants – splat!
Fire-breathing Piranha
plants? Oh, you better believe
- splat!
 |
Stomp! Can’t spike me, spiny thing!
|
This is what a power-up should be: Letting
you do something
you couldn’t previously
do before; not the same thing but flashier.
Mario jumps, therefore
he is. And to jump on those spiky, bitey baddies; oh, I feel complete! World
5, level 3 is at a point in the game just before it gets tricky,
and this empowering
level is like a little
reward for the player.
And as you finish the level the shoe is left behind,
like Cinderella dashing
out of the ball at the stroke
of midnight, never to be seen again in any subsequent Mario game.
Is there a prince roaming
the Mushroom Kingdom
searching for the owner of the shoe? Passing from level to level to see who it fits? Since it perfectly fits the most common enemy in the game you can only assume the Prince married
the first Goomba
he came across;
and may they live happily
ever after.
The sheer scarcity
of this power-up
is what makes it such a treat,
and so fondly
remembered. It was in one level, of one game, a game that I own at least five different releases
of.
5 out of 5 socks.
 |
Kuribo? Jewel? What the heck was peach on about?
No one knew.
|
