Back in second week I remember in discussion section how the group that played Super Mario Bros. tried to analyze the game. They covered everything including the gameplay mechanics, the visual setting, the sound design, and the level designs. As in-depth as this discussion was, the only insights into this game were only about how well the game is designed given the limited hardware and how it manages to keep players invested in playing regardless of skill level. At no point did we reach any meaningful discussions of what the game might suggest about any aspects of the real world, or even of its own world.
Super Mario Bros. tells no history of its world. There is no explanation for the core design elements or the mechanics. Without the game manual (but with some common knowledge of the game and its sequels), Super Mario Bros. paints a surrealist world in which a plumber runs through incoherent ruins full of large pipes while stomping on creatures in order to rescue a princess from a giant turtle monster. Brick blocks float in the air. Jumping and hitting them produce strange coins with no purpose. Different blocks release moving mushrooms that make Mario grow or flowers that let him throw fireballs. None of this makes any sense.
Ennuigi envisions this world, but through the lens of Mario's less famous brother Luigi as he contemplates this world and his own existence. Why does Mario act this way? Who built these structures? Does Luigi exist as his own person? Does he exist at all? Basically, Luigi has become an existentialist with a bad smoking habit.
Ennuigi pokes fun at game analysis and critique. Super Mario Bros. has no information to analyze. It's a game designed for fun, not a comment on the state of society. No matter how deep you look into it, you will never find any sort of explicit (or even implicit) messages about anything. It's just a game. However, the vague, unexplained world of this game leaves everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) open to questioning and interpretation. Ennuigi encourages you to question this game and to interpret every single detail however you would like to.
This reminds me of a collection of short essays titled "Critical Perspectives on Waluigi" published online in 2013. ( https://theemptypage.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/critical-perspectives-on-waluigi/ ) Waluigi is a character in the Mario Bros. canon, but has never appeared in a main series game. Beyond the abstractness and lack of details in the series, Waluigi is even more of a mysterious figure. There really is nothing known about him. To some this would seem that there is nothing to interpret about him. To others, Waluigi is a symbol. A symbol of what? Whatever you want to interpret him as.
I found your comparison between Ennuigi and Super Mario Bros very interesting! While it does often seem as if Super Mario Bros is mainly intended strictly for fun and entertainment, could we not see it just having a narrative with an opposing perspective on the world to Ennuigi. While Mario in Super Mario Bros is an idealized "everyday man" given unrealistic opportunities to reach unrealistic goals, Luigi is Ennuigi is a more realistic "everyday man" going through an existential crisis with minimal game mechanics. Could the fact that nothing makes sense in Super Mario Bros add to that narrative rather than adding to the argument that the game is simply just for fun?
I wanted to expand on this by sharing a Super Mario Maker 2 level I played a few months ago, but I could not find it. In summary, it was a recreation of Super Mario Bros. levels except they were destroyed and in decay, similar to the aesthetic of Ennuigi. In contrast, playing in a decayed version of 1-1 with the same mechanics as the original game have a much more profound impact on the player in having them experience the actual change in the world rather than merely viewing it as in Ennuigi.
I would also like to respond to Charlotte's comment about the themes we talked about in discussion. It is definitely true that Super Mario Bros. explicitly…
I like the way that you frame Ennuigi as a statement on Super Mario Bros. -- how another character in the game is led to contemplate whether or not the game itself has any meaning whatsoever. However, I do think that in discussion section, there were points brought up about Mario as the archetype of the everyday man who gets to chase these unrealistic fantasies of fighting monsters and saving princesses. There is more to unpack in this story of the damsel in distress and what that says about how society frames gender norms. Mario, as an everyday plumber, could be used to relate to a specific type of audience, cementing a perhaps dangerous narrative of what men should dream…
I definitely agree that the game's contents are for sure satirical—how else are we supposed to take the visual of chain-smoking Luigi? The fact that this game jumps immediately to such a somber interpretation, I think, speaks to a sort of somber-ness within players themselves. When presented with a world as carefree and idyllic as the Mushroom Kingdom, what about it drives players to see a darkness where literally none "officially" exists? Is it perhaps due to the uncanniness of it, the utter perfection that begs to be broken? Or is the fact that players "own" these narratives giving them the entitlement to destroy them? I don't have the sociology background to back this up, but it seems like an…
You do a great job here of outlining both the game and the content it parodies. I enjoyed Ennuigi way more than I thought I would at first -- it was a bit of a slow burn. The more you adjust to the absurdity of a children's franchise character experimenting with existentialism, the more you realize that the source material you're using as a metric is actually more absurd. This moment of reversal/realization was brilliant. (And honestly a bit disconcerting; I felt like my childhood mythology was being attacked.) Ironically, the fact that this game exists almost gives meaning to the original franchise. In naming the absurdity of the Mario universe, that universe itself becomes a sort of experiment that…