Story elements in Mario that have been changed or re-written

[Manspeed]

I guess they're "canon" in the sense that they're most likely to be acknowledged by Nintendo whenever they do some sort of Mario retrospective, but that's still not really the same thing as say, Zelda or Metroid's official canons.

[Kriven]

Donkey Kong GB could potentially retcon Mario Bros. The first three Mario games (Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.) are kind of an origin story explaining how Mario returns (or back in the eighties, discovers) the Mushroom Kingdom. You have Donkey Kong which takes place in New York, and Mario Bros. where we see Koopa-like creatures invading what is presumably Brooklyn's sewer system. It's reasonable to assume that Mario followed the Shellcreepers back into the Mushroom Kingdom.

But Donkey Kong GB shows us that it's Donkey Kong who leads Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom.

[Manspeed]

That only applies if you assume ever went to Brooklyn at any point...which I don't.

The nature of Donkey Kong GB's ending still confounds me. I get that it's supposed to be the Mushroom Kingdom in that ending scene, but the game never shows us how Mario, Pauline, DK and DK Jr. actually got there. Was it within walking distance of DK's Tower? Did Pauline drag Mario on a long expedition? Did they come out of that pipe that's sitting off to the side?

Since they hadn't gotten rid of the Brooklyn/New York thing yet in 1994, I guess it's safe to assume the dev team intended DKGB to be a remake of DK and that the ending is supposed to show Pauline taking Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom for the first time and handing him his first ever Super Mushroom. How they actually got there though, is still a mystery. And an even bigger mystery is what to do with DKGB in regards to Mario's new origin as of 1995.

[Shrikeswind]

I want to point out that the Brooklyn thing was never unquestionably a thing in the games. It comes from sources which are unambiguously not set in Mario's pseudo-canon, which is to say "Super Mario Bros. Super Show." There was never really any point in the games where Mario is stated to come from New York, much less Brooklyn. Unless you can provide a Nintendo-developed counterexample, of course.

[Kriven]

SimCity SNES, Mario's Time Machine, and Mario is Missing! all make mention of the Mario Bros. having once lived in Brooklyn. While MTM and MIM are both licensed games with questionable continuity, SimCity SNES was developed by Nintendo.

[Manspeed]

SimCity is also part of a series usually made by an American developer, and was released in 1991.

@ Shrikeswind:
As of right now I have only collected 5 substantial examples where Mario is ever stated to be from 'our' world.

1. Miyamoto's off-handed remarks regarding Mario Bros., where he specifically mentions New York.

2. The OVA 'Super Mario Bros.: Peach-Hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen!' wherein Mario and Luigi appear to be grocery store managers in a town that looks like it's somewhere in the middle of Texas or Nevada.

3. This book that I personally bought, scanned and uploaded. It was published in 1994 (Right after the aforementioned Donkey Kong GB) and states Mario and Luigi to be from 'Italy', Lady and Pauline to be from 'New York', DK and DK Jr. to be from 'Circus' and Foreman Spike to be from 'America'.

4. The three Mario cartoons by DiC.

5. The Mario live-action film.

The first thing I'll point out is that all of these examples are from before 1995 and thus before Yoshi's Island was released. The second thing I'll point out is that three of them are from periphery Mario media e.g. media that are most definitely not the games, and thus a completely different set of stories altogether.

The two that stick out are the oft-quoted Miyamoto line about Mario Bros. being set in New York, and the book. The former is only in regard to one game, and even then its pretty evident Miyamoto changed his mind about it at some point or else Yoshi's Island would not have had the premise it had. As for the book, once again it was published in 1994 and obviously made with what was then-considered to be true about Mario. Had it been published after 1994 it's likely it would state Mario to be from the Mushroom Kingdom like everybody else.

[Kriven]

"SimCity is also part of a series usually made by an American developer, and was released in 1991."

Right, but the one mentioning Mario was made by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. That definitely lends it a little more credence.

[The Qu]

That book is hella interesting. Thanks for that.

[nocturnal YL]

Jun 17, 2014 13:18:52 GMT -5 Manspeed said:

This book that I personally bought, scanned and uploaded

Nice find. Do you know who published it? Any chance you can show us the cover as well?

There are interesting finds in this book, like Mario's moustache's origin being somewhat different from what I've heard before (identifying Mario's direction versus making his mouth and nose separated) and calling Birdo Ostro, a classic mistake made also by the actual overseas version's in-game text.

They also talked about the SMB1 glitch-based techniques being faithfully moved over to SMAS, while I doubt this was a concious decision. They just fixed the game-breaking ones and left the harmless ones intact.

[Manspeed]

The copyright date says it was by a company called "BIG KOROTAN". I unfortunately forgot to scan the cover. >>;

If you could translate any more stuff from it, it'd be much MUCH appreciated. Ideally I'd have the entire book translated but I've yet to encounter anybody with the time to do so.

Jun 17, 2014 13:25:37 GMT -5 Kriven said:

Right, but the one mentioning Mario was made by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. That definitely lends it a little more credence.

Yeah, but as I just explained, that credence is ultimately swept away by the fact that Mario's origin was completely re-written in 1995.

[Kriven]

But I was originally talking about how DK GB retcons the Mario Bros. arcade game. Yoshi's Island retcons a retcon. Retconception.

And retcon is this thread's purpose, right?

The whole Brooklyn thing came about in response to Donkey Kong GB, which was developed at a time when the duo were assumed to have been from Brooklyn at all.

Not that Yoshi's Island actually retcons a Brooklyn stomping grounds for the brothers, that's got way more to do with your own hang-up, really. The games and their materials have demonstrated that the brothers were "born" in the Mushroom Kingdom and that they spent a good deal of time in Brooklyn, and it has repeatedly stated that they are of Italian descent. I haven't seen them maturing in the Mushroom Kingdom, and Yoshi's New Island already sets a precedent for delivery error on the part of the Stork.

[Manspeed]

None of the games after Yoshi's Island mention or have anything to do with Brooklyn/New York/the 'real' world in any capacity. It was completely dropped. And Mario's heritage is irrelevant considering how many other characters there are in Mario's world who have funny 'real world' accents.

You seem to be fishing for reasons to weld Mario's pre-1995 and post-1995 origins together. Which is why I have to ask - why do you want Mario to have actually gone to Brooklyn so badly? Does it add anything? If so, how much? Does its removal really affect Mario in any significant way? If there was a substantial answer to any of these questions, I highly doubt they'd have thought to remove this element in the first place.

[Kriven]

why do you want Mario to have actually gone to Brooklyn so badly

I don't have a want for how Mario's history should have been, only for how it has been presented.

It is you with the wants, and your ignoring portions of history simply to avoid "a history which is too comic book" in a franchise that is literally the wonderbread of cartoon video games.

None of the games after Yoshi's Island mention or have anything to do with Brooklyn/New York/the 'real' world in any capacity.

The plot of Mario Tennis on GBA is literally about an Earth tennis champion traveling to the Mushroom Kingdom.

[Manspeed]

I'm not ignoring anything. Nintendo's the one who dropped Mario's original origin. You want that origin back in place for some reason and you're not telling me why.

Aside from needlessly complicating Mario's story, I don't think Mario needs to be from Brooklyn because it adds absolutely nothing to Mario at large. Removing it ultimately did nothing to affect Mario and it's clear they only removed it for the sake of their own convenience. Rather than trying to create a forced mental image of Mario and his setting in my head that runs contrary to what Nintendo currently presents, I prefer to just accept Mario as it is. Given his current depiction, I seriously cannot picture a character who looks and acts like Mario ever hailing from the "real" world at any point. Arguably such an origin makes less sense now than it ever has before, so Nintendo's willingness to move further and further away from it is totally understandable.

And all of Camelot's Golf and Tennis games on GBC and GBA (I've played all four of them), only sort of imply they take place on "Earth". It's never outright stated. And it's certainly never even so much as mentioned that Mario is from there. If anything, they make Mario out to be some sort of otherworldly superbeing that could only come from a magical land like the Mushroom Kingdom. This makes sense, given that they were released long after Mario's origin was re-written in 1995.

[nocturnal YL]

Jun 17, 2014 16:46:15 GMT -5 Manspeed said:

The copyright date says it was by a company called "BIG KOROTAN". I unfortunately forgot to scan the cover. >>;

If you could translate any more stuff from it, it'd be much MUCH appreciated. Ideally I'd have the entire book translated but I've yet to encounter anybody with the time to do so.

Big Korotan is a publisher that makes compiled data books, particularly those of Doraemon. Shogakukan handles the distrubution of their books, unsurprisingly. They're basically the king of Japanese publishing by now. Nothing suspicious here.

I'm actually more interested in how did they get the information, which the contents of the book made no mention of. Normally, books like these would tell you that the original teams had the data - the anniversary artbooks of Zelda, Kirby and Fire Emblem all mentioned that. (EDIT: Maybe not in 1994.)

I guess I can translate parts of the book, if you like. I'll do the trivia, then maybe the main characters if I feel like to. Don't think the other parts are remotely interesting. And from what I can tell, you can probably read some katakana youreself (just like how I started back when Melee was new), so there isn't much of a need to translate things like names.