Okay, now with some rookie blog mistakes out of the way, I retooled my thoughts on content and title and let's hope for the best.
One of the best images from my childhood. A Super Mario game; a Square game; mix the two and you get this masterpiece, this true classic.
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was released in May of '96 here in the US, months earlier in Japan, but never officially released in Europe for the SNES- poor gamers had to wait until it was released on the Wii's virtual console, 'officially' of course. Mario RPG took iconic characters and locales, along with inventive new ones, and molded them into a marvelously written and executed story.
So, let's talk antagonist: Smithy. Smithy uses the factory located through the gate in Exor, the giant sword that pierced Star Road and Bowser's castle, in order to build his army and take over the world.
The skills acquired as an analog of "magic" were spectacularly tailor-made for each character, yet surprisingly my favorite was the Ultra Jump, not the consummate favorite Geno Whirl. My second favorite character had to be Bowser, simply because of the flawless execution of his egocentric, yet somewhat comically vulnerable personality. My favorite character touched on a cache of great memories and was actually a set of characters:
The Axem Rangers. Enough said.
Along with the classic Square sidequests, Mario RPG provided hours of fun and good childhood memories. And while Paper Mario may be considered the "spiritual sequel", we're long overdue for a Super Mario RPG 2 and I still believe somewhere down the road we will see one.
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You're right, Paper Mario is certainly really good, but aside from the thematic similarities, they're about as different as two RPGs can get.
Why do you think it is that we've never seen Geno or Mallow even once since this game? They were great freaking characters.
Ahh, I loved this game. Thank you for reminding me it's on Virtual Console!
*downloads*
Finding Culex and fighting him was incredibly cool for me, because that little area had a much darker tone than the rest of the game. Plus you get the kickass quartz charm accessory for beating him.
Just yesterday I learned that Bowser's victory animation was changed from the Japanese one. In the original, he would essentially give the "fuck you" gesture. Check it out on a recent feature from GamesRadar.