Topic: It's MAR10 today. So what Mario game are you playing or replaying?

[Lerion]

Well I've played most of them but for the past weeks I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy a lot. Love this version. Soon will start to play 2nd part of it. Not  much to do with this virus around.

[JonLeung]

Happy MAR10 Day again!

I notice with some dismay that I still haven't made much progress in catching up on the Mario & Luigi series and the Paper Mario series despite my nagging intentions to.  You'd think it wouldn't be that hard but other things keep popping up.  Still... it's been a few years now!  I did buy Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS) a few months ago to make an attempt, but in not having time, I let my brother start it, who didn't get far in it and doesn't seem to care.  I heard it was not great compared to other Paper Mario games, but yikes, if it's not even interesting enough to even play more than a couple hours in...  As time is at a premium, and if I want to have any hope of catching up, I might have to be okay with cutting out some entries, even in a series like Mario.

Kind of hard to cut out the big mainstream Mario games but it becomes a tricky question with remakes.  I never did pick up New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (Switch) because the Peachette addition probably wasn't a big enough draw.  But recently I did pick up the new Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (Switch) so I think when I do have time to game today, the main thing will be opening that up.  Thankfully Bowser's Fury is accessible from the start, and is a short game, maybe five or six hours... not sure if I am going to do that all today, though I'd like to.  Should I just take a day and make a whole thing out of it?  I have doubts I will replay the Super Mario 3D World portion, especially if all it has are gameplay tweaks and bug fixes.  It was fun, and surely still is fun, but I don't know if I want to relive the frustration of the last stage, Champion's Road... that took over six and a half hours one Saturday for me and my brother to beat the first time around!  Maybe it'll be easier with four players, since having four players die simultaneously is hopefully less likely... but that's if there is any interest, once group gatherings are allowed again.  Most likely I'll just stick with Bowser's Fury...

I guess I did make time for a remake semi-recently.  A few months ago I picked up Super Mario 3D All-Stars (Switch) - and you should too, since I believe it gets discontinued at the end of this month - but I only made time to replay Super Mario 64.  Got it 100%, and thankfully some things were easier than I remember; Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride aren't as scary now but there were still some tense moments for sure, and the camera was still a cause for many lives lost.  I'd played all three when they were new and 100% completed them all, and though I legitimately like Super Mario Sunshine in a weird way, I don't think there's much priority to relive that and/or Super Mario Galaxy just yet.

Well, with that said, I guess I should bust Bowser's Fury out of the plastic wrap.  What are your MAR10 Day plans this year?

EDIT: So I made a little bit of time for games today, like 3.5 hours, and got 50/100 Cat Shines in Bowser's Fury which is enough for the (presumably) first ending.  Pretty good to finish a game in one sitting, haven't done that in a while.  Of course I'll play it through, but for today that is good enough, gotta get back to updating VGMaps.com and stuff like that...

Oh yeah, I randomly decided to buy the cartridge of Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World (Super NES) the other day.  Despite the Super NES being my favourite console, I have am embarrassingly low number of actual cartridges for it (especially compared to my other game libraries) mostly since I definitely rented many games in those years and didn't feel a need to buy games that I finished on rentals (which was actually almost always, even RPGs, surprisingly).  I don't know if I want to hardcore collect for it (though I have contributed quite a lot to my brother's NES collection) but I should at least get the major titles, and can't get much more major than five Mario games all in one!

[JonLeung]

Wow, no one has replied since last year... but for my own sake, it's interesting to see how I'm doing, as I have trouble making time for games.  I'm usually doing game-related stuff, but not playing for enjoyment as much as I'd like.

My progress report on the Mario games is not so great on the RPG front.  Since I posted about getting Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS) last year, my brother gave up on it when he wasn't too far in.  I did manage to play it and finish it.  I enjoyed it, but I totally get how it's considered a lesser experience compared to the previous Paper Mario games.  I can move on now... but I haven't.  I still really want to.

I mentioned getting Bowser's Fury (Switch) last MAR10, and then in the edit of that post, you can see I said that I found 3.5 hours to play it and actually get the ending.  I have since gotten 100% on that.  Did not bother to even start a replay of Super Mario 3D World (Switch) which is on the same card, as I already finished it on the Wii U.  Similarly, I did not replay the latter two games on Super Mario 3D All-Stars (Switch), but I did get one Shine in Super Mario Sunshine just to get the "Shine Get!" that I needed for my "Video Game Logic" parody of Daft Punk's "Technologic" - you can see it with the "Get It" first at 0:38...

As for my plans this MAR10 specifically, I probably won't be able to play for a solid 3.5 hours like I somehow managed to do last year.  Because the Wii U (and 3DS) eShops will be closing down for good about a year from now, I looked into if there was anything that I need before it's no longer available, so a couple weeks ago, I bought the Wii U Virtual Console version of Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (GBA).  It includes all the eReader stages (which, thanks to Peardian, you can see here) so I should be able to make some time today to play a few of those stages, at the very least.  I only played "Level E16: It's A Shoe-In" with Mario so far, as I like Kuribo's/Goomba's Shoe, but I should definitely do them all.  Some stages add in elements and items from Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario World, so that should be fun!

Let's see if by this time next year I get any closer to making time for the Mario RPGs...

[TerraEsperZ]

I've never really done anything special on MAR10 but then again, I do have these long periods where I play very little since I'm usually too busy drawing or mapping.

I did play a whole bunch of Mario games this summer when I stopped working for five months after burning out. I finally justified the purchase of a Switch to myself because of the number of (mostly) Nintendo games that were available. I played all the way through Super Mario Odyssey as well as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury and Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe over the span of a month. They were all fun but Odyssey and Bowser's Fury were my favourites of the four.

Do Luigi games count as Mario ones? Because I also bought Luigi's Mansion 3 and I haven't even started it, though since MAR10 will be over in 15 minutes, I guess I missed it again this year!

[JonLeung]

I forgot to mention that only a week or so ago, I watched my brother play through Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (Famicom Disk System), the original game that Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES) is based on.  I'd certainly known this was the case for just about as long as I've known of Super Mario Bros. 2, but relatively recently on my YouTube channel I covered The NES Endings Compendium - Years 1985-1988 which talked more about it, and Shesz (who does the "Boundary Break" and "Regional Break" videos) more recently covered the differences between the two games - and quite thoroughly.  Since I had also just got around to auditing my NES ROMs (why hadn't I done that earlier?) and got our old PowerPak flash cartridge to run Famicom Disk System games (again, why not earlier...), it just seemed like things were lining up to finally be interested enough and have the means to get around to it, on an actual NES - which my brother recently got an RGB mod installed on, so it was something colourful to put it through its paces, too.

The differences are interesting, but the biggest thing is that the game has to be finished with all four characters to get the full ending.  Super Mario Bros. 2 is one of the games that my brother has finished probably quite literally over a hundred times, so it was a breeze, though there was sometimes a brief pause to notice whenever there was something he noticed as different (especially as he hadn't fully watched Shesz's video).

[VGCartography]

Bowser's Fury is definitely awesome. Kind of an Odyssey area (or larger) but with different mechanics.

I captured some Galaxy planet pics for a collage recently: https://www.deviantart.com/vgcartography/art/Super-Mario-Galaxy-Planetoid-Catalog-908412054

I know they're probably all hands on for BotW2 and such, but I do hope we get an Odyssey 2 or another Mario platformer before the next console. Never getting a Mario 64-2 is an all-time screwup in my book still.

[TerraEsperZ]

That Galaxy collage is amazing!

God I loved the Super Mario Galaxy games... Even though Odyssey was also amazing, I would rather have a Super Mario Galaxy 3 before a Super Mario Odyssey 2.

[JonLeung]

It's MAR10 Day again!

As of this morning, I got 4,000 hours of watch time (in the past year) on my "JonLeung1" YouTube channel, the vast majority of it due to my compilation of all The Super Mario Bros. Movie trailers and other ads, which got even more of a boost yesterday with the reveal of the Final Trailer (even though I made a new compilation including that here, sometimes it takes a couple days to pick up steam)...  So I guess I owe my success to Mario, LOL.

The significance of the 4,000 hours is that's one of the requirements for monetization for a YouTube channel.  The other being 1000 subscribers, which I got 23 days ago (and I actually got to 1100 yesterday, so it's definitely accelerating).  I should probably get out more original content again (instead of rehashing Animaniacs and Super Mario Movie stuff), while I wait for a month or so for the third step, which is simply YouTube's approval, which doesn't outline their specific criteria.  Better lay off the potentially copyright-infringing stuff, so that I don't get any strikes while they're considering it.

Aside from this YouTube milestone which isn't really that Mario-related other than the success of that one video, I probably should actually play something.  It's been over eight years and I still haven't started Mario & Luigi: Dream Team so I wonder if I should just start already.  Though I don't like multiple RPGs on the go, and I've been busy with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 when I do have time to play games these days, and in that I've been enjoying grinding and am quite overpowered for where I am in the story (barely into the story at all, and already at Level 55 with all nine Classes (that I could get at this point) for all six characters, maxed (for now) at Level 10), but I can certainly take a break to find something with Mario today.  If not Dream Team, maybe I should play more of those extra e-Reader stages for Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 which I bought last year but barely played... or now it's on the GBA app for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, so I could play it there too if I don't mind starting over...

I normally play games in the morning when I am on the WalkingPad (1.25 hours, guilt-free) and haven't missed a day of walking on it since March 2020 (aside from the two weeks when it was getting repaired).  But I haven't walked this morning because of a specifically-timed errand, so I guess I'll walk after work today - and hopefully will have decided what to play when I get on it.

For someone who remembers this day every year, it's pretty bad that what I could play feels like an afterthought in the past few years...

I'm also planning a Japan trip - won't say specific dates - but I look forward to seeing Super Nintendo World in Osaka.  I wanted to go in past years, as a "flex" that I am such a Nintendo fan that I would see it in Japanese instead of waiting for it to come out in the United States in English, but alas, due to world events that wasn't possible, and I couldn't get my passport renewed in time to be there opening day for the California one.  Ah well, that's a silly thing to flex anyway.  But I'll be seeing more than just gaming-related stuff, should be a good trip.

What are you guys playing (or doing) that is Mario-specific?

EDIT: Near the end of the day, I remembered that I hadn't played the latest wave of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the one that reintroduces Birdo and includes the all-new Yoshi's Island track, so I played that Fruit Cup and Boomerang Cup and I guess that'll count for this year.

Let's see if I fail to start Mario & Luigi: Dream Team yet again when MAR10 rolls around next year...