A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
In all seriousness, my guess would be that Bowser kidnaps the princess as a way to lure Mario in. Knowing that he doesn't stand a chance against Mario, he scatters his minions throughout the land to hopefully wear him out to the point of exhaustion, so that by the time Mario arrives he will be so weak that it'll be physically impossible for him to defeat Bowser. Then, Bowser hopes to take Mario out so that the Mushroom Kingdom will be totally defenseless, therefore he will have free reign, marry the Princess and be King!! (well, technically a prince)
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
Haven't you ever wondered where Baby Bowser and seven sons of Bowser came from?BurningDoom wrote:Why the hell does King Koopa even kidnap the Princess? What's the point?
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BurningDoom
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
BoneSnapDeez wrote:I'm still trying to figure out why Toad has been flipping us off all this time!
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
Well this post came out longer than I thought.
TLDR: It's a more or less tongue-in-cheek tradition at this point. Paragraph 4 talks about this in greater detail. Paragraphs 1-3 are background reading.
A more serious analysis:
I believe that the reason is simply the continuation of a tradition that served a more practical purpose in another era. During the creation of Mario in the NES days, developers didn't have a lot of tools that they could use to explain or characterize the central figures in the game. Thus, what you saw and experienced in the game had to be more or less self-explanatory for the sake of the player. Rescuing a princess as the goal of the game makes perfect sense; winning the heart of someone who's hot, rich, and royalty would net you women, money, and power in one shot. Seriously, that's everything important in life in one neat package. There's nothing easier in the universe to understand then why you want to recapture this princess.
Now, if saving the princess is the hook, then the challenge opposing the player must be just as obviously characterized. Creating the antagonist as a large and brutish fiend makes sense because that's easily identifiable as something bad or harmful. A regular person could be a bad guy, but regular people are something that you see all the time. Within the average human's mind, a human figure can represent something either good or evil. However, a giant fire-breathing monster is something that you'd probably consider frightening and harmful in most any context. This is why making the villain a monster is the obvious decision; just by seeing him on the screen you can tell he's supposed to be the bad guy. He looks menacing and fearful. The benign NPCs are the ones that look like humans, i.e. Toad.
Once you combine the elements mentioned above, the most logical tie and motivator for the player is that the menacing villain has captured the princess. It's a concept that seems logical based on the way our brains process good and evil. Evil is always considered an obstacle to overcome, particularly the evil of other entities that interfere with what we want (to an individual, this is more or less the basis for evil). Thus, the villain having gotten in the way of the player's goal is easily understood. Coupled with the easily understood motivation of saving the princess (which we've been culturally trained to understand as automatically being given to us as a reward due to the heroic nature of our actions), the player can more or less intuitively understand the story of the game based on these factors.
Now that developers have more room to explain these phenomenon, the way that these characters are used and the way that they interact with each other has aged. The real reason that this plot keeps getting used is more or less an homage to the early days of the genre, coupled with a tongue-in-cheek way of reusing the this plot because of how iconic it's become. for example, a recurring joke you can now see throughout Mario is that Bowser has been increasingly frequently questioning his own motivations for bothering to capture the princess yet again (because Mario invariably ends up beating him).
TLDR: It's a more or less tongue-in-cheek tradition at this point. Paragraph 4 talks about this in greater detail. Paragraphs 1-3 are background reading.
A more serious analysis:
I believe that the reason is simply the continuation of a tradition that served a more practical purpose in another era. During the creation of Mario in the NES days, developers didn't have a lot of tools that they could use to explain or characterize the central figures in the game. Thus, what you saw and experienced in the game had to be more or less self-explanatory for the sake of the player. Rescuing a princess as the goal of the game makes perfect sense; winning the heart of someone who's hot, rich, and royalty would net you women, money, and power in one shot. Seriously, that's everything important in life in one neat package. There's nothing easier in the universe to understand then why you want to recapture this princess.
Now, if saving the princess is the hook, then the challenge opposing the player must be just as obviously characterized. Creating the antagonist as a large and brutish fiend makes sense because that's easily identifiable as something bad or harmful. A regular person could be a bad guy, but regular people are something that you see all the time. Within the average human's mind, a human figure can represent something either good or evil. However, a giant fire-breathing monster is something that you'd probably consider frightening and harmful in most any context. This is why making the villain a monster is the obvious decision; just by seeing him on the screen you can tell he's supposed to be the bad guy. He looks menacing and fearful. The benign NPCs are the ones that look like humans, i.e. Toad.
Once you combine the elements mentioned above, the most logical tie and motivator for the player is that the menacing villain has captured the princess. It's a concept that seems logical based on the way our brains process good and evil. Evil is always considered an obstacle to overcome, particularly the evil of other entities that interfere with what we want (to an individual, this is more or less the basis for evil). Thus, the villain having gotten in the way of the player's goal is easily understood. Coupled with the easily understood motivation of saving the princess (which we've been culturally trained to understand as automatically being given to us as a reward due to the heroic nature of our actions), the player can more or less intuitively understand the story of the game based on these factors.
Now that developers have more room to explain these phenomenon, the way that these characters are used and the way that they interact with each other has aged. The real reason that this plot keeps getting used is more or less an homage to the early days of the genre, coupled with a tongue-in-cheek way of reusing the this plot because of how iconic it's become. for example, a recurring joke you can now see throughout Mario is that Bowser has been increasingly frequently questioning his own motivations for bothering to capture the princess yet again (because Mario invariably ends up beating him).
Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
That bastard.BoneSnapDeez wrote:I'm still trying to figure out why Toad has been flipping us off all this time!
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
As if it's not bad enough to tell us that we just went through an entire torturous castle for absolutely nothing, he has to flip us off, too. Talk about adding insult to injury.harper wrote:That bastard.BoneSnapDeez wrote:I'm still trying to figure out why Toad has been flipping us off all this time!
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
Considering the lack of royalty in the region (Daisy?) King Koopa may not have much of a choice unless he stoops to marrying a commoner or creating his own bride.
Bunch of things created to illustrate the point, from friendly (the CollegeHumor "catch up" session) to more deviant (JK "Persona"'s take on the affair). Of course, Bowser could just be a creature of habit.
Bunch of things created to illustrate the point, from friendly (the CollegeHumor "catch up" session) to more deviant (JK "Persona"'s take on the affair). Of course, Bowser could just be a creature of habit.
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dedalusdedalus
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
Because video game logic. Posing this question is like asking why the robot masters in Mega Man always try to take over the world by hiding out in a themed castle and waiting for Mega Man to attack them one by one.BurningDoom wrote:What I meant is how does it further his plans for domination of The Mushroom Kingdom at all? I never meant that Mario games are ridiculous.dedalusdedalus wrote:Yeah, that just makes Mario Bros. completely ridiculous.
I could totally believe the part about Mario travelling through pipes and shooting fireballs, but they just completely lost me when they refuse to explain why Bowser kidnaps the princess.
By the same token, if Princess Peach is the head of the Mushroom Kingdom, then it's technically a principality. But it isn't, because video game logic.
Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
I always thought it was pretty clear...
rape!
rape!
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Cronozilla
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Re: A Fundamental Questions About Mario Bros.
*Cronozilla puts on his devil's advocate cap*ElkinFencer10 wrote:Haven't you ever wondered where Baby Bowser and seven sons of Bowser came from?BurningDoom wrote:Why the hell does King Koopa even kidnap the Princess? What's the point?
Sunshine Spoilers
Maybe they're adopted ... is there a Mario Universe Kingdom equal to China in terms of adoptions? Maybe it's covered in the Mario & Luigi games.
And then there's those other people. The guard-boss in Mario 3, and the bosses in 3D Land. Very reminiscent.
Cousins? Brothers/Sister?
Why can't we see Wart again? ... Wait, if Mario 2 was a dream is that how Mario see's Bowser?