Super Mario Bros. ~View 5~ The Underwater Waltz

As I discussed earlier, you'll often find that platforming games like Super Mario Bros. follow a set pattern of levels. It's kind of like a required blueprint, in a way. You're always going to traverse through a field of grass, flowers and easily tromped enemies. You're always find yourselves in a desert surrounded by mountains. You might find yourself deep underground, or soaring in the sky. And, of course, you'll find yourself swimming underwater at some point or another.

To the non-gamers out there, here's one rule of the gaming fandom: Most gamers hate water levels! Often denounced as being notoriously difficult, many gamers feel that these stages are too troublesome to traverse in, not to mention sluggish. There's also the employment of obnoxious enemies and stiff controls. In short, they disrupt the pace of action.

Myself? I have to admit I was once partial to them myself. And I can summarize my former opinion in three words: Sonic the Hedgehog.

Back in the old days, we had a Sega Genesis and I found myself playing Sonic games every now and then. Now that I think about it, we had a couple o' games on there. Let's see...there was Vectorman, in which I was convinced he was Kermit the Frog in disguise, and some army game in which my style of play was to get both sides into the lake and drown.

Ah, the joys of foreshadowing and the masochistic joys of childhood. In any case...

It was like any other day. I was playing Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at roughly the tender age of five. It was just me, Sonic, and his buddy Tails the Fox. We were running through hills, escaping forest fires, encountered Knuckles the Echidna (Or as I labelled him, "Snuggles"), and fell down a waterfall following the collapse of a bridge, right into a water stage.

Moments later, this happens.

I want to make this absolutely clear: I didn't know what was going on, why this was happening, but I did know one thing. This scared the crap out of me. Immediately the forces of unbridled terror seeped into me and I screamed, ran upstairs and hid in my room. I didn't know what was going on but when the music stopped and I dared to tiptoe back, Sonic had drowned and I lost a life.

To this day, I still don't play 2D Sonic the Hedgehogs for this very reason. My cousin Joe said it would be perfect as an alarm clock, but I'm not willing to take any chances. God damn drowning music.

My water level experiences only got worse from there. In Super Mario 64, there was a GIGANTIC EEL in one of the game's early stages, Jolly Roger Bay, and I refrained from playing any water levels in that game too. There was also the threat of sharks in Banjo Kazooie, and Donkey Kong 64 also featured some rather disturbing creatures of the deep as well (FREAKING PUFFERFISH). Perhaps my fear stemmed from an uncomfortable fear of seeing beloved characters die on screen, in this case drowning, which was very possible if you weren't careful enough.

Unagi the Eel, the stuff of my nightmares.

Have my feelings changed? Well, I've certainly gotten over the terror. In fact, water levels are some of my favorite ones now. Water levels contain a nearly unprecedented amount of beauty that always gently enforce the positive effects of warmth and luxury, even though they are not without their dangers. Not only that, but they feature some really soothing music, one of which we'll be going over today. Today's evaluation will be a short one, but I promise you that we'll be going in much more detail about this enigma of gaming later.

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So here's your standard Super Mario Bros. water level.

It's a pretty relaxing stage. You're just swimming on by, grabbing the floating coins and dodging squids and big-eyed fish.

The fish, Cheep Cheeps, are pushovers, but the Blooper squids have a penchant for following you around. This is one of the easier stages, but if you aren't powered up by a mushroom, that isn't the case. Those Bloopers can screw you over if they touch you, and they can suddenly reverse into a random angle, so watch out.

I've found that the fireballs especially shine here. Why are the fireballs working underwater? I don't know, but man is it satsifying frying these things.

So long, suckers!

This is actually the only underwater level I've encountered so far, and during my last attempt I was close to the end of the game. I've heard whispers of them being hidden amongst the many warp pipes, so I'll have to look harder.

Over the years, I've found that one is always guaranteed a pleasant experience in a Mario game's underwater level. They're not too complicated, but they're never overbearing on you. Best of all, Mario can't drown in the 2D games, and thanks to the ever-abundant source of air bubbles and coins in the 3D titles, there's a very low chance of succumbing to that threat. In fact, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario's breakout title on the Nintendo Gamecube, had the setting of a tropical island, so you'd always have to encounter a body of water in it's selection of stages. It was a punishingly difficult title, but it usually never had to do with h2o.

You know, for all of it's innovation, that game gets too much flak. You'll learn in future blog posts that gamers are not too welcoming of new ideas and diversity.

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Here's another iconic song from the Mario series. We don't see this song as often as the Main Theme from earlier, but it's always been a fan favorite. In fact, whenever I hear people humming Mario songs, this seems to be the one they have the most fun with.

And can you blame them?

Personally, I feel that if they got an orchestra at some waltzing party, this would be a huge hit. I'd just stay in the background and revel.

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It's come to my attention that there's been an annoying issue in regards to the comments. Apparently, they won't show up after you post. I've adjusted the posting settings a bit, and it seems to be working out.

So, anyway, what's next....

I've actually been noticing there's a bit of a problem with the game that I haven't noticed on my other NES games. Weird fuzzy lines pop up every now and then and sometimes it freezes the game. The gameprobably just needs to be cleaned. We've only got a couple of posts left, anyway.

Man, I can't wait to move on to Kirby!