User blog:WikiSchm2000/The MarioMario54321 Review Marathon - Part 24

Mario Kart 64 Bloopers: Peach's Birthday (December 22, 2017) [Runtime: 7:56]

Prelude:

Alright, so near the second review that I did on this series I said that the previous videos belonged to the ‘Morally Questionable Mario Era’, which I later renamed to the ‘Morally Awful Mario Era’. And after watching so many of these videos I’m starting to realize that this precedent might be too broad and runs the risk of lasting for too long, so I’m just going to trash this idea entirely. I’ll just say that the videos covered in reviews 1-11 are from the ‘Experimental Era’, a point where MM was trying to find his footing through many different kinds of plots. Granted most of them had Mario being a jerk, but there wasn’t anything too common between them besides their crudeness. For the videos of Lavender Town up to the end of Mario vs Oiram 3, I’d call that the ‘Pokemon Era’ because just about every video was bloated with Pokemon content in them.

But as of the Linerider video onwards, you’re going to see quite a bit of two games in particular: Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party. In fact they’re more common to see in these videos than Super Mario 64, which means that I’m going to be calling this era the ‘Other Mario 64 Games Era’ for that fact. I’ll talk about Mario Party later, but for now we’ll be focusing on Mario Kart 64. As I said before the game doesn’t allow for too much freedom, and when making plots where the game has to take up the majority of screen time it’s hard to keep things interesting. There’s quite a bit of reliance on running gags in some places or having the viewer stretch the imagination.

So, what would I consider a good use of Mario Kart 64 for these types of videos? They need to have a plot centered around them, some reason to visit the course other than just driving around it to see the sights. Do something with the karts that can’t be done with racing. And perhaps put in some good music to distract the viewers, that’s pretty much a plus. It’s extremely, extremely hard to accomplish but it is possible. So, how does MM fare with his first of these bloopers, Peach’s Birthday? Let’s find out!

See this video first though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AzQpfXHUoU&list=PLNPi6H0sXYaCHQG4Br4q5yZJp8uxhid2B&index=24

The Main Video:

We start with an intro of Mario driving through his course and near the castle, with it being the intro for this video. It’s a pretty uninteresting and boring intro honestly, it doesn’t have any sort of flair to it. It’s just two videos mashed together with white text displaying that it’s a video. Really all the other previous intros were more interesting, including the one that literally was an eyesore. Because at least that looked slightly dynamic.

Getting on to the plot, the current day is Peach’s birthday. Mario has to go out and get a present for Peach from the mall, and already I don’t trust that Mario’s going to end up getting anything for her. He couldn’t even bother to save her life the last time he went out, why would I expect him to use his time getting her a gift? Anyway in order to not appear like a fraud and get discredited by the kingdom Mario pretends to go to the mall, only for him to miss the ramp via an attempt to Moon Jump.

Oh, so that’s what Mario was complaining about in Mario vs Oiram 3! A shame this had to come afterwards so that moment would still mean nothing, but I suppose that line could have been foreshadowing to this moment too.

Because currents are a plumber’s natural weakness, he’s somehow sent off to a cave in the...desert? Okay that’s an odd place for him to have been taken, but I’ll go with it for now. Mario somehow ends up on the train tracks, with him trying to look for a way out. For whatever reason Mario decides to try and get the train to pick him up...okay no hold on, sorry, I have to pause for a second. This plot is already confusing and I need a moment to register what’s happening right now.

The current of water I can chalk up to Mushroom Kingdom logic. I suppose that since it is a cave it could have some water in it? Plus Mario might have gone through quite a bit to get his kart back on the surface. But how on Earth does Mario think that a 5-box train with empty storage would be able to pick up his kart? In fact if Mario has a kart why does he need a ride from a train? Just drive over to where you need to go yourself, it’s probably faster than taking the bloody train! But it actually becomes more nonsensical when you realize that the train is going in a loop around the track, so Mario would literally be going in circles.

But believe it or not, Mario is even dumber than that. He rams straight into the front of the train.

I imagine that the engineer didn’t even see Mario or hear him considering he’s not stopping for some reason, which in of itself is absolute incompetence. But even if he did stop, with Mario outright charging towards this thing I don’t think the train could have stopped in time to prevent this from happening. Plus the head-on collision should have caused an explosion that decimated pretty much anyone. But let’s just say that Mario’s physics-breaking powers allowed him and his kart to just phase through the train with only slight mental trauma to go along with the collision. Either way that was the absolute dumbest thing that Mario could have done in this scenario and I’m actually beginning to think Luigi might be more intelligent at this point.

Also, he just got hit by the train. Knowing Mario all too well in these videos, I’m predicting right off the bat that he’s going to try and murder the train’s engineer for doing this. And wouldn’t you know it, I’m right. By the way we’re only one minute into the video and Mario’s already both ran into a train intentionally and declared that he will murder everyone inside said train for getting him run over. So...he’s going to kill all the passengers inside who literally could not have done a single thing? They who have absolutely no control of the train and are just there? He’s going to murder how many innocents? Alright, he’s getting the Not Mario name again, he’s earned it.

So Not Mario first chases after the train, though once he gets close he figures that he’ll instead ram it and destroy it that way. That...makes no sense at all because he ALREADY RAMMED it and it DIDN’T EXPLODE, so why should I believe it should explode the second time he does it? Does he just mentally activate anti-physics powers when he’s not angered and getting hurt as a defense mechanism? Is that it? Maybe if he hit it from the side it would have made more sense, or got grazed by it from the side as he tried to maybe jump on. But we have this horrible inconsistency so my brain is going to be screaming at me for a short while.

Also, this is the first video where we start the running gag of Not Mario’s “NO!” from the Paper Mario video followed by an angry image of him from Smash Bros Brawl.

In fact I probably need to make a counter for this one screen alone. NO Screen Counter: 9. Anyways, Mario rams the train head-on, pretty much murdering every single person inside.

And somehow a western-style train turns into a modern one once MM puts in a stock static image of a train explosion. I’m just going to take this as censoring, and really MM didn’t have anything to animate the train exploding. I’m not sure if this is better because it actually shows a train, or if a generic one would be better because of the vagueness though.

Also, you won’t really know this until around 500-600 videos later, but there’s actually two trains coming around this track in Mario Kart 64. Which means that Not Mario ended up destroying an entirely different train than the one that rammed him! Granted he didn’t realize that yet in-canon but it’s absolutely terrifying to think about. Imagine you’re taking a ride in a train going in circles...for some reason...and a terrorist plumber just rams into you for no reason even though no one in that train did anything wrong. I feel sorry for every single occupant on that train, god rest your souls. Also **** you Not Mario for killing them, you’re only proving more and more why Oiram should have won in the last story.

As for my count on how many people died, I’m assuming that the train cars housed around 70-120 people inside based on Google results, so I’ll be generous and assume it’s at minimum capacity. Granted I don’t know how many people would bother sitting in a train going around a circle...in fact is there anyone? Not Mario assumes there’s people inside, but we’re talking about the same guy who thought running into a train was a good idea so we can’t trust a bloody thing he says. Although also granted since this is a kart course, the passengers would have front-row seats to kart drivers racing around them, plus maybe some cavern sights to help ease the mind. That or there’s a party going on in there. Whatever, for Not Mario’s benefit of the doubt let’s assume each of the 5 box cars has at least 70 people. Therefore we can add 351 victims to Not Mario’s body count. Mario Victim Count: 383.

After committing the biggest crime thus far (we’re only two minutes in, dang that section was long), Not Mario ends up landing in Luigi’s Course. So somehow he survived the explosion of an entire train, but since karts are indestructible in the Mario Kart games I’ll buy that he somehow survived too. He somehow remembers to get Peach a present, but after seeing Luigi’s face he throws a fit. He says that it’s not right for people to worship Luigi and that he needs to go to a place where they worship him instead….

…

… Okay dear lord maybe the ‘Morally Awful Mario Era’ wasn’t accurate enough of a title. It perhaps should be called the ‘Mario is a Villain’ era instead because there’s no damn way he’s not. So not only does he murder random people for the slightest of upsets; not only does he outright push Peach’s interests to the side because of petty jealousy for his brother; NOT ONLY does he treat Luigi like garbage that shouldn’t be appreciated...but he also wants to be worshipped for his actions too?

I didn’t think in all my life I would say this, but MM’s version of Not Mario literally has the personality of Frieza from Dragon Ball Z. I’m not even kidding, there isn’t a single redeeming quality to him. The only thing that makes me feel good about Not Mario in this series is when he either dies or gets the crap beaten out of him. When the main protagonist of this series is a Hate Sink, you have utterly and completely failed and you need to go back and rethink the entire characterization of your main protagonist.

So, going to Mario Circuit where I suppose they just worship Not Mario, he’s finally content. So there’s a cult dedicated to worshipping Not Mario as their god? I mean considering he’d kill them otherwise I don’t blame them one bit. Heck, they’re so enthusiastic that one makes his appearance on his own course newsworthy!

Not Mario soon ends up entering a warp pipe and heads to...the jungle? But...but the pipe was clear...it literally showed the other side of the track! There’s no way you can fit an entire jungle in a pipe that isn’t even a Warp Pipe, I...I can’t...I…

This makes no flipping sense, I’m sorry. This literally makes no damn sense at all and my brain can’t take watching much more of this. So Not Mario...SOMEHOW… makes it to the jungle and laments that he can’t get a gift for Peach because he’s out in the middle of nowhere. I assume he got there the same way that MM got to the Ice Desert because that’s the only excuse I can think of. Sad music starts to play, but because Not Mario doesn’t actually give a damn about Peach like I suspected he outright orders for the sad music to stop.

We then see Not Mario clipping through a boat (because physics is a joke now) and he fails to hit the bridge. What an idiot. He also decides to dive straight into the water and gets carried away to a cave near the jungle, which is the first logical thing that’s happened in the video thus far. Once he drives off, though, the Jungle Natives attack his kart, making him shake a bit. And I don’t even need to tell you what happens next, I’ll just let the counter speak for itself. Mario Victim Count: 393. I’m assuming there’s ten of these natives by the way.

Granted, the explosion this time is in a jungle, so props to MM for using different explosion types for various scenarios. That being said, though, Not Mario definitely caused a forest fire to break out and added an entire forest to his casualty count, but since it’s the fire that killed the animals I’m not going to bother with them.

So Not Mario ends up falling into a cave, seeing a bunch of yellow MS paint (which looks bad I’m not going to lie) and says that it’s gold.

Okay granted the yellow boxes look good, it’s just the walls that look not all that great. Not Mario ends up breaking a box and turns golden, causing falling boulders to not be able to hurt him at all. Incidentally I didn't know that was possible with the metal cap so props on MM for teaching me something new.

This pleases Not Mario, whose first reaction is to say that he’s rich. He also gets the idea to use this as a gift to Peach because he needs to keep in good touch with her somehow.

His idea though is to give her a truckload full of the stuff, which is way, way too generous of Not Mario to give. I would expect a bucketfull or something, but he’s pulling out all the stops. Not Mario ends up driving back to Peach’s birthday party and waits about an hour to start. Luigi ends up coming back and says that he got a kart for Peach, and honestly I’m glad that I’m seeing Luigi again. But then he says that he sells Not Mario’s stuff on Ebay to get cash for himself, which means that he’s pretty much a criminal too. Okay it’s not as bad as being a murderer like Not Mario, but it’s still pretty dang wrong. In fact, Luigi seems more invested in showing Not Mario up than actually being nice to Peach. Also it appears the reason that he keeps getting better gifts than Not Mario is because Not Mario can’t afford anything better, which means that somehow he lost control of that Scatman hotel a while back. He must have been caught up in copyright, or someone bought it once Not Mario paid back all his debts.

Really, I just feel sorry for her. She’s in the company of a madman with a video camera, a red plumber who’s also a serial killer, and a green plumber who literally won’t do a thing for her unless it’s to show Not Mario up and taunt him. And the latter two are the only ones attending her party. Literally none of her actual friends are...granted she has friends. I assume this is only to swindle Luigi and Not Mario out of cash at this point because she sure as heck doesn’t have any other reason to invite them to her party. If Oiram were still alive I’d bet you he would have given her an actually good birthday party. Granted he would have declared himself evil for doing so, but better him than these abominable frauds of heroes.

Peach drives around in her kart and we finally get to see her physically for the first time!

Took you long enough. Anyways, one hour later, the truckload of gold arrives and Luigi has to admit that Not Mario did better than him. Not Mario forces Luigi to not sell his stuff on Ebay again, which actually pisses me off. Yes Luigi kind of deserved that, but why does Not Mario get away scot-free with all the wrong he’s done in this series? He should be getting punished too in all honesty. But in a rare fit of kindness, Not Mario actually lets Luigi help dig for gold at the end. I suspect this is one of the last remnants of the actual Mario left remaining, clawing out and trying to resist whatever MM did to him.

And that’s Peach’s Birthday. I did not expect this review to be so long, but here we are I guess. Really I thought that the Paper Mario video was Not Mario at his worst, but I was wrong. He takes it up a notch in this one and really becomes super unlikeable. I’m still waiting for the day when there’s a truly likeable protagonist who’s actually meant to be a protagonist, because right now the best one we have is Luigi. And he’s a complete idiot who steals Not Mario’s money for his own means and tricks him into getting burnt towers so he’s not exactly good on his own merits as a person. Granted, the story was entertaining enough to get this long of a review though, so at the very least it wasn’t boring. But given Mario acting like Frieza, traversal between locations making no sense and my lack of empathy for most of the major characters besides Peach I’m starting to have an aneurysm over thinking any more about this.

The Extra Bonus Stuff:

Not Mario - 44 lines [77%] (Because he was in the entire video. Also can we please have Luigi be the main protagonist now, this man doesn’t deserve the screentime)

Train #1 Occupants - 0 lines (Got away scot-free, the lucky punks)

Train #2 Engineer - 1 line [2%] (Poor guy, he just wanted to live.)

Train #2 Passengers - 0 lines (Poor guys, they just wanted to live.)

Jungle Natives - 2 lines [4%] (Had the guts to force Not Mario off the grass, mad respect for them.)

Luigi - 8 lines [14%] (Well he appears near the end, plus he’s technically the main antagonist of sorts.)

Peach - 2 lines [4%] (Finally got a real appearance and spoke, that’s a first for her.)

Total Lines: 57 lines

Biggest Chad: Train #1 Engineer - He pissed off Not Mario enough to get a death sentence spoken against him and lived. He did run over Not Mario intentionally, though, plus he got another train crew killed, but honestly no one else really deserves this award.

Biggest Loser: Train #2 Engineer - He was murdered for a misconception on Not Mario’s end and I feel so bad for him. At least the Jungle Natives died for what they believed in.

Favorite Quote: “Mushroom Times: Mario apprears in his own course” - The Newspaper (Misspelled appear, plus the fact that a newspaper would report Not Mario driving on his own course at any moment is hilarious. The line where Not Mario declared he would murder an entire train was a close second though.)

Let’s hope that we get Luigi as the main protagonist in the next video!