Project: Mario
The first website I ever completed was the Yoshi’s Island guide for SMBHQ.com. It was, what you might call, incredibly basic, and clearly the product of someone getting to grips with the medium.
But even back then I was looking for a way to combine my love of games with my love of drawing. Some of the best websites from back then were doing it, including Zelda HQ and NintendoLand, both of which seem to have rebranded into more conventional news websites, which really is a crying shame.
NinDB really doesn’t leave much room for artistic talent, as it’s pretty objective game information, and there’s so much of that raw information and so little creative writing that it’s never seemed a good fit. The closest I ever got was the Nintendo All-Stars section, now dead. In it, I drew a Nintendo character and wrote up a profile on them. The aim was to inform about lesser-known characters like Mike Jones (StarTropics), Takamaru (Mysterious Murasame Castle) or Muddy (Mole Mania) while also finding an outlet for my artistry. Funnily enough, official artwork for some of them is so scarce that my art started showing up in unusual places – including IGN’s “Characters for Brawl” list.
This is all leading up to a project that I’ve had in the back of my mind since those very first steps into the world wide web back in the late 90′s. A Mario guide, illustrated, and thorough. At present I am looking at an enemy listing covering every major Mario release.
Here are some problems I have with Mario guides (e.g. MarioWiki, Mario Monsters, TMK’s Mariopedia):
- They rarely make note of something that is poor localisation. For example, Cheep Cheep is in many games, but has been localised as Goby, Bub, Piscatory Pete, etc. Many guides will list these separately, even though it was just poor localisation.
- Where there is no English name, sometimes the names concocted are a joke. The fireball in Donkey Kong 100M stage has been listed as “Foxfire” in MarioWiki. Upon discovering that the source for this name was an unofficial American Donkey Kong guide, I gave up relying on MarioWiki for anything.
- Some of them contain information on appearances in TV shows and comics or even the godawful movie.
- MarioWiki especially is written as if there is some underlying ecosystem, or political structure, or motive, as if they are trying to construct a coherent world from scraps. This smacks of fanfic, and I will have none of it.
All we need is a list of enemies, divided into family groups (so all Shy Guys are together). Enemies that have been translated wrongly will have their original names restored. We need a game list and a short description of the enemy. And, ideally, they will be joined by an illustration of the enemy.
I’ve already compiled enemy lists for the following games:
- Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
- Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario Land
- Super Mario World
- Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
- Super Mario 64
- Yoshi’s Story
- Paper Mario
- Luigi’s Mansion
- Super Mario Sunshine
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
- Super Princess Peach
- Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
- New Super Mario Bros.
- Yoshi’s Island DS
- Super Paper Mario
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii
- Super Mario Galaxy 2
So, no mean feat, I think you’ll agree, but it’s surprising how many of them fall into a small subset of family groups. So by keeping all the families together, this will significantly reduce the ludicrous amount of information that needs work. And I have been drawing like crazy, and have just started experimenting with finishing up on Illustrator, to see if it offers any much-needed speed.
Will I finish it? Will I post it early? Who knows. It would be very out of character for me to finish it… but then this is a labour of love that’s been in the pipeline for the best part of 13 years, and longer if you discount the internet as the medium to present it.
31 August 2010 at 13:57
Still can’t wait to see some of those fine drawings.
Hopefully we can do some nice catch-up next time we meet (hopefully soon).
And hey if you ever need any other series doing, I should totally be drawing more anyway.
2 September 2010 at 02:12
This is an excellent idea!
I look forward to seeing this project grow, as I too have wanted a more focused and complete guide to the Super Mario Series.
Plus, having followed NinDB since its inception(You totally turned me into a Nintendo Trivia buff!!) I know your fantastic illustration skills will make this top notch!
2 September 2010 at 13:14
Wow Fry, this is strikingly similar to a project I was working on (and have taken an indefinite break from as of currently), except mine was a guide to Mario characters rather than enemies. Funny thing is, I actually did consider doing an enemy guide after the character guide was completed.
3 September 2010 at 10:43
A character guide shouldn’t be all that difficult to accomplish, and really this guide would include characters… It’s just enemies are so poorly covered elsewhere that they’ve taken precedence.
The trick to a character guide would be to be thorough. There’s so many Mario sites out there, but I haven’t seen a single one that does it right.
7 September 2010 at 03:57
That was my plan.
I covered it by dividing the guide into sections.
Section A is Playable Characters, Section B is helpful, supporting or otherwise non-harmful characters who are not playable. Section C are all major bosses and villains.
The first two sections also include playable or helpful enemy drones.
Each character entry would include a short write-up about who the characters and what they do, plus a listing of each appearance they’ve had to date. I also plan to make witty observations regarding them as well.