Toad's Castle : A look at Mario in the Future

A look at Mario in the Future

Written by E. Martin (Marduk)

Most gamers would agree that the Mario franchise would never die out. However, considering how much Nintendo abused the minds of genius' and exposed all to everything Mario-possible, and yet managed to get new ideas every year for the past two decades, it is no easy task for an ordinary person like myself to say that Mario will die out, because who doesn't like playing a game with a chubby Italian plumber kicking arse in a fantasy world in-accessible to us?

The Mario character has been around for what, 25 years going on 26? And since his debut on the gaming market, how many games featuring him has there been? 20? No more than that… 50 games? Higher! 75? Still more! 100? Close, but still not quite! 150? A little bit more. 152? Yes! Mario has been seen throughout the past two and a half decades in over 150 games (some yet to be released in the upcoming months). That is about…6 games with Mario in it ever year for the past 25 years, which in one year reached as high as 16 games! So will Mario be discontinued in the future? Most fans say no, that it will live on. And statistically, it certainly is likely we will see the little red Italian plumber for at least another 25 years, whether on video game consoles or remakes built on NES and SNES engines (which we have seen in the past few years for SNES emulator known as zSNES).

So what will be of Mario in the future? I'd say with all the new technology enhancements of the video game industry, mostly courtesy of Nintendo and Konami, we may one day have a virtual reality or 3-D (the little glasses) game. Imagine that, those little fireballs from the beanstalks making a close call with your head and then heading back towards Mario. There are already video games that can detect your body movements when you duck or throw a punch or even jump, so maybe one day you wouldn't even need a controller to play Mario, but your agile body itself! (I was referring to those arcade boxing games and the new Wii controller technology and the Police911 v1+2 games). Anything is possible with today's technology…just look back in the 1980s with the duck hunting games…and that was considered state of art technology then!

With all the Mario media these days, especially with it being one of human history's best selling video games and characters, practically being the game that built Nintendo into what it is today, we can all expect to see a new type of gaming, even more superior than the Wii's technology. Most likely, it will be 3-D effects and body movements for controls. When? With the Wii's incredible innovative technology, I'd said another 3-6 years. How many more games/how much longer will the Mario dynasty last? Mario games will always be around. It's one of those things that people never get enough of, even if Nintendo discontinues it fans will always make their own sequels.