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Post by Sqrt2 on Nov 13, 2008 4:10:38 GMT -5
Alternatively, you could say that no Mario game is non-canon and everything you see happened somehow. Even Hotel Mario?  I'd say that is definitely non-canon (and I'd add that those SNES 'edutainment' titles aren't canon either, since they take place in the real world). |
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Post by Fryguy64 on Nov 13, 2008 4:41:52 GMT -5
Looking over Masa's post, he has taken the argument back to source so we're all talking about the same thing. Some good karma coming your way, good sir.
Videogames as a whole will be rickety when it comes to continuity, thanks largely to the fact that they need to be entertaining videogames, and not entirely story-driven. It's easier for RPGs, where the game itself is usually about menus and stats, so storylines and set-pieces can be elaborate affairs (in fact, they need to be, otherwise the games would be crushingly dull spreadsheets).
But taking my favourite bit from the Zelda arguments - "Why is the Lost Woods in different places in different games?", and this is almost immediately followed with suggestions that in the 100 years or whatever between games, that the forest has died and regrown, or it's magical... NO! I shout. It's because if the forest was where it was in Ocarina, then it would entirely break the flow of the game!
But this need to make a good game usually breaks the continuity. Masa's example was Samus being able to climb ledges in some games but not in others. Did she "forget" or something? No - it's because the games were developed out of chronological sequence, certain skills weren't given to her until "later" games. If you try and write in every little thing from the videogame portion, then you'll only drive yourself insane.
So long as you ignore much of the localisation bollocks, the Super Mario series does have quite a good continuity, even accepting oddities into its canon, such as "Super Mario USA" and characters created for the various sports and party games. Toadette showing up in Paper Mario: TTYD for example, despite just being a Mario Kart character.
Hotel Mario is just an action/puzzle game, and so there's no major reason it couldn't be slipped into the canon, other than the horrible videos - but then Mario Teaches Typing probably has worse videos. And Mario is Missing and Mario's Time Machine are both utter gash. But why not include them all? Or the Super Mario Bros. Super Show? With a little creativity, you could make them all work - but would you want to?
I certainly know I wouldn't.
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Post by Sqrt2 on Nov 13, 2008 4:56:30 GMT -5
Hotel Mario is just an action/puzzle game, and so there's no major reason it couldn't be slipped into the canon, other than the horrible videos How about the fact that it was released on a non-Nintendo console (the Phillips CD-i of all things). Shouldn't that fact alone make it non-canon? |
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Post by Hiker of Games on Nov 13, 2008 8:15:45 GMT -5
Hotel Mario is just an action/puzzle game, and so there's no major reason it couldn't be slipped into the canon, other than the horrible videos - but then Mario Teaches Typing probably has worse videos. And Mario is Missing and Mario's Time Machine are both utter gash. But why not include them all? Or the Super Mario Bros. Super Show? With a little creativity, you could make them all work - but would you want to? I certainly know I wouldn't. This is where the real canon discussion begins. Back in my more fervent Zelda theorizing days, figuring out what was canon and not was a big deal. However that quickly became overwhelming. Look at some posts at the Zelda Legends forum some time. Canon is handled with such care that the original Japanese text is carefully taken apart to see what is consistent and inconsistent with our versions of the games. While I have found the results interesting, it definitely made things too complicated for me. (That aside, split timeline is bollocks. The coward's way out! Long live the TToTT!) Of course with Zelda, that's just examining canon on the micro level. On the macro level, it is easy to dismiss the Philips games, the manga, comics, television series, and other material as falling outside the canon. It's harder with Mario. We know that the Philips games were made without permission from Nintendo, but via a legal loophole. So we can nix those. I've personally always dismissed the edutainment games, but they were made with Nintendo's approval. So was the television show, the comics, the manga, the anime, the movie, and everything else. Of course it's nonsense to make those work into one solid continuity. Clearly the comics have their own continuity, the show its own continuity, and so forth. Very much in the same case that Spider-Man has the Ultimate continuity, the movie continuity, the cartoon series continuity, and the original continuity. There's no reason to actually tie them together into one. We don't have to make all these other Mario continuities fit into the main one, because they're not the same. They retread over events in the game (the cartoon depicts the Mario brothers first meeting Yoshi) and thus are inconsistent with the main series. So really that only leaves the Edutainment games as loose ends for the Mario canon. |
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Post by TV Eye on Nov 13, 2008 9:23:01 GMT -5
Don't think too hard, people. You might hurt yourselves...
I figure now I need to throw in my two cents...
Okay, when talking about Mario continuity, we should first figure out if it's the same as Zelda's or Metroid's, in that each game is a puzzle piece that should be put together based on clues in past games.
Metroid is the easiest series to figure out. We all know that at the beginning of each Metroid, Samus loses the powers she gained in the previous game, which is why she needs to find them again. We also know that each Zelda game stars a different Link. This is why he always starts out with zero items in his inventory, but Zelda games also take place in different time periods, so we look at clues in the background and see the history of Hyrule and how that helps us to establish a logical timeline.
Mario however never has an extensive story like Metroid or Zelda, so it's never explained how he loses his powers (Like the ones in Mario and Luigi or Paper Mario) or items like it is the the previously mentioned games.
So should we just figure that the Mario timeline is just in order from each game released? Is Mario Galaxy the last in the Mario timeline? Should we even care? I'll leave that up to you.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Nov 13, 2008 9:30:15 GMT -5
The CDi games were developed with permission from Nintendo, but with no involvement from Nintendo. The same is true of all the edutainment games, which were neither developed or published by Nintendo (although in Mario Teaches Typing 2, Charles Martinet is farmed out to provide the voice of Mario's creepy-ass floating head!)
Of course the shows operate under their own continuity, but if you dismiss the vast chunk of the show, then surely you have to dismiss everything that originated in the show. People seem to pick and choose what parts of these "alternate universes" they want to continue. Mario and Luigi do not have official surnames. Mario and Luigi do not come from Brooklyn, they were not sucked down a pipe into the Mushroom World, and there's no such thing as a "Real World" into which Mario and Luigi can travel at will. The Koopa Kids' names in the show aren't their nicknames... etc. etc.
Localisation is a major issue for canonical discussions, as in the NES and SNES days there were way too many liberties taken with the source material. Trying to tie an American storyline for A Link to the Past in with the games that followed is no better than arguing about whether there's a difference between Zora and Zola. Using the Japanese source can also show some ties that might have been missed with the different localisers - for example: that Barba in AoL and Volvagia in OoT are one and the same - Barubagia.
Even within the Mario series - especially with enemy names - I think it's important to make sure you're looking at it as the creators intended it.
Of course, this all falls down with DKC, as Rare kept changing its mind, or saying things that contradicted everything else. Japan seems fairly confident that Cranky is the original DK and Super DK's grandfather, and DK Jr. has just vanished and has nothing to do with the DKC series. I've yet to see any convincing evidence that any of this is not the case, so I'm willing to ignore the Rareware.com scribes page, or the screw ups between father and grandfather in DK64, and tow the Japanese line on this one. They are, after all, back in control of the DKC canon.
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Post by Hiker of Games on Nov 13, 2008 9:34:15 GMT -5
Though when it comes to the Japanese canon, I can't help but point out K. Rool's 'brothers'. Of course the shows operate under their own continuity, but if you dismiss the vast chunk of the show, then surely you have to dismiss everything that originated in the show. People seem to pick and choose what parts of these "alternate universes" they want to continue. Mario and Luigi do not have official surnames. Mario and Luigi do not come from Brooklyn, they were not sucked down a pipe into the Mushroom World, and there's no such thing as a "Real World" into which Mario and Luigi can travel at will. The Koopa Kids' names in the show aren't their nicknames... etc. etc. Oh yes. I definitely dismiss that stuff. I always groan when stuff from the show is touted as fact for the original continuity. And why shouldn't I? Just because movie Spider-Man can create his own webs biologically doesn't mean I should expect the comic Spider-Man to be able to do that, but is just a wuss who makes web cartridges to use. |
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Post by Koopaul on Nov 13, 2008 11:00:33 GMT -5
That aside, split timeline is bollocks. The coward's way out! The split timeline was confirmed by Miyamoto himself you twit. It's official. |
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Post by Hiker of Games on Nov 13, 2008 12:23:20 GMT -5
I wasn't just talking about the fans either. Confirmed or not, it's still bollocks.
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Post by TV Eye on Nov 13, 2008 12:47:14 GMT -5
I wasn't just talking about the fans either. Confirmed or not, it's still bollocks. Why? To me, it makes perfect sense. It may be a crazy way to have a timeline, but it still fills up loose ends. |
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Post by Hiker of Games on Nov 13, 2008 14:46:53 GMT -5
Just because it works doesn't mean it's a good timeline, even if it is confirmed. As a whole, it dilutes the connections between the games to the point where continuity stops mattering. It's that reason why I say that the Zelda games have an extremely weak continuity because a split timeline has to be created to account for the games. It lacks elegance and is overcomplicated. Which is, consequently, why I don't take the Zelda timeline as seriously as I once did.
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Post by Arcadenik on Nov 13, 2008 15:27:24 GMT -5
I remember I theorized that the Oracles happened after Wind Waker because I was looking at the geography of Labrynna (Ages map) and noticed that the ocean was bigger in the past and smaller in the present, like the land was growing bigger or the ocean's level was lowering.... either way fits with the Koroks' trees sidequest in Wind Waker. They said the trees would make the land grow bigger.
I even theorized that Labrynna is north of the Great Sea (aka Hyrule) because of Crescent Island. Its north in the Great Sea and south in Labrynna.
I just couldn't figured out how the Triforce ended up in Hyrule Castle in the beginning of Oracles after Wind Waker....
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Post by Manspeed on Nov 13, 2008 17:35:12 GMT -5
Masa just repeated everything I was thinking in post form. I don't know he does it. ;D
Even if there's really no continuity dispute when it comes to Mario, I still like coming up with little fanon theories for minor things, like the Koopalings being biological children while Bowser Jr. and the Mini-Bowsers from Mario Party are all Jango/Boba-style clones.
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Post by Arcadenik on Nov 13, 2008 19:14:41 GMT -5
So... Morton Koopa Jr. is Bowser's biological son, yet Bowser Jr. is not? Where is Morton Koopa Sr.?
I don't think Bowser ever said the Koopalings were his children in-game, like he do with Bowser Jr. Did we get that from the SMB3 manual or what?
I could buy the Mini-Bowsers (really Koopa Kids) as Bowser's clones, but not Bowser Jr.
What I really would like to see is a Bowser spin-off game... something like Donkey Kong Country, starring Bowser and Bowser Jr.... while the Koopalings are supporting characters like the non-playable Kongs are in DKC games.
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Post by Hiker of Games on Nov 13, 2008 19:40:30 GMT -5
I know people hate Bowser Jr., but things should be put in perspective.
Bowser Jr. IS Bowser's son. This is irrefutable. However the Koopalings might not be. In their original appearance, they were just nameless minions of Bowser. We have NOA to thank for their names. There's a good chance we also have NOA to thank for the Koopalings being assigned as Bowser's children. It's possible they were just his generals and that's it.
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