RPG Talk: Super Mario RPG

Super Mario RPG was released in Japan March 9th, 1996 and was released in North American merely two months later. It wouldn't be released in Europe till it's release on Virtual Console almost twelve years later, making it the single longest regional delay of a title in Nintendo's history. Super Mario RPG was not only the final Mario game for the Super Nintendo but was also the last Nintendo game that was developed by Square until 2002. Super Mario RPG is regarded as one of the SNES's best regardless of it's late release and among the RPG community it is usually highly regarded, which is saying a lot since the Super NES's RPG library is fairly legendary even now. Regardless of how many times this game has been reviewed and re-reviewed. I will give my input on rather quirky RPG.

As with most Mario games, the exact time of the setting isn't easy to determine, the appearance of Bowser's Clown Car and Yoshi at least suggests it takes place at anytime after Super Mario World, though like most Mario games it's extremely vague. The story starts up classic Mario style involving Peach (Who was still known as Toadstool at the time) is kidnapped by Bowser in front of Mario's house while waiting for Mario to wake up. Mario being Mario rushes to Bowser's Keep to rescue her. Though Mario was able to quickly dispatch Bowser, his attempt to rescue Peach was halted when the castle begins to shake as a giant sword splits the sky and crashes straight into Bowser's keep sending Mario, Peach, and Bowser scattered to the four winds. Upon recovering, Mario returns to Bowser's Keep believing Peach was still there only to find that the Keep is under control of the 'Smithy's Gang' who seem to intend to conquer the world and fill it with weapons. To prevent interference from Mario or anyone else for that matter, Exor, the sword collapses the Keep's bridge. Mario is forced to return to the Mushroom Kingdom and eventually would discover a star piece in the castle after it is brought under attack by a creature called Mack the Sword while Mario was helping Mallow retrieve a stolen coin. Mario's quest involves stopping Smithy, finding Peach, and discovering the secret behind these star pieces.



Now overall the plot is generic overall, but it's characters and the world that really bring the story to light and make it less ordinary. Mario, like most of his games, remain the silent protagonist but yet still manages to display quite a bit of personality through his various animations and expressions. Bowser revealed a side that hadn't been seen about him often. He's tough guy who thinks he's the baddest around but yet display an attitude that appears to be that of a whinny spoiled kid more so then the force of ultimate evil. He makes continuous excuses for everything that doesn't go this way and gets rather annoyed when people ignore him. Peach shows some courage in this particular story but yet seems to display her symptoms of her Princess life style often getting scared by things and even scolds people a few times. The two original playable character Mallow and Geno. Mallow was a lost prince, who for some reason thought he was a tadpole even though he was more shaped like a cloud. He's more or less a crybaby who tends to have a few moments where he seems to go back and forth from courageous to cowardly. To me he came off as a teenager who's not exactly sure who he is or what he wants. Geno on the other hand has come down from the Star Road to recover the star pieces that Exor damaged when he dropped down from the sky and possessed a doll to do so. I'm going to be honest, I've never quite understood the big deal with Geno of all of them, he's has probably the least personality of any of playable characters. He's the most soldier like in mindset, he has a mission to do and takes most of his priority. Though it's still a solid interesting character, he just comes off a little weaker on my view on him. He does have alot of flashy attacks and is a fairly strong character regardless.


NPC interaction is also fairly interesting, many of the NPC have various animations besides just simply standing or walking randomly. The unusual thing about these interactions is unlike most RPGs, Mario is already well known but most of the world. So there isn't alot of complex involvement into getting involved into most situation, it's more that Mario just seems to happen to be in the area when things are going on though this could easily be view and cheapen the plot or shallowing the development. Some characters interact pretty well with many of the NPCs adding more character particular to Bowser while interacting with his troops showing Bowser as a little less of simply a brutal dictator. That his troops to a certain extend seem to have loyalty or even respect for Bowser regardless of the shortcomings.

Even many of the non-plot related enemies have unique personalities and pre-set relations. The two most commonly known are Booster and Valentina. Booster is a crazy man that lives in a massive tower with his snifits, he forgets things and seems to have no sense of common sense or intelligence. He's not particularly evil more so then easily confused, in his attempted to marry Peach he ended up eating the cake and left completely forgetting about everything else prior. While Valentine is a self-proclaimed beauty who tends to be extremely bossy particular to her sidekick, a fat blackbird named Dodo. She's a character that defines egoistical beauty. She's has a short fuse even though she hides behind that using beauty and sophistication to her advantage.

Traveling is actually more standard of Mario games then RPGs in general. There is no spanning world map between areas. Rather you select the area and enter it much like Super Mario Brothers 3 or Super Mario World. In areas themselves are also a lot like a Mario game. All enemies are visible and Mario is able to jump , run, drop off and interact with the area with very little restriction. Areas range from simple go from one end to the other while others involve more exploration and puzzle solving. The puzzles are entertaining at times and the more difficult ones are more optional then required, which bypasses the struggling with some puzzles like my previous reviewed game. It is easy to jump and move in all directions making it fairly easy to get around and avoid enemies if necessary.

The game does play a little similar method regarding gear and items. Each character only has three slots: A weapon, an armor, and a Accessory. As far as the weapons go each character has three varieties but there aren't many varieties other then them getting stronger. Armor is character specific while most accesories can be equipped by just about anyone. The item inventory is quite small however, I never found it a heavy burden since it's fairly easy to avoid enemy encountered if your dangerously low on health and/or items. The standard spell formula has also been simplified, each character only learns a total of six spells and they are only earned through levels. In this game the mana pool is referred to as Flower Points or FP. Unlike MP it is not character directed rather the party shares FPs. This forced the entire party to converse when necessary and did add a bit of complication to the simple process, but at the same time, it made some abilities pretty useless not making the FP cost worth the effort in comparison to others.

The battle system is a fairly standard turn-based battle, however it had it's own twisted to the system in the form of timed attacks. When attacking or being attacked, if you hit the button at the right time, your damage increases done or decreases your damage taken. The pattern for weapons was pretty easy to learn but rewarding to do, parrying attacks required a little more work and sometimes it was hard to pull off with particular enemies, but it did keep you on your toes in tough spots. Special abilities also had timing features which ranged from timing hits with Mallow's Thunderbolt. Rapidly tapping the button for Mario's Fireball, to holding down the button for Geno's charge attacks. Three members were permitted in the party at once with Mario always making up one of these members.

However, the one place this game falls short is it's difficulty level. Most of the boss fights are relatively easy and the maximum experience level cap is relatively low. Certain boss fights can be skipped in a few places by completing certain mini-games. Regardless there a few extra fights that do challenge you such as Culex and Jinx. However, there is a piece of armor in the game, the Lazy Shell if you equip that to Peach after she's learned comeback, it pretty much can make your party invincible. Level grinding really isn't all that necessary unless you tend to take on Culex with no Lazy Shell.

The graphics were very unique by the standard that was set by RPGs at the time. The actual game was displayed 3/4 perspective. In other worlds it wasn't true 3-D rather sprites that gave the illusion of 3-D. Mario and the other characters could move in all 8 directions and the sprite animations were very smooth for the time. The worlds are very colorful and the environments were all unique and well designed. The enemy sprites were fairly detailed and showed quite a bit of originality along with the common Mario staples. The only real compliant I have is some of the spells look flat. Some spells like Shocker and Bowser Crusher looked like flat pictures moved slightly over the area. Mind you, they still look fairly good regardless.

The music in Super Mario RPG was composed by Yoko Shimomura. The music was of a different style then what was common in Square's previous RPG works. The soundtrack was very upbeat and bouncy fitting in with the colorful Mario world. Even the standard battle theme sounds more upbeat then any RPG theme I've ever listen to, and probably even more catchy. The sound effects range from Mario classic jump noise to explosions and all of them sound very good.

The game is fairly polished and doesn't have a lot of glitches or bugs. There are a few areas that infinite number of enemies walk down, and I could recall people using turbo controllers to level up quickly this way, but that is hardly game breaking. However, I did run into a bizarre glitch, in Land End, according to every source I've ever read, there is a couple of chests up on a high edge. You jump about center to make a floating platform appear then jump in the cannon and land on the platform and it's suppose to take you up to these chests, I've never once got this to work I've tired every method I could think of but it will not move. I don't know if this is a glitch in my cartridge or it was a more widespread problem.



The game is full of extras big and small. The game has several random cameos from other Nintendo games such as Link and Samus. There is also a place in Booster's Tower that turns you 8-bit with the whole classic Mario Overworld theme to go along with it. There are also several mini-games that can provide small rewards and test your reflexes. A mine cart ride, a Yoshi race requiring you to tap buttons via melody (Which I STILL cannot beat, curse my lack of rhythm), and even composing songs by jumping on tadpoles. There are also several bonus fights later on in the game which included Culex, a Final Fantasy style character who is not only the strongest boss in the game, but has four crystals that are just as powerful as he is (Not to mention it includes special music from FFIV).



Super Mario RPG is an unique RPG experience. Everything just comes together very well and expands the Mario World into a living and breathing world in a way that hadn't been entirely done up to that point. It gave us another side of not only the Mushroom Kingdom but RPGs in general. It's colorful world, upbeat musical score, and simple yet appealing battle system. Super Mario RPG is a late blooming but loved classic in the SNES RPG library.