As someone with a girlfriend, if my girlfriend was constantly carried off by a giant turtle and she did not get a restraining order taken out on that dude, then our relationship would be over faster than a Tik Tok. (Side note cannot believe I just wrote that sentence, I feel so old). So, I feel like Mario really needs to either find a new relationship or invest in some private security because come on dude, some of these kidnappings could have been easily prevented.
As baffling as the plot of the Mario games are (if it can even be called a plot), he is a beloved franchise and is 99% of the world’s first guess when asked about video games mascots. As much as I enjoy platformers, personally I never really got into the Mario games as a kid. I think my main bulk of play time in the plumber’s world was in the multiplayer minigames in the Mario Bros game for the DS, mostly because it was the one game that myself, my cousins and my sister all knew how to play.
Who knew I needed to race penguins?
We have talked about Mario Odyssey on the site before but other than that, I have not seen the need to talk about the many other instalments in the seemingly endless franchise. I do not need typing lessons or to have pills prescribed to me by someone who did not go to medical school. However, there is one set of Mario games that I have a soft spot for – the Mario Galaxy games. Released for the Nintendo Wii, these games formed a large part of my childhood and were the first games that my sister would play with me.
As much as I adore my sister, video games are not her forte. Case in point, I let her have a go playing some Spiderman a few months back and her main achievement was to jump up and down the street like a weirdly dressed frog. It was mostly to piss me off but still, the point stands. So, the multiplayer aspects of the Mario Galaxy game (although limited) were perfect for us to play together, without resorting to murdering one another.
So…. you like jazz?
Taking any series and sending it into space, can make or break the franchise. Just look at the Friday the 13th series! Why on earth would you send Jason into space? If humanity had mastered inter-space travel, you think they would be able to put down one dude with a murder fetish. Thankfully, Mario in space was worth the pocket money that I spent on it. Though if my wrists start cracking by the time, I turn 30, then maybe I played too much of it. The introduction of motion controls into modern gaming must have really boosted physiotherapists businesses.
After playing Odyssey, it really feels like Galaxy was the blueprint that they based their most successful game off. Exploring different worlds with unique themes, collecting stars/moons for completing odd tasks, trying out new powers (be that through possession or consumption of odd mushrooms), even improving your ship as your adventure progresses. Even the concept of a world changing after you beat it for the first time was seen in the various comet types in Galaxy, only to become entirely new sections in Odyssey. Thankfully, the cosmic clones have stayed in the TRASH WHERE THEY BELONG.
THESE FREAKING CLONES. I SWEAR TO GOD.
More than anything, the Galaxy games were a kind of escape. I got to explore new places, try new things, and just revel in the excitement that those goofy minigames brought me. The age that I played those games, were when my battles with self-esteem and anxiety began. To have something that I could escape into and that my big sister could enjoy with me, was a support system that I did not know that I needed.
Anyways, I will go back to writing my dissertation project now.
The first Nintendo game that I ever played, was, like many kids, a Pokémon game. However, I wasn’t playing a ten-year-old child out traveling the world and making creatures fight one another. I was a Ranger, out protecting the people and Pokémon of the world I lived in. For those of you who haven’t heard of the Pokémon Ranger series, first off, you are missing out. This game series is great fun and really puts the focus on getting to know the world around you and helping the people in it.
Instead of training Pokémon, you “capture” them which is essentially a minigame in which you draw circles around the creature in question to calm it down. Once calm, it’ll happily help you with a task before heading back out into the wild, unharmed and happy. Different Pokémon can help you with different tasks such as helping you up cliffs, cutting down trees and powering various electrical switches.
As you start the game, you proceed through the usual menus of picking your name, gender, and appearance, etc. However, the only Pokémon you will have by your side throughout the entire game is either a Minun or a Plusle, aka the cutest little beings ever and if anyone ever hurts them, I’ll destroy the entire universe. After a quick tutorial on how to “capture” Pokémon, your character is made a fully-fledged Ranger and you fly off to the base to receive your first mission. The game’s story is split up into a series of missions that have you traveling around the region helping citizens and rescuing as many Pokémon as you can.
LOOK AT HOW CUTE THEY ARE. LOOK AT THEM.
I know this will sound cheesy, but the Ranger series is really all about the power of friendship. It strips back everything you know about the Pokémon franchise, taking away all the TM’s and advanced tactics that seem so common in the main series, leaving you with a single tool at your disposal. Most of your missions involve an injured, panicked or scared Pokemon putting themselves or others in danger. With the help of those around you, you can bring peace and resolve the situation. The more missions you complete, the more missions open to you and the more challenging Pokemon you can tame. The “enemies” in the game are the goofiest possible, the Go-Rock Squad. They are basically a group of evil musicians that wander around angering the Pokemon with their… unique methods.
The Ranger series is a trilogy of games, mostly sticking to the tried and trusted formulae. The stories all follow a Ranger trying to protect the people and Pokemon of their homeland and immerse you in the world. You don’t feel like a passing stranger in the Ranger games, wherever you go people recognize your character like a Ranger and will happily chat with you, even asking you to help with their own problems in later games through side quests. By removing the battling system completely, the game’s focus on its story and character really flourishes and I highly recommend the series, alongside the Mystery Dungeon games which have some twists in there that shocked little Caitlin to their core.
There is an element of “catching them all” for the completionist like myself but instead of having 200 Pokemon in a computer, you have a “Fiore Browser”, which lists acts like the Pokedex from the main series but instead of listing statistics and natures, it tells you how the Pokemon can assist you during captures e.g. slowing down the target, making your capture more effective, etc, and what their “Field Move” is – such as cutting down a tree.
These guys are extra, with a capital E.
In the first game alone, there are 213 different Pokemon to encounter and capture, with enough variety in the process for you not to get bored. You can have a few Pokemon in your party at once and utilize their abilities to help you on your missions, never willingly putting any Pokemon or person in harm’s way, in comparison to the ridiculously violent 10-year olds. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Although you can only have one “partner” Pokemon at a time
in the games, you do get a Pichu playing the Ukulele as your partner in the
third game so… best game series of all time, everyone goes home and stop trying,
you can’t beat perfection.
Anyways, that’s all I really had to say about the Pokemon Ranger games. My good friend (spacelady who made our fantastic logo), reminded me of how much I love this series so here we are. Apologies that it’s shorter than usual, it’s the last week of my placement so everything is a little bit all over the place.
As always, like, comment and follow the site both here and on Twitter – @OurMindGames. I recently got accepted for a press pass to EGX in October so I can’t wait to bring you all amazing content from the convention!
A profound belief of mine is that anyone can be good at anything if they put their mind to it. Growing up, I was never “gifted” at art. Neither my sister nor I were considered “artsy”, mostly sticking to crafting birthday cards or building little models out of wood and glue (much to my mum’s chagrin). At school, I was pushed away from the arts – something that I fought against, keeping my love for drama going strong and discovering the joys of backstage work. However, I lost my love for art. I dropped art at the end of Year 8, not returning to it until the end of my first year of university due to that innate fear that I wasn’t good enough to even try.
The fact I lost something that brought me so much joy for so long, is an experience that I hope no-one else will go through. It is this attitude to “not naturally born artists”, that can crush so many people’s dreams and deprive the world of the unique beauty that they would bring to it. Therefore, I think games like the Drawn to Life series, can be crucial in inspiring the future generation. For those who have never heard of these games, it’s a bit hard to explain but I think there’s a mechanic in it for everyone. The games were developed by 5th Cell, the team behind the Scribblenauts series, for the Nintendo DS. It’s sequel – known as Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, was released in two editions for the Nintendo Wii and the DS, each version telling a different story.
If you hadn’t guessed by the title of the games, this series involves drawing. In both games, you take on the role of the “Creator” – the god-like entity that watches over the world and cares for its residents. The citizens of the world, known as the Raposa, are humanoid creatures crossed with rabbits? It’s a bit hard to tell but they have cute ears. When you load the game up for the first time, you hear the story of how the world was created, how you created the Book of Life, which contained all the designs for your creations. The game gets you to draw forests, the world and even the people themselves. Then you hear Mari, a young Raposa, begging you for help. The darkness has almost consumed the entire village and you are their last hope.
If you don’t want to help these little cuties, then you suck 😛
The remaining villagers gather in the broken-down Creation Hall and you, the Creator, bring life to the old mannequin sat in the corner, providing them with a hero to combat the darkness and its source – Wilfre. Wilfre used to be a member of the village until he tried to make his own creations instead of just waiting on the Creator. When those creations turned into shadow monsters, he fled the village and tore the Book of Life into shreds, scattering its pages to the wind and condemning the village to eternal darkness. He is the antagonist in both games in the series, though his character gets a lot more development in the sequel.
The games are split in half, the first half being the various story elements, character interactions and drawing sequences required of you to push the plot forward. The other half is a platforming game where you fight off basic enemies, collect the various collectibles and retrieve whatever item/page from the Book of Life you were sent in there to retrieve. At the end of each “world” is a boss that forces you to combine all the skills you’ve learned in that world in order to defeat it. Once you finish one world, you move onto the next. Pretty standard stuff. However, it is the personality of the villagers you save and the world you help create, that you grow so attached to.
Nearly everything in the game, from the hero to the town’s buildings, to the very platforms you use to explore the levels, is hand-drawn by you. Sure, there’s the occasional template out there for you if you aren’t in the mood to draw but the game actively encourages you to put your own twist on the world. Either that or they ran out of budget to pay the artists. I speak from experience; you don’t need the drawings to be “high quality” in order to enjoy the game. Though, I do burst out laughing every time I see my original platform design – I accidentally hit the wrong button so all that got submitted was a red dot! It made me smile so I decided to keep it and carry on with the game, much to my chagrin later when the platforming sections became more complex. After all, it’s rather difficult to jump to a platform you can’t see…
This is my child Heather if you hurt her I WILL FIND YOU
I think part of why the Drawn to Life series has such a profound influence on my love of drawing, is the fact that it accepts literally anything you give it. Whether the hero you provide the game with is just a blob or something more… explicit (looking at you Game Grumps), they go along with it and are just as willing to enlist your assistance to save their world. No matter how ridiculous or sloppy you think it looks, to the characters in the world, it is the most beautiful creation they have ever seen. They are nothing but grateful, which is a really refreshing perspective, especially for young artists that are just starting out.
As much as I prefer the charm and mechanics of the first
game, the sequel’s story is what speaks to me the most about this series.
Throughout the game, there are constant hints towards a greater meaning to all
this, with a mysterious voice asking you about “that night”. They get you to
draw what you think you remember about it, occasionally coming back to it in
between your various doodling adventures. Wilfre, the bad guy from the original
game, claims to be acting for the greater good, saying that if his plan doesn’t
succeed then the whole world will be destroyed. He kidnaps Heather – a young Raposa
with darkness covering half her face, that you rescued in the first game. So,
the Raposa set out to rescue her and defeat Wilfre once again.
Considering his behavior in the first game, no-one believes Wilfre’s “saving the world” claim but soon Mari, the now-mayor of the community, disappears. You see her rip the Book of Life to shreds and Wilfre, disguised as your friend “Sock” (totally not suspicious name there Wilfre), throws the pendant given to you by Heather into the ocean which was your only way of tracking her down. Eventually, you make your way to Wilfre’s lair where Mari confronts you all and explains why she has been working with him to drain the colour from the world. She talks about what she’s seen and how if they don’t act, they’ll all be wiped out. When Mike, a member of your community who looks creepily human in comparison to everyone else, speaks up, Mari screams at him about how he won’t ever understand. You then challenge Wilfre and once you defeat him, you must extinguish the “Eternal Flame” and allow the world you’ve spent so long saving, to fade into darkness. It’s a drastic change from the goofy adventures around the world on a giant sea turtle.
I’m not ashamed to admit that this ending sequence made me very emotional.
In a series of images, you watch a human family visit the carnival and drive home in the dark. The two children in the back of the car are a young girl and her smaller brother, whose parents are killed when the car crashes into a ditch. The young girl’s face is badly injured, resulting in half her face being heavily bandaged. Meanwhile, the little boy is put in a coma. These two children are Heather and Mike. The entire world of the Raposa is an invention of Mike’s mind, keeping him trapped in the coma. The darkness from the first game potentially hints at his struggle to survive his injuries, whilst the colour draining from the world in the second game shows that the more he wakes up, the more the vivid the world he created will become – hence Wilfre draining the colour to prevent it.
This ending was considered too dark for many people and was
replaced with Mike falling out of a tree in other releases of the game, however,
I think any other ending wouldn’t have such a poignant impact on the player. Throughout
the game, you hear someone talking but they don’t seem to make any sense.
However, as the Eternal Flame goes out and the world fades, those words become
the phrase:
“God… Just bring back my little brother to me.”
I honestly didn’t expect such a deep and profound storyline from such a goofy little game series but I’m so glad I gave these games a chance. We’ve all lost someone, whether it be to illness, time or distance. Speaking from experience, the feeling of sheer hopelessness that comes from watching a loved one in pain is horrific. I can only imagine the pain Heather must have been in, each minute that her baby brother lay in that hospital bed. As much as the Drawn to Life series are kids’ games, they convey much deeper messages and encourage creative expression more than a lot of more “mature” game series.
Now, I’ve rambled on long enough. Hope everyone has a good week and remember to like, comment and follow the site to keep up to date with all my posts. If you want to chat with me about more general things, hit up my twitter – @OurMindGames !
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