Hey, you guys know that guy Mario? He’s been in a few games. And one of them’s an RPG! A lot of them are, actually! But this was the very first one, and while I could legitimately go off on Super Mario RPG for quite a few pages (it’s on the SNES Classic, so feel free to stop by the library??), I’d like to focus on one aspect of the game: accessibility, and how tight procedurality brings it about.
A bit of background: while a Mario game in terms of characters and overall aesthetic, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996) was actually developed by Square of Square-Enix fame, i.e. the company behind the Final Fantasy series of RPGs (and Chrono Trigger, which is honestly the bigger milestone here). Even at the time, before Final Fantasy VII became the simultaneous poster child and whipping boy for JRPGs’ reputation for convolution and being anime as fuck, previous Final Fantasy entries were fairly involved in their own right. Random encounters abound throughout the series, making overworld exploration dangerous and unpredictable; a few games allow for extensive character customization (V’s job/class system, VI’s Magicite system that allows any character to learn any spell, etc.); and world maps are vast, often with parts inaccessible and generally filled with random encounters. Right off the bat, Mario RPG replaces these Squarean conventions with much more agreeable alternatives. All enemy encounters are visible from the overworld, characters have few bells and whistles to them (only customizable in terms of gear), and—in my opinion the most salient point— the world map allows for instant access to any location previously visited, no journeying required.
Though this makes the world map quite unexplorable, it nonetheless plays off well the game’s brisk progression. Mario RPG is incredibly linear, with very little backtracking to it. Indeed, the world map ultimately cycles back to the first areas of the game; the player is kept in constant forward momentum, with each new plot element advancing the story towards a new area. Even in the few exceptions to the rule (Princess Peach/Toadstool, upon being recruited at the game’s midpoint, must be escorted all the way back to her castle, among the first areas explored), the simplified world map allows easy travel to and from necessary locations, letting the player quickly get back on track. The pacing of the game, for the most part, reduces progression to its bare minimum elements: get to a place, progress the story/obtain a Star Piece (the resident MacGuffins) and move on to the next place. Since areas are never overlong, players are always motivated to keep playing and move forward, allowing the game to open itself up for exploration.
In turn, the game’s smaller scale makes other elements more accessible as well. A lack of backtracking means that nearly everything in a given area is accessible as soon as you get there, or otherwise easy to make available. Case in point: the game’s superboss, the Final Fantasy-esque Culex, can easily be challenged the very moment you reach the town he lives on. Not that you should, ideally, but the knowledge is nonetheless made available to the player very quickly; compare with, say, Final Fantasy VII’s Weapon superbosses, which need be hunted down on the world map once they’re released. Similarly, all major goodies are available in the game’s main areas, with no need to find a recondite cave or hidden dungeon à la Legend of Zelda to obtain them. In the very same town where Culex resides, the player also has several opportunities to obtain very useful gear, and are made aware of how to obtain them right away. Everything the player can encounter is tightly compressed into a linear path, and consequently they are much more likely to see it all as soon as they can.
It is this level of accessible game design, among other things (the dialogue is quite charming, battles aren’t particularly hard, etc.), that makes Mario RPG such an easy game to go back to and replay. It’s not too demanding, and presents everything about itself on its sleeve. I’d even go so far as to argue that Mario RPG makes a case for the benefits of a rigid procedurality. Square would not make another Mario RPG (though they would venture into Mario sports games, oddly enough), but Final Fantasy would continue to flourish. By 1997, the (in)famous VII would cement the series’s transition to flashy presentation and complicated storylines (Kingdom Hearts says hi a few years down the line, as well). These games aren’t bad, to be sure, but they tend to be on the chunky side. Narratives require so much investment, and the games present so many options to the player that, for the completionists and proceduralists out there, they quickly balloon into 200+ hour sprawlers (if I like Xenoblade Chronicles, it’s in spite of its crushing length, not because of it). By contrast, Mario’s continued RPG adventures (the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series) aren’t very complicated games. Yet for a child who has never before picked up a game console before (and, indeed, for college-aged adults with increasingly less time on their hands), something blissfully uncomplicated serves two purposes: accessible entertainment, and a demonstration of how, when reduced to their very core, game mechanics can provide equal enjoyment to their more involved counterparts. Make no mistake, Super Mario RPG is far from perfect—platforming in isometric space is simply beyond man’s ability—but nonetheless it’s an important case study on how often, less is more. Once a game tells the player everything it has to offer at face value, they are freed from the need to accomplish absolutely everything, to search for rewards where they might find none, and are instead welcome to actively pursue direct accomplishment: pure, simple progress.
also the soundtrack kicks fucking ass, it’s all yoko shimomura, baby, check out kingdom hearts and mario & luigi to see more of her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHPNJfw1i7U
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