Bowser takes the Princess and hides her in a castle, and you have to save her.
Bowser takes the Princess and hides her in a different castle, and you have to save her from the Koopa Kids.
Bowser takes the Princess and hides her in yet another castle, gives each Koopa Kid a castle of his (or her, just in case Wendy sees this) own.
Bowser takes the Princess, now called Peach, and hides her in a giant painting. The inside of the painting looks like a castle.
Gee, where have I heard this... wait, isn't it the exact same storyline used over and over and over and ~over~ again? Koopa takes the Princess and hides her in a castle. You go rushing off to save her. Mario has had over 22 games of his own, and virtually all of them (with a couple small exceptions) use this plot. Redundant, isn't it? Why doesn't Nintendo come up with something better? I mean, really! We're talking about a series that consistantly sells 2 million or more games every time! Mario 64 is still a huge draw for Nintendo, and there are even new copies of SMB 3 out there at some stores. (And no, please don't flood us with letters asking where the stores are) The least they could do is write up a new storyline for the series! Honestly, didn't the "Save the princess" concept die with Knight Rider? Shouldn't we have evolved to a higher state of pixelated being? Would it really kill Nintendo to hire some new writers? Now it's true that the Mario games aren't really about "saving the princess" as much as they are about testing the waters of new graphic and play engines. All of the major Mario games were tests of some sort. The first Mario was testing whether or not the NES could be effective as a console. Mario 64 was testing the graphics power of the N64. But would it really kill them to test a new ~storyline~ for the game? Geez! Am I all alone on this? Send us a letter, voice your opinion! It may get used in an upcoming letters column. Or try this: fly to Europe, find the nearest monarchy, break in to the monarchy's castle or government building, steal the monarchy's leader and hide him/her in a castle of your own, then see how long it takes them to hunt you down. Wait a second... if you try that, they'll either shoot you or toss you in a dark damp pit for the rest of your life! So how does Bowser pull it off over, and over, and over, and ~over~ again without any obvious punishment, other than the mild embarrasment that his tail was kicked by a short fat plumber?
Well, that's my rant for this week. Catch ya later!
~Steve Dixon~