Mario versus FanFiction (lotsa images warning)

[Lin Beifong]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-2 - Calm before the storm

Yes, but a whole bunch of deadly traps are! Care to explain that?

No, see here! You seem to be pretty nonchalant about that whole trap thing! I'd really like an explanation, but the game assumes I'm an idiot, so it won't let me actually confront you about this obvious attempt on my life.

Check again, you say? In the room that was clearly designed to kill me?

Well gosh, that sounds like a super great idea to me, derr her her!

Oh no! The trap that was previously here and tried to kill me after I hit this button is still here and it's trying to kill me again after I hit the button!

Luckily though, whoever designed this trap was just as stupid as the script that lead us here. So by flipping to 3D, it turns out this contraption is entirely half-assed. Literally.

So, we jump on top of it and use it as a clunky elevator.

Fun fact: in 3D space, parts of these brown platforms are further in the back, while other parts are closer to the front.

Meanwhile, the spike trap elevator only covers the front half of the room.

This means, if you flip to 3D and the game decides to put you in the back of the room, and too far away from any platforms, you risk falling all the way down to the bottom again. When that happens, you have to press the button again, wait for the spike trap to descend, and then slowly ride it back up again.

Again, the player's time is a resource spent with wild abandon by whoever came up with this chapter. It's ok though. Those idiots are gonna keep playing anyway, right?

Time to unchain this thing.

"Gnaw had enough of brick lady's dumbass scheme!"

"Gnaw eat brick lady now!"

"OM NOM NOM!!!"

Suddenly he's a "savage thing", huh? You called him good earlier. Make up your mind, Tippi.

And on that note: The player knows why he went after Mimi. The game itself made no effort to hide her identity. Why is this suddenly presented as a mystery? She's the villain, you already told us.

Stop assuming we are idiots already! Most players are capable of using their brains, game, so give us a chance to actually do it!

You're pretty wiry, Tippi. You don't look like there's much meat to you. I wouldn't eat you, and I love eating things.

Just like there wasn't much to this level. We went into a house, half-heartedly searched a couple rooms, and set a dog free.

Nothing really happened, and nothing was accomplished.

I'm sorry for being even more bitter and spiteful than usual, but this chapter is particularly infuriating to me. Up next is what's arguably the worst level in the game, and I am not sure how exactly to cover it yet. I'll have to think of something.

 

[Lin Beifong]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-3 - We own you, player

Welcome to the infamous chapter 2-3 of Super Paper Mario. Center piece of this level is this vase situated on a ?-Block.

Examining it reveals that it's a cheap piece of shit. It goes without saying that hitting the block will break the vase, so you'd have to be some kind of idiot to fall for this setup, right?

But as we have already established multiple times, this game fully believes you ARE an idiot, and thus breaking the vase is your only option. You cannot make any progress without breaking it. There is no end of level block. You HAVE to break it so the game can play out whatever shitty scenario it has cooked up for you to endure.

Why are you still here?

I really couldn't give less of a shit. Let's, for a moment, ignore that I already know you are the villain because this plotline flows like something written by a monkey repeatedly sitting down on a typewriter. You are a maid. A servant. Someone in your position does not have the authority to address guests of the house in this manner. If you want me to believe your disguise, you have to act your part accordingly.

This is impersonation 101, and you're botching it. Go back to shapeshifter school and come back when you've learned to not utterly fail at the ONE job that you have!

May I see the receipt? Because my magical all-knowing butterfly just told me it's a cheap piece of shit. If I went out of my way to acquire this information, I should have the option of calling you out on your obvious bullshit.

Also, Rubees? What, are we ripping off Zelda now?

Yeah, I don't cut grass while wearing a skirt.

Everyone uses coins in this game. Including vendors in completely different dimensions. Honestly, if there's one currency that qualifies as universal in this twisted realm of poorly thought-out nonsense, it's fucking coins.

Why can you not tell her this??

I am Super Fucking Mario. Do you know what I do to bricks like you? I smash them!

Under reasonable circumstances I would not have to put up with this garbage. If I couldn't outright break her in half for trying to kill me earlier, I could just walk away and ignore her. What's she gonna do about it? She can't do anything to me without breaking her shoddy cover story.

But no. You have to play along. The game doesn't see you as a player, it sees you as a gerbil in a wheel. When they want you to run, you run. Keep that mentality in mind.

And there we have the framework for this chapter: You working off a debt. There are honestly so many parts about this that just don't make any sense. From Mimi using a seemingly made-up currency to trap you in a contract, to her disguise being shit, to me knowing it is a disguise because the game told me, to Tippi not using the information available to her when I need her to, to me agreeing to all of this for no apparent reason other than "the plot wouldn't work otherwise"...

Nothing about this setup is fun. You know the villain, you know everything that is wrong, and you cannot do anything about it anyway. It all just leaves you frustrated because you're powerless against the game's bullshit.

 

[Ray Trace]

Uh don't worry about being bitter, you being more bitter is when this thing is at its most hilarious.

 

[DragonFreak]

Yeah this level is like the opposite of fun. This game is the opposite of fun.

 

[Ray Trace]

On a side note, Gnips look cuter in the Super Mario-Kun

Seriously, most of the Super Mario-Kun Super Paper Mario character designs look so much better than the official ones.

 

[DragonFreak]

A lot of things look cuter in Super Mario Kun.

 

[Ray Trace]

Annnnd I forgot another thing. I think in the Super Mario-Kun, they skipped the part where Mimi was supposed to be a maid and went straight for the disguise as Merlee. So in the Super Mario-Kun, they actually played the disguise card correctly, at least in Mario's POV (readers knew she tied Merlee up because it happens meanwhile)

 

[Lin Beifong]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-3 - Press jump, press jump, press jump

Wait, so apparently you have an entire bank room set up for this shit? How did you even do that in the short time between chapter 1 and 2? If you would expend half of that energy on making actual competent plans, you could have eliminated me already.

This whole scenario feels like I am forced to go along with a kid's imaginary playhouse world. A world in which sense and logic are non-existent because the kid has not yet developed the mental faculties necessary to comprehend these concepts. And granted, that sort of concept CAN be used to great effect by a competent writer, but here it just comes off as annoying.

Also, we see a return of the "I love you" joke from TTYD. The key difference here is that I liked the Puni Elder as a character and would want to hear her reaction to it, whereas I don't really give enough of a shit about Mimi to be interested in what she has to say.

I'm going to say it anyway, only to give the game a chance to be funny and/or clever with the response.

You killed it.

Why did you bring back this joke when your punchline is going to be this incredibly lazy and bland response?

Fuck off, Mimi.

So, to clarify: Our goal in this chapter is to acquire one million units of Mimi's made-up shit currency. To that end we have a bunch of rooms up here to explore where we can get rubees in exchange for work.

This particular room is secured with a four-digit password which we do not have yet.

This is the entry-level labor room. By the way, get used to being shit-talked and insulted a lot. You know, having to do repetitive and menial tasks wasn't "fun" enough on its own, you have to be called disparaging names while you do it.

These designers know exactly what I want out of a game.

These pharaoh-looking guys serve as your supervisors. You talk to them to get rubees.

Talking to them is always a chore because of the aforementioned name-calling.

In any case, this is pretty much all there is to the first half of this sub-chapter: You hit this block. Every hit of the block is worth one rubee. This is all you do for this part of the level. You jump, you jump again, you jump some more, and ever-so-slowly work off your debt, one rubee per jump.

Since you are told from the beginning to go work off your debt, and this is one of the first rooms you can come into, it is possible for a player to arrive here and not know what to do other than hit the block over and over again. There is a "goal" to this, but you pretty much have to figure out what that is through blind guessing.

I pretty much know exactly what I have to do, and this level is STILL infuriatingly repetitive to me. Just imagine doing this shit blind.

No matter whether you know what the game wants you to do or not: You have to hit this block a minimum of 100 times. Once you reach 100 rubees, you can stop, but you'd be forgiven for not knowing that and continuing anyway. Many people fell into this trap and I feel for them.

To get the full experience, watch the above animation and count the block hits in your head. Stare at it until you reach 100, then move on.

Next to the labor room, there's also this break room where more of these prisoner guys are hanging out.

They give you some cryptic hints.

Some of them demand rubees for their info, and based on how shady and untrustworthy these people are acting (especially the one we met in 2-1), it would be a reasonable assumption that these guys are trying to rip you off.

They're not, though. Paying them is the only way to progress through this level.

This one wants 10000 rubees. I can only imagine the poor souls who think they have to go hit that block 10000 times.

Another thing deterring me from wanting to pay these fuckers is how rude they are. Why would I want to give these assholes the rubees I have painstakingly amassed? It's counter-intuitive!

Oh, something else that will pop up a lot in this level: People calling you a gerbil. That "gerbil in a wheel" comment I made earlier? That's not something I made up. The game literally calls you a gerbil at every opportunity it gets.

You'll see soon.

Anyway, this guy is the first paywall we need to overcome, and the reason why we needed to hit that block 100 times.

Pay attention to this line. The game KNOWS how counter-intuitive the setup of this level is.

It is calling you out for making what would generally be seen as a stupid decision. And yet that stupid decision is the ONLY WAY TO PROGRESS THROUGH THIS LEVEL!

How can you have the audacity to criticize me for my decision when you forced me to make that decision in the first place by cutting off all other options?? Kiss my flabby plumber ass, game!!

I hope you are prepared to hold all these 100 rubees because I am going to shove every last one of them down your throat, you malformed, pajama-wearing turd!

This better be worth it.

(It's not)

 

[Lin Beifong]

Annnnd I forgot another thing. I think in the Super Mario-Kun, they skipped the part where Mimi was supposed to be a maid and went straight for the disguise as Merlee. So in the Super Mario-Kun, they actually played the disguise card correctly, at least in Mario's POV (readers knew she tied Merlee up because it happens meanwhile)

It's always great when a comic adaption somehow manages to write around the failures of the game designers.

 

[Ray Trace]

With game design like this and the game constantly berating its players, I really fail to see how its story is any good when you have a ton of asshole NPCs right in the beginning of the game. And I fear that those prisoners won't be the last of the NPC assholes.

People often praise the characters of this game but they conveniently ignore all the assholes and their dialouge.

This constant, concentrated mean-spiritedness isn't what I think should be in Mario's World, which is supposed to be a happy, go-lucky series where you'd want to be, not people who think "HOT GIRL ALERT" or "Old guys with or without mustaches suck".

 

[Lin Beifong]

I think it's the escalation of a trend. Like, if you think back to Paper Mario, a lot of NPCs were constantly singing praise of Mario and treating him like a big celebrity, which makes sense since that game takes place in central Mushroom Kingdom, where Mario's influence is the most concentrated.

Then you had TTYD, which took place on the outskirts of the Mushroom Kingdom. The people here were more like "Mario? Whatever!" The tone was a bit more rough and rude, but it was to a reasonable extent. People weren't rude for the sake of being rude, it was just a logical extension of the environment they lived in. Plus, the quips they made where all more tongue-in-cheek, and interspersed with niceness and genuine appreciation once you got to know the characters better. This is the tone I prefer, because it strikes a good balance between pleasantness and bluntness.

It feels like this game is the logical conclusion, where the designers have leapt away from the saccharine-ness of Toad Town, waaay past the tolerable niche TTYD was in, squarely into absolute asshole territory. Here, nearly everyone is either an outright prick (like the prison guy or Bestovius), using Mario (like Merlon), or a combination of both (like Watchitt). Like, I already made this point in an update, but if almost everyone you meet is an unlikeable douche-canoe, you really don't want to save any of them. You need a connection to SOMETHING if you want players to have fun saving your world.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

Get him good, Mario, get him good.

I don't think any other character so far up until this point has made me actually angry. His words are pretty venomous. The gateway people, yeah, they're just thick-skulled morons that you can easily trick. What grinds my gears is that this asshole is a creep, a misogynist, and an ageist too (Mario's not even that old; if you use the only official source from Melee, he's 26 years old) and it's unfortunate that Peach has to be polite, being a princess and all. If I were her, I would tell him to fuck off.

Oh, Mario, also, why do you need to save this goddamn world, why not leave it to rot...?

 

[Lin Beifong]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-3 - Hold right

Ah, yes. Like a hamster wheel, the metaphor comes full circle.

Rule of comedy: By saying one word over and over again, it automatically becomes funny and makes you a hilarious genius.

Oh, you mean like a... hmm... what's a small animal that runs in a wheel... like a... guinea pig?

"Get in the wheel, smartass!"

"No, we're not tired of this word yet! Gerbil gerbil gerbil!"

Anyway, with the repetitive dialogue out of the way, we can focus on the repetitive gameplay instead.

Your goal in this room is to move this wheel. Moving this wheel generates electricity, for which you will be paid in rubees.

How do you move the wheel?

You hold right.

That's all you do. You hold right on the Wiimote.

They managed to take the block jumping concept and made it require even less participation on your part. At least in the other room, there was an electrical current you occasionally had to jump over.

Shut the fuck up, before I garrote you with your own whip!

Anyway, I climbed into this wheel and held right for what I felt was a reasonable amount.

Actually, let me rephrase that: I held right for what I felt was the amount the designer's twisted mind would deem "reasonable". Nothing about this is reasonable. No competent game designer would have made a level like this! No director worth their salt would have allowed this travesty of an absolute mess to make it into the final product.

I need 10000 rubees to pass the next paywall. How many do I get for wasting my time running in this wheel and listening to a degenerate call me a gerbil over and over again?

Go fuck yourself, game!

Stepping away from this cockamamy display of basic level design failure, I found this block hidden behind a wall.

It grows a climbable vine, except they were too cheap to animate an actual vine, so all I get is this lame squiggly line.

Up here is another guy...

...calling me a fucking gerbil again! I have half a mind shoving you into that laser myself!

Ok, so this guy is telling me that turning sideways will make me practically invincible. My honest first thought was this:

Whenever you flip to 3D, you end up turning sideways. That has to be what he means, right?

No. No it isn't. I forgot to factor in that this game makes no sense, and thus I need another ability that turns me sideways, but differently. Because fuck you.

So I go back to the wheel again. I don't know how long it took me. It was way longer than anyone should have had to do this. Just to get the mandatory 10000 rubees that I need to proceed and finish the level.

What's worse, there are people that don't know you can stop after getting 10000 rubees. They continue to run in this fucking wheel, thinking this is the way to pay off their one million rubee debt. I've heard stories of people who got stuck here, who had to resort to letting the game run over-night to grind for rubees, or who just said "fuck this" and outright refused to play the game again (that's the smart choice, btw).

And you may think: "Well, that's their own fault! There's no way the game designers would make you grind one million rubees, why would you believe that? It's obvious there was another way!"

But no, it's not their fault. If you look back at everything that happened up to this point, you will notice a trend: The game designers have no qualms about wasting your time. Painfully slow elevators, mindless and empty dialogue after dialogue, hitting the same block 100 times, etc. etc., all of this is either outright designed to waste your time, or not made with a safeguard against it.

At this point, it is an entirely valid response to lose faith in the designers' consideration for the player. And without that faith, the assumption that, yes, they WOULD go as far as making you grind for these rubees, becomes very realistic.

I have heard that, once you reach 100k rubees, the wheel stops generating them. I haven't confirmed that myself because I am not insane enough to want to grind that much. This mechanic is supposedly the designers' "mercy", there to clue you in that there's something else to do. But at that point you have already grinded way more than you needed to, and it just makes you feel empty.

This vile setup reeks of contempt. Purest contempt for the player who is forced to do these things to see the rest of the damn game.

So, after I got the money, I go back to this guy. By the way: He's another NPC standing in 3D space without any ill effects, or any explanation really.

If you found her asleep, why didn't you take her out?

Isn't she holding you here against your will?

I couldn't give less of a shit if I tried. I don't care about her as a character, why would I care about her private life?

I am so ready for this level to end.

 

[SiFi]

If you stand in one of the wheel's lower "corners" and hold down on the d-pad, you'll slide in place, generating electricity faster. Oversight, or backdoor? Who can say?

 

[Ray Trace]

I can't wait for Edo to reach, y'know, after this entire mess. his reaction is going to be gold.

I've just recently read on MarioWiki what happens after this and my god it's insulting and pretentious like hell.

 

[Lin Beifong]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-3 - Twist and shout (angrily)

Behind another wall I found this chest.

Will it contain what I need to solve my problem with all of these troublesome pests?

Is it arsenic?

Oh nevermind, it's just one of those guys again. I just got Waffles, and you're already handing me another one? Guess you're just giving these away.

I like where this is going.

Absolutely! I would be thrilled if this world was gone, you have no idea how ecstatic I would be.

Well obviously, I mean, the world is still here after all. Have you seen the shit going on in this level???

In all seriousness though, this guy's not going to destroy the world for you, no matter how much you'd want him to. There's really only one thing pixls do, and it's coming right up.

Hold on to your time, folks...

...'cause it's going to be wasted!

Incidentally, this is also the amount of brain cells you have left at this point.

True, I am filled with one particular emotion right now. It's not "thrilled" though.

"You could poke someone's eye out with my edges, for example!"

I can empathize with your dislike of the Ancients, I'm not particularly fond of them either.

Maybe the two of us can be friends after all.

Not gonna happen though, because you're going to transform into a silent, lifeless prop real soon.

I'm going to call you Twisty, because of what twisted realm I found you in, because of what twisted mind came up with the moronic concept of your ability, and... because you kind of look like a little twister.

If all else fails, maybe I can re-purpose you as a shiv...

Anyway, Twisty's ability is to turn us sideways, but in a way that keeps the camera fixed. This somehow allows us to be immune to lasers.

So I have to conclude that it's not the lasers hurting us, it's the camera.

Nothing about this makes sense.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

The game: it's because you're supposed to be "invisible", fool!

 

[Lin Beifong]

Yeah, I get that, game. That doesn't make it any less stupid, though.

Like, really, they could have just made the laser barriers scanners or something, with a turret or whatever firing at you whenever the barrier detects something. Then it would have made slightly more sense.

Except not really, because flipping still does exactly the same thing.

 

[GBA]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-3 - Twist and shout (angrily)

how dare he bring pi into this shitfest
the nerve

 

[Lin Beifong]

Spoiler: Chapter 2-3 - Safe from harm

Behind the lasers, we find this safe, which is what the 8 digit combination is for.

Or was it seven? No, it was eight with the final 6. I think the last part impaired my ability to count.

In any case, this safe is the actual goal of the chapter and the way you're supposed to pay off the debt.

I don't feel relieved or accomplished though. I just feel angry that I had to do all of this in the first place. When a player, after solving your stupid puzzle, feels angry instead of glad, you know you fucked up.

To be honest, they should have drawn a giant middle finger on the back wall of the safe. I can only imagine what people must have felt like if they grinded up to 100k rubees before coming here.

I've got your lousy fake money! Now kindly fuck off and never cross my path again!

Choke on them!

"People aren't supposed to actually PLAY this level! I didn't expect someone to hate himself THAT much!"

Curse me?

...overreaction, much?

Also, I hope that really hurt.

Ugh, fucking hell. Now I have Mimi bits in my mustache.

Anyway, this temper tantrum somehow causes the end of level block to appear behind a barrier.

Tippi, I swear to the stars! You, me, and everyone else knows exactly who she is by now! If you ask "Hmm... I wonder who she really was *wink wink*" one more time, I will break you like a fucking toothpick!

I just got done playing one of the laziest, most infuriating, most incompetently written levels of this game. My tolerance for shitty, patronizing dialogue is at an all-time low! So if you don't have anything worthwhile to say, shut the fuck up for once!

In any case, the end of the level is behind this row of bars. To pass through, you need to flip to 3D and then flip again using Twisty. Which essentially means your orientation is the same as before flipping to 3D, but now you can pass through bars.

So now that this nightmare is over, one question remains:

WHY?

What was the point of making us do this?

I have... an idea. Speculation, if you will. This isn't anything I can prove (or even want to, anyway), this is just the honest impression I got from playing this... level.

Game developers are not infallible. Sometimes they create a game area that is sub-optimal and just not fun. Sometimes something gets lost in transition from the concept paper to the finished product. Sometimes seemingly minor details end up sucking the fun out of a level unexpectedly.

I don't think this is what happened here. It seems too deliberate.

There's nothing I have to go on other than my own experience playing this level, as well as what I've heard from other people. But certain patterns popping up throughout it make it feel like behind this level lies a... malicious sentiment.

I previously mentioned how this whole "work off a debt through menial tasks" setup reeks of contempt for the player. This contempt appears to permeate nearly every aspect of 2-3, from the general tone, to the plot, to the dialogue. The way everyone calls you a gerbil, and then the game literally makes you run in a wheel... a gerbil in a wheel creates a very distinct image. Combined with the other condescending little details it seems like the game is making a statement. It feels like the NPCs aren't just calling an avatar character names.

With everything that happens in this level, it's like the whole thing is a proxy through which the level designer is talking to the player. And what they are saying is: "I own you! I can make you run in a wheel like a gerbil! I can make you hit the same block over and over again like a trained animal! I can force you to do things and then insult you for doing them as if it was your idea! You are mine! I OWN YOU".

Maybe this makes me a conspiracy nut, or maybe I'm just biased from playing this mess and then reliving it again through these posts. But after experiencing this, it feels like this whole thing is just some frustrated level designer's twisted power fantasy. Maybe they were in a bad mood and chose to vent their issues by taking it out on the players through creating this... garbage. If this is the case, then that is pretty low.

It's very possible that I'm wrong and reading too much into a shoddily assembled level. You are encouraged to draw your own conclusions.

 

[SonicMario]

I'd say it's more like filler in an attempt to help extend the game's length myself.

Far from the best choice for such a thing mind you, but the game is fairly easy and even somewhat short. I think I once replayed it all over again and beat the whole story within large spurts of gameplay within three days. The first two games when I replay them unless I played them literally all day would take at least 5 days or the entire week to replay again.

 

[Dr. Javelin]

i honestly don't recall having that much problem with the level when i played it (a long time ago, to be fair)

i mean it was dumb and silly but this game already established that as its tone

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

oh hey 2-3

I once had enough of an experience here to write a shroom section about it

i may or may not have realized that there was a safe full of rubees after the hamster wheels and may or may not have tried to set up something to sit on the wiimote to hold down right

I didn't follow through though because the tv burn in protection kept buggering it up on me

which raises a question now, you could theoretically beat this chapter without that pixl couldn't you?

 

[GBA]

oh hey 2-3

I once had enough of an experience here to write a shroom section about it

was that a fake ad
i think i remember seeing that

 

[LN1]

which raises a question now, you could theoretically beat this chapter without that pixl couldn't you?

the end chapter block is behind some bars that are impassable without the pixl.