Super Mario Just Never Gets Old

I’ll shamefully admit it: I’ve never beaten Super Mario Bros.

So the other day, I buckled down for a Super Mario Bros. 3 marathon with my nephew, age 7. While playing, I realized that Mario is timeless, and sure as my little nephew is growing up with him now, we’ll still remember Mario in a century.

Mario, Link, Master Chief, Solid Snake. These gaming monuments speak to desires and dreams rooted deeply inside of us, and the experiences they offer will never die.

I’m waxing poetic here, but games create worlds where fantasy becomes reality. They’re born of the human’s desire to embark on fantastic adventures and accomplish great deeds.

They’re also lots of fun. Graphics change and become outdated, but great gameplay never gets old. Just fire up an old copy of Doom or try Ocarina of Time again. It’s as if next-gen never even happened.

Who can forget the first time they saw Ocarina of Time's opening title screen?

Sure, I love today’s upgrades, but I still love me some old-school Nintendo. You’d think the early games would die out someday, but in reality, nothing equates to running Mario’s old-school sprite around. That my nephew — and I, for that matter — would rather play Super Mario Bros. instead of newer games on modern systems shows that certain titles are timeless.

I’m sure a lot of people can attest to this: pulling the weathered case of Game X from the closet for nostalgic value. Then after playing if for a bit, you realize, “Damn, this thing’s incredible.”

Like I said before, though, there’s more at work here than simply good gameplay.

It’s no accident that a fat plumber facing insurmountable obstacles became a world icon. Mario is the classic underdog, and battling evil mushrooms and dangerous-looking plants, all in order to save a princess — that’s some incredible Odysseus shit, an inborn narrative that lives inside all of us.

In fact, that narrative is why we have heroes and root for them to begin with. Not only in video games, but in film, fiction, plays, etc., we follow strong heroes because they represent everything we wish we could be. Entertainment allows us to live vicariously in a more fantastic role than our own lot in life.

And in Super Mario Bros., we actually get to become that hero.

Snake's a memorable character, probably because his nature speaks to a deep-seated part of us.

The Legend of Zelda offers the same kind of narrative. In Halo, we become the hardened soldier, a one-man army, admired by his peers and the ultimate savior of the planet. Metal Gear Solid gives us the role of an old timer bound by duty, and that sense of duty is something we can all identify with.

These are only a few examples of games that can stay with us long after we’ve finished playing them. For brevity’s sake, I won’t mention the others here.

But it’s safe to say that we’ll collectively remember these and other big titles decades from now. Super Mario Bros. will someday be recalled as the Casablanca of the video game industry. The cultural impact of video games will grow, and we’ll have college-level game studies classes that will examine the immersive techniques employed by such industry grandfathers as Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima.

Time will tell which games leave the largest marks. Long after we’ve passed away, though, Mario and Solid Snake will live on, making future generations’ dreams and desires come to life.