Mario Clash

"Vegita's Dusty Shelf o' reviews is being cleared off...right drawer."

I'm about to become a very large hypocrite. I'm hoping that I can justify my doing so, and ultimately avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and people who don't like hypocrites). However, I feel I'm bound to honesty more than I am to a sense of being true to oneself, so I don't mind becoming a hypocrite as long as the truth is clear. Ok?

I don't like gimmicks. Now, this is a pretty bold statement coming from someone who has turned in such ludicrous ''reviews'' as my Hydlide, Fester's Quest, and Gauntlet Legends reviews that relied heavily on gimmicks, but I feel in this instance it may be different. Allow me to explain - a gimmick is a tool which is applied to someone or something that really has no reason for the association other than to gain attention. Such instances of a gimmick might be the use of humor to gain someone's attention prior to making a sales pitch - while most people won't look at this as a gimmick, let's face it: it is. You are using something other than your product to get attention for said product; I'm not to fond of this sort of runaround advertising. Now, I'm not saying that such things like humor should be removed from anything and everything - if I said that, I'd become an even BIGGER hypocrite than I'm making myself right now - but the use of humor strictsly for the purpose of getting someone's attention (meaning that the humor, on its own, wouldn't hold up at all) is just silly. I've written reviews that have relied on gimmicks rather than good writing and information to get attention - this I'm guilty of, and I'm not trying to weasel out of it. However, I feel that I in my reviews I've also supplied enough information to supplement the gimmick, thus making the gimmick secondary. (I hope, that is. I KNOW I'm going to take flak for this, but I'm prefectly ready to...ignore it.)

(I'm probably sounding rather confusing, but I feel I should get this out of the way before I get on to the review since I feel this is important to the development of the review. It's good for you to be able to follow my train of thought when writing this, so you don't get confused and end up disagreeing with me off of principle rather than what I say.)

So what about Mario Clash makes it a gimmick? Let's face the facts - this is a very, very low-tech game that is so ill-thought out, it actually seems to take a step backwards in terms of conception. Mario Clash is nothing more than a rehash of Mario Bros., the 1983 platformer where Mario (and Luigi) bopped enemies from below in an attempt to clear off the screen. Since 1983, the video gaming industry has made leaps and bounds, so if someone were to pitch the idea ''Let's remake Mario Bros.'' one would logically assume that there would be massive increases in the gameplay itself. Ultimately, there is a small update in terms of graphics and gameplay, but to say this is anything the Nintendo couldn't have done would be a bald-faced lie.

Mario Clash has our plucky plumber, Mario, moving around in a seemingly-3D environment, bopping enemies as before. There are improvements in graphics and sound from the original, but ultimately the formula remains exactly the same - the level layouts change subtly and new enemies are introduced, but it's really nothing but a few extras tacked onto the original idea. This in itself is not a gimmick - the gimmick comes into play when you realize that a game that was made in 1983 received a few superficial upgrades and was planted into a ''3D world'' to make a quick buck. The only 3D aspect of the game is that Mario can travel into the background, and, due to the Virtual Boy's duel screens, he actually looks like he's really far away. To be blunt - big freakin' whoop. You can apply this extremely simple concept to hundreds of games, and the one that gets picked first is an age-old game that most likely wouldn't hold much attention nowadays. Who's the marketing genius behind this? I can think of tons of games that would have been commercially successful by playing off of what is popular, while still showing off the capabilities of this new system, as I'm sure many of you could. It's extremely depressing to think that a game such as this was made simply because of a gimmick, isn't it?

Here's an example of such lunacy towards making ''new'' games. Suppose you were to take the mother of them all, Pong, and put it in a 3D world. Sure, it looks better, but in order for people to buy into the gimmick you'll actually have to put something 3D in there. Therefore, they add in a paddle in the background which you can bounce the ball off of, thus creating the illusion of 3D gaming. However, that's the only addition to the game. Would YOU want to buy this game? If so, then Mario Clash might just be the game for you.

Graphics:

Well, you have to give Ôem a little credit - despite the Virtual Boy's blatant inability to show any color other than Red, the graphics on this are rather decent. Mario appears in his 16-bit incarnation (seen in Super Mario World), as do his opponents. The animation for hero and villains are decent enough, given the capacity for the system - Mario has multiple frames of animation for running, jumping, getting hit and falling off the screen, etc. So there really isn't much to complain about when it comes to the graphics of the game without relegating to critiquing the system the game was made for.

Sound:

The sound for this game was, well...average. It was your standard Mario bleeps and bloops, most of which I believe were taken from Super Mario World. The only thing I can think of that warrants the sounds being placed higher than average would be that the displacement of sounds from left to right and near to far (via the stereo speaker system on the Virtual Boy), but that really seems to be more of the Virtual Boy's credit than the game's. Thus, the sound affects are placed at strictly average, since that's all they are.

Gameplay:

Ok, what the heck is this? I thought games like this weren't made anymore because gamers got outright bored with the same simple thing (with minor variations) over and over again. Yet here I am, proven wrong because Nintendo wanted to resurrect an old game into a new format. Here's a tip, Nintendo - if you're going to take an old game and put it into a 3D environment, make it a game where you know it will be entertaining to the crowds of today as well as its ability to display the capabilities of the system. Games like Super Mario 64, Tekken Tag Tournament, and U.N. Squadron all showed off the capabilities of the system without being solely a tool for showing off these abilities - each game were great in their own right, yet fully displayed the systems they were made for. Mario Clash is a low-tech game that actually relies on what it was created to show off just to really scrape together any depth of its own. Suffice to say, I am not impressed - in fact, I feel like I've genuinely wasted my time and money.

The Finale.

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, I was not and am not happy with the development of this game. I would have no complaints if the game were to use the 3D aspect to create new, interesting ways of playing the game, but when they are used pretty much only has an addition to the usual game, it looks and feels like a poor adaptation. Granted, it's an upgrade to the original concept...so why does it feel like it was done about 10 years too late, and ultimately feels like a step backward? If Nintendo had taken Pong and put it into a 3D environment, it would still be Pong and would still be a simple game with little replay value for today's gaming community. The fact that they took a marginally more-complex game does not change the fact that they took an old game and seemed to update it without actually updating it. Does anyone else feel cheated?

---Final Score: 2/10---

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 05/28/02, Updated 05/28/02