Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

I did not grow up with the Mario & Luigi series. Actually, it feels as if the series was adjacent to my early development years as a gamer, but I had yet to play any of them prior to this review. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the first game in the series, was receiving tons of critical acclaim the same year I was thoroughly exposed to the world of gaming, so I was well aware of its impact. My best friend growing up heralded Superstar Saga as the “quintessential Mario experience,” or at least that’s the same sentiment expressed more eloquently than as the seven/eight-year-old he was at the time. Being an ecstatic enthusiast of the Paper Mario games as a child naturally should’ve correlated to an interest in playing the Mario & Luigi games but somehow, the opportunity slipped through the cracks. Why was I relatively indifferent to Mario & Luigi? It’s not as if I selectively chose to only play the Paper Mario games as an act of silly reverence, as many fans even tend to umbrella both series as the collective of Mario RPG spinoffs. I suppose my surprising indifference to Mario & Luigi was due to the fact that the games were exclusively on handheld hardware. My optimal way of playing a video game was to sit in front of the television with a controller and bask in its comparatively more enveloping glow, and that’s still the case to this day as an adult. I owned a Game Boy Advance growing up (the SP model to be precise) and mainly used it as a Pokemon machine because Pokemon Silver was the only game I had for the Game Boy Color. Whether it was due to some undiagnosed trauma (or autism) that impeded me from playing Superstar Saga at its prime, I’m happy to report that I’ve made up for lost time. I had high expectations for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga after what is now decades of hype, and the game has delivered on them splendidly.

Still, I can’t help but compare Mario & Luigi to Paper Mario. Both series are spiritual successors to Super Mario RPG on the SNES, sharing the same JRPG genetic code that separates it from the mainline series of platformers. Also, each Mario RPG, regardless of the specific series, uses the narrative-intensive genre as a vehicle to expand the world and characters of the Mario universe. The direction to achieve this sense of amplification tends to verge into subversive territory. The first Paper Mario game was only slightly off-beat, as it told the traditional Mario story of Mario saving a kidnapped Peach from Bowser once again with more dialogue, exposition, and other patches of irregular elements that the developers couldn’t possibly squeeze into a mainline Mario game. The Paper Mario series would become more irreverent as the series progressed, but Mario & Luigi came out of the gate swinging a toolkit of monkey wrenches at Super Mario’s foundation. To increase their allegiance to the Mushroom Kingdom, the neighboring BeanBean Kingdom sends esteemed ambassadors to Peach’s Castle to offer her a generous token. However, that generous gesture is actually a cloud of noxious smoke, as the meeting has been intercepted by the devious BeanBean witch Cackletta, disguised with her right-hand crony Fawful. One would expect the gas to knock Peach out so these fiends can easily carry her off to whatever vessel they arrived in and fly off with her in their captivity, but that would be too orthodox for a Mario conflict premise. Instead, the booby trap kidnaps Peach’s voice, rendering her deprived manner of speech to take the form of jagged characters that drop out of the text bubble and literally explode like bombs. Bowser, on his regular routine of capturing Peach, finds her unstable communication to be a hefty inconvenience, so he joins the Mario bros. on their quest to retrieve the voice and return it to its rightful owner. From the beginning of their valiant adventure, Fawful attacks them on an airship, and the fallout of his ambush leaves Bowser separated from Mario and Luigi. So much for that solid truce between Mario and his usual arch nemesis. Still, the fact that this cooperative pact was made at all is rather extraordinary. Cackletta’s goal using Peach’s voice is to activate the “Beanstar,” a mythical artifact in BeanBean Kingdom that is said to grant the wishes of someone pure, hence why Peach’s voice is needed. One might point out that the Beanstar is the same as the Star Rod from Paper Mario, but this kind of magical with an all-powerful allure has been used as a standard Macguffin for a number of Nintendo’s IPs (the Star Rod from Kirby, the Triforce, etc.). As I’ve said before regarding Paper Mario’s pension for slight irreverence, the low bar that the mainline series sets makes the smallest sort of deviation a fresh change of pace. In Superstar Saga, the rule book for a Mario story almost gets tossed out of the window entirely, which is a wonderful sign of things to come to keep one’s interest piqued. Also, the start of the adventure is spurred by the player as Toad rushing to Mario and Luigi’s house to warn them that the princess is in danger, and Toad gets an unsavory glimpse at Mario’s Italian sausage while he’s in the shower. C’mon, any Mario game where the player can control Toad, the most notable NPC in gaming, for a brief period has got to have some wild tricks up its sleeves.

Up until the Gamecube era, setting a Mario title outside the confines of the Mushroom Kingdom was considered a revolutionary prospect. Super Mario Sunshine marked the first mainline Mario game that dared to plant Mario past the parameters of Peach’s royal country, but the vacation premise sort of implied that this setting was merely a temporary digression. Paper Mario would revel in placing Mario in settings beyond the realm of franchise normalcy, but his first outing as a quirky, two-dimensional arts and crafts project kept him secured in the Mushroom Kingdom’s domain in order to use the JRPG format to expand on the typical Mario story. In the case of BeanBean Kingdom where the brothers find themselves in Superstar Saga, it’s difficult to say whether or not this protein-rich province is all that different from their normal stomping grounds. BeanBean Kingdom shares many parallels to the fungal neighbors of an unknown directional point of reference. The land where the musical fruit roam has a topographical eclecticism that seems to rival the Mushroom Kingdom’s imperialistic endeavors. BeanBean’s land elevations range from the waterfall-filled apexes of Hoo-Hoo Mountain, the wildly ungroomed wilderness of Chucklehuck Woods, to the sandy shores of the beaches located around the kingdom’s eastern coastline.

While BeanBean Kingdom can compete with the Mushroom Kingdom’s varied array of destination spots, BeanBean Kingdom decides to take a divergent route for its infrastructure. Nowhere on BeanBean’s map is there a hub for our heroes to relax and briefly wind down in, taking off their leather boots to scrape the blood and guts of every Goomba and Koopa Troopa they’ve stomped on. BeanBean’s capital located in the center of the realm is the hotspot for purchasing items and overalls that are somehow stocked abundantly for both Mario and Luigi’s convenience. BeanBean’s capital even features a cafe where Mario and Luigi can make a smattering of exotic coffee blends made from the various beans littered beneath the grounds of the kingdom, and these earthy concoctions are tested by the eccentric scientist E. Gadd from Luigi’s Mansion back when Nintendo attempted to keep this character relevant. Alas, the capital does not exude the same atmosphere of a hub like Toad Town, the coziest of hubs located outside the grounds of Peach’s Castle in Paper Mario. Firstly, Mario and Luigi only become acquainted with the capital area after fully exploring two other areas. Secondly, the fact that the capital looks as bombed out as the aftermath of intercontinental Europe following WWII does not make the player feel safe and sound. In fact, the state of BeanBean’s capital becomes more shell shocked as the game progresses. Lastly, the brothers do not return here after every mini-climactic point on their quest like Mario did upon returning from Toad Town’s branching pathways. It took me longer to realize this than I’m willing to admit, but the developers were not trying to replicate Toad Town on a handheld device. Rather, BeanBean Kingdom shares a striking resemblance to Hyrule, specifically the rendition of Zelda’s kingdom from A Link to the Past. BeanBean’s capital is located at the core of the nation like Zelda’s castle estate, signifying that it’s comparable to a nucleus in both stature and its literal position. The field area outside of the castle’s perimeter can be construed as an “overworld” due to its relatively neutral terrain with a plethora of secrets to be found that will net the brothers some upgrades and goodies if they search diligently. All the while, the areas of interest like dungeon-esque HooHoo University and the Yoshi Theater, whose patrons are all the colorful, gluttonous dinosaurs, never feel as if they are removed from the rest of the map. Returning from an area outside the grassy BeanBean plain doesn’t emit a wash of sentimentalism like it usually does with the less coalesced districts that stem from Toad Town. Zelda’s world design influence also works wonders for Superstar Saga because it's a top-down game, an inherent commonality with A Link to the Past as opposed to any other Mario RPG. Overall, the design decisions are fluid and aid in differentiating Superstar Saga from the other Mario RPG series.

I suppose another reason as to why Superstar Saga’s world feels more topsy-turvy is because its pacing is so erratic. Comparing Superstar Saga to Paper Mario at this point makes me sound like a broken record, but the way both Mario RPGs structure their narratives is the prime contrasting factor between these two franchises. Paper Mario organizes its narratives by dividing its subsections into chapters that focus on a singular area with its own sub narrative that comes back around to the overarching plot after solving the conflict of the sub plot and obtaining the game’s primary Macguffin. Superstar Saga, one the other hand, will have the brothers running ragged with how jumbled their quest trajectory is. Fortunately, the location of the objective is clearly displayed on the game’s map in the pause menu with a soaring red flag marker. Thank the lord for this because I’d be totally lost without it. Once they reach the objective point, which usually leads to traversing around an area outside of the BeanBean overworld, the path from point A to B is fairly clear. All the brothers have to contend with along their way is a series of puzzles that impede their progress. Before then, Mario and Luigi will zigzag around BeanBean’s overworld like a couple flies hovering around a dead body.

Though I prefer the more episodic story structure seen in Paper Mario, I think the more spontaneously assigned objectives in Superstar Saga greatly complements the game’s humor. Paper Mario may have its chuckle-worthy moments, but Superstar Saga revels in wackiness. I’ve often compared Mario to silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin, and their famous mustaches are only a mere fraction of that comparison. Both Nintendo’s mascot and the tramp share a certain blue collar charm to them, a loveable scamp portraying someone of a low common denominator status that is more than the sum of their parts (ie. a chubby plumber and a homeless man respectively). That, and tumbling down a series of platforms in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine is vaguely reminiscent of the slapstick comedy that Chaplin helped popularize in film, which in the Mario context is as funny as it is frustrating. Superstar Saga’s inherent RPG mechanics negate the possibility of dooming Mario with slipping into oblivion, so the Chaplin-esque influence stems from his other comedic attributes. Charles Martinet’s voice he provides for Mario (and less notably Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi as well) is one of the most recognizable voice roles in gaming. Still, it’s not like the recording studios at Nintendo have ever challenged Martinet with any Mario monologue similar to channeling Daniel Day-Lewis. Mario is a simple character that works perfectly with the catchphrases, yelping, and vaguely Italian gibberish. However, all of the instances where all of these vocalizations are uttered mostly coincide with specific controls like jumping and being hit. In Superstar Saga, Mario (and Luigi’s) utterances carry them through the events of the game as they react to the dialogue from the other characters as the most physically expressive they’ve ever been, fully encapsulating that silent comedy influence they’ve always had. The brothers are always gaping their mouths in shock in times of peril, clumsily running into walls, and looking dazed after being impacted with something blunt. Who says pixels can’t render emotions as well as 3D can?

Mario and Luigi aren’t the only Mushroom Kingdom mainstays joining them on their quest through BeanBean Kingdom. Bowser and Peach are requisite for any Mario adventure in some capacity, and the way that they are integrated in Superstar Saga is indicative of the game’s level of subversiveness. Using the game’s introduction as evidence, Bowser is no longer held up in his palace waiting for Mario to beat him into submission. From the smidge of dialogue Bowser spouts, this game’s depiction of the Koopa King is the lovably buffoonish one we know from Paper Mario. However, Bowser mostly spends his time in Superstar Saga being the brunt of physical abuse and emasculation. After his airship crashes, his unfortunate luck leads him to fall into a cannon that conveniently fits his bulky, hard-shelled frame as he gets blasted to no man’s land. Upon seeing him again, Bowser is donning a blue mask as the neutered bitch sidekick of a BeanBean thief named Popple (his Luigi, if you will). While the introduction will have the player believe that Peach’s voice is a captured surrogate for her body, the game presents a twist to the player that reveals Peach is entirely unharmed. Supposedly, Peach’s guards knew of Cackletta’s duplicity beforehand, so they swapped her with a fake Peach to thwart their plans. This fraud is revealed to be Birdo, the Mushroom Kingdom’s favorite flirty, bow-wearing bisexual who is rarely integrated in any mainline Mario titles. Peach is actually available in some sections of the game, even if her big chunk of her screen time involves escorting her through the desert in the most infuriating part of the game. Bowser’s bastard Koopalings return after a decade-long hiatus, and the brothers fight each of them individually. If dusting off older characters and putting them in the limelight again is a part of Superstar Saga’s subversiveness, it’s a welcome change of pace from the mainline series.

Of course, the fact that Superstar Saga is set in an unexplored kingdom means that there is a whole new cast of characters to get acquainted with, and they’re all delightful. Among the slew of green, Toad-like NPCs around the BeanBean Kingdom are the monarchs that they serve, and they’ll be cooperating with Mario to stop Cackletta from potentially taking over the world with the BeanStar’s power. We are introduced to BeanBean’s queen as a hostile boss battle, but this only due to a parasite that the brothers then have to eradicate from her stomach with the digestive powers of a special kind of Chuckola Cola. After that, the rubenesque ruler and her assistant aid Mario in directing him on the right path. Her son, Prince Peasley, decides to butt into the brothers business on the field, waving his poncey blonde hair with a cocky smirk expected of someone who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Even in a game where Mario and Luigi are constantly fumbling over each other, Peasley is still the comic relief. Superstar Saga’s recurring villains are especially exemplary because they exude so much personality. Cackletta is aptly named because her defining feature is that witchy laugh of hers, usually at the expense of Mario and Luigi’s or something/someone else good and moral. However, I find her diabolical nature to be a bit cliche in the supreme antagonist role she fulfills. The true highlight villain in Superstar Saga is Fawful, Cackletta’s right-hand man in her evil operations. He doesn’t subvert too much from the henchman trope seen across all media, but this beady little bean has one quirk that makes everyone adore him. Whenever Fawful speaks, his speech is rife with so many grammatical errors and malapropisms that it's reminiscent of the dialogue from Zero Wing. How lines like “I HAVE FURY,” “at last, my entrance, with drama!” and his insult “fink-rat” haven’t been immortalized in the pop culture lexicon unlike “all your base are belong to us” is a mystery. Every warped line uttered by Fawful is pure gold.

But really, the best aspect of Superstar Saga’s lively character roster is the inclusion of Luigi. Luigi has always served a secondary role to Mario since his inception but somewhere along the line, Nintendo started to completely blow him to the wayside. Luigi hadn’t made as much as a cameo for the first two 3D mainline Mario titles, skipping two whole generations that would’ve been vital to his character. Luigi is only Mario’s housemate in Paper Mario, an NPC who stays home airing his grievances that he wasn't invited out to play. No wonder everyone thought Luigi’s Mansion was trifling material as Luigi’s first proper 3D introduction. Mario had gone solo, forgetting completely that his roots stemmed from sharing his billing with his brother. I jest at Luigi’s expense from time to time, but his frank omission from Mario’s mainline adventures on the N64 and GCN make me sympathetic for him. Fortunately, for those Luigi fans who felt slighted at his absence, Superstar Saga makes certain that Mario doesn’t bogart the spotlight to the point where Luigi is shadowed in complete darkness. On top of actually having a consistent presence in the game, Superstar Saga marks a considerable point of evolution for Luigi. While Luigi was playable in Super Mario Bros. 1-3 and World, his design boiled down to just “Green Mario” thanks to the primitive graphics. Seeing him side-by-side with his brother here shows great distinction between them, as Luigi is clearly taller, slimmer, and has a thinner mustache. I also believe that this is the first time when Martinet gives Luigi a distinct vocal inflection, which is more nasal and pitched lower than Mario’s voice. More importantly than anything physical, Superstar Saga continues the timid persona Luidi exuded in Luigi’s Mansion as his prime characteristic. Mario is now the straight man to Luigi’s blubbering and pitiable demeanor, the Costello to his Abbot. It’s a strong dynamic between the two that has never been so pronounced in any previous Mario game. The game also seems to be aware of how prevalent ignoring Luigi is in the Mario universe, with characters not knowing his name and the fact that Luigi was originally going to stay behind as always in the beginning. All of us Luigi fans forgive you (for now), Nintendo.

Mario and Luigi’s discernable traits in terms of their personality and design is all fine and good, but the essential factor in this dynamic that defines the Mario & Luigi series is how they act on the field. Mario and Luigi are magnetized to each other throughout the game, switching between who is leading in front with the press of a button. When traversing through BeanBean’s overworld or one of its attractions, each brother has a distinctive set of skills that compliment each other on a relatively equal pairing. Luigi leaps onto Mario’s back to propel both of them above high reaches, while Mario positions himself on Luigi’s shoulders like a totem pole to whirl across platforms for a brief period. Hammers, a Mario weapon that only seems to be compulsory for his RPG excursions, are given to both brothers to smash large, intrusive rocks on the field. The more interesting part is the brothers using the hammers on each other, with Luigi flattening Mario like a pancake to eke through small crevices and Mario returning the favor to Luigi by bonking him beneath the ground to creep under gates and such. Mario can also drink a copious amount of water to the point where he becomes engorged like Spongebob, and Luigi expunges all the excess water weight by making Mario spit it out with his hammer. An island oasis society off the coast teaches Luigi the power of electricity and Mario the power of fire without the usual flower attached to power orbs and light candles. Like with the hammers, the brothers can use their respective elemental powers on each other, with Luigi sticking Mario to him with static and Mario literally lighting a fire under Luigi’s ass. The brothers also use their field dynamic in a series of mini-games that range in both fun and challenge, with the most demanding being the barrel one conducted by what appears to be the skeletal remains of Donkey Kong (who can somehow talk). Luigi never feels secondary to Mario at any point.

The dynamic between Mario and Luigi also translates onto the battlefield. Superstar Saga’s initial approach to the battles borrows from Earthbound, with enemies on the field that can get an advantage over the player if they run at them from behind, or a counter advantage if Mario or Luigi attacks them first. Once a fight is engaged, Mario and Luigi run parallel to the enemy, with Mario always situated in the top left corner and Luigi at the bottom left. The brother’s selection of attacks mirrors that of Paper Mario’s, as a wheel presents the options to jump on an enemy or use the hammer to attack, with a timed pressing of their designated button to deal more damage. Badge points are still present, but here they take the form of “Bros. Attacks” that involve using both brothers in unison for an especially powerful maneuver. Executing one of these takes practice as the button timing requires steep precision. Speaking of steep precision, the true marvel of the RPG combat in the Mario & Luigi series is the defense mechanic. In every RPG, there is an inherent rule that the player will take some amount of damage from the opposing side, as little as it sometimes might be. In Superstar Saga, every attack from the opposition can be avoided by jumping over them and their projectiles or countered with the hammer. As revolutionary as this might seem, Mario and Luigi’s abilities to circumvent any hazards does not make Superstar Saga facile. Extreme practice and familiarity with enemies is needed to fully utilize this feature, and that is what makes the combat in Superstar Saga so invigorating. A JRPG that fosters a high skill ceiling that doesn’t require grinding? Next thing you’ll tell me is that the US is going to elect the first openly gay president next year. Paper Mario made the typical RPG combat more fun and interactive, but Superstar Saga rockets that idea into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, constantly mitigating damage with dodging allows some boss battles to overstay their welcome at times.

Even if the player has the reflexes of a drunk sloth, the game doesn’t punish the player too harshly in combat. The difficulty curve in Superstar Saga is incredibly consistent, and the only time it wasn’t was upon encountering the goomba-tanooki cross breeds in the field away from the objective. I’d like to say this is because the game is impeccably balanced, but I’m afraid this isn’t the case. Besides the frequent bombings on their capital, the BeanBean Kingdom is doing just fine and dandy considering their profusion of resources. Healing items such as mushrooms, nuts, syrups, and status-ailing herbs are so commonplace that my inventory was stocked in multiples of hundreds at some point. Failing to hop over an enemy’s attack in battle ultimately didn’t matter because I could always take a turn to heal and have the other brother work on the offensive. Even at a point where my items were thinning, BeanBean’s evidently booming economy allowed me to replenish all the items I expunged during battle without breaking the bank. I can’t criticize a Mario game too harshly for being too easy considering the overall accessible appeal of the franchise. Still, with the defense mechanics at hand, I wish the player had the option to raise the stakes of error during battle.

Near the end, I guess my wish for Superstar Saga to become more challenging came true, even if it was unexpected. Upon seeing an unconscious Bowser, the spirit of a defeating Cackletta possesses Bowser and forms an unholy fusion of the two villains called Bowletta. Superstar Saga capitalized on what Bowser would look like with tits far before Bowsette, but without ANY of the sex appeal. Somehow, fusing with Bowser’s body gives Cackletta control over Bowser’s castle, which is floating over BeanBean with Peach in captivity (of fucking course). Like most other Mario games, Bowser’s castle is the climactic end to the plumber's adventure. In Superstar Saga’s case, Bowser’s fiery domain also presents a difficulty spike as sharp as the ones on Bowser’s backside. Enemy attacks become heavily unpredictable to the point where avoiding them can be based entirely on luck alone, and the steroid versions of the Hammer Bros. hit like a tank with Magikoopas healing their already stocky health pools. I had not died up until this point in the game, and now I was carrying a defeated Mario or Luigi on the back of the conscious brother who was hanging on by a thread. Facing Cackletta in Bowser’s throne room was the most taxing boss fight in the game by a stark hundred miles. Her first form is a quick bout of damage output that will end quickly but once she dupes the brothers with a bomb and vacuums them into her stomach, the real final fight against her soul begins. I implore everyone reading this to time their fight against this giant phantom because I guarantee it will take more than fifteen minutes to defeat. Her attacks become fairly predictable through constant use, but the long process of revealing her weak point just for her to heal and obscure it from view for approximately seven or more times makes for an endurance test guaranteed to make the player exhausted. I understand that the climax of any game should offer its pinnacle challenge, but the game pushes the player into the deep end after they’ve been doggy paddling in the shallow end all this time.

After playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the first time in the two decades I’ve observed it from a distance, my slight curiosity has blossomed into pure admiration. With using Paper Mario and a healthy dose of the top-down Zelda games as its inspiration, Superstar Saga crafts another exceptional Mario RPG that is as subversive as the other contemporary Mario subseries. Still, I still prefer Paper Mario, and that’s probably nostalgia blinding my perceptions. Now, I don’t know if I can earnestly compare the two because Superstar Saga deviates heavily enough to warrant completely different comparisons, almost like Superstar Saga isn’t just handheld Paper Mario after all. Superstar Saga is a wackier JRPG depiction of a Mario quest with a higher skill ceiling than any JRPG I've played. It's unfortunate that its genius level of innovation eventually blew up on the player at the end. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a whole different beast in of itself, and that's what makes it so refreshing. Luigi finally gets his time to shine.

I can hear the soundtrack in my dreams. Played this thing on my Gameboy Advanced SP until it literally stopped working. Great vibe, great charaterization of the Mario Brothers, which is a weird thing to say but frankly they're both a bit flat in most games, this one gives them some flavor and makes them feel like brothers.

Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga was notable for its fusion of RPG, platformer, Zelda, and light puzzle elements, with a timing-based combat system not too different from what SMRPG and Paper Mario had already done. Despite the minimal RPG aspects, weak new characters, and somewhat repetitive combat: its pleasant tone, creative minigames and quirky sense of humor contributed to a simply colorful, joyous experience.