Hello and Welcome to Dominik’s Little Old Purple Column, the 24th of its kind coming to you from post-Thanksgiving weekend Canada where I am grateful for your ears once more and I hope you are grateful once more for this fine theme tune.
(Do I even have to point out anymore that you have to click on the audio playback thingie to hear the theme tune? Probably not.)
GAMES NEWS!
I feel dirty and grubby this week. I feel confused and conflicted. I have a chasm at the pit of my soul. There is something I don’t really want to talk about. But I feel I have to talk about it. Because if I don’t talk about it, people will say, “Oh my God I can’t believe Dominik Diamond didn’t have anything to say about this because this thing in question was the very first thing that featured on the very first GamesMaster show, and there’s him with that book out about it as well.”
The problem is, because of the boring reality of timetables, deadlines, and whatnot everybody already has had their say on it. So, I’m not sure what else I can add, other than, “sorry I am late to the party with this but here’s my bit” because apparently the big videogame news this week is that fans are trying to fix the Super Mario Brothers movie trailer.
I don’t get it. I don’t get the reaction. I understand that you love Mario. That you grew up with Mario. But for fucks sakes there are wars going on. People can’t even afford to heat their houses. And I’m fairly sure we haven’t really done anything to fix the environmental catastrophe we’re labouring under either. Maybe we have? Maybe we fixed global warming on the 6th of October. But no. If you went on the internet in a 24 hour period at that time last week you would have been forgiven for thinking the world was about to end because people - and it’s worth pausing to let this sink in - didn’t like the trailer for the new Super Mario Brothers movie.
Come on, kids. I thought I taught you better back in the day. It’s a silly movie about a daft video game. It doesn’t matter. I mean sure it matters. With a small m. It’s entertainment. Entertainment is important. But it’s not life or death. And the level of rage I saw about this just depresses me.
The main bone of contention was originally Chris Pratt’s Mario voice.
This was enough to have whole swathes of the internet kakking it’s keks in all manner of ways. From those who were throwing themselves off cliffs screaming that his voice is different from that in the game to the others prepared to march on assorted parliaments saying it’s disgusting that he is appropriating an Italian accent from The Sopranos.
By my count? In that trailer? Chris Pratt speaks just fourteen words. Five of which are grunts and ouches. You have to be some kind of cunning linguist to make a judgement based on that.
Which leaves nine words forming two sentences.
“What is this place?”
And
“Mushroom Kingdom here we come!”
If you can tell what his accent is going to be like in the movie from those two sentences, then you need to stop getting angry at movie trailers for silly wee videogames and start helping out with voice recognition technology.
And then, as if we couldn’t sink further as a society? As if we couldn’t take the nadir of comment and shove it further down towards Satan’s shitter? The second thing that stopped the world?
The size of Mario’s arse.
Apparently, in the trailer it looks like he doesn’t have one. I didn’t even notice. I wasn’t looking at Mario’s arse. I don’t think I have ever looked at Mario’s arse. When I close my eyes and think of the memorable parts of Mario? I think moustache and cap. Never arse. When did this Mario Arse Obsession begin? I remember the 8 bit era. I remember the 16 bit era. When exactly was the Mario Arse Era? There are even some who have gone as far as to claim their outrage at his tiny bum is because of the laws of physiology. That he wouldn’t be able to leap the distance he leaps in the game without substantial glutes and, as a result, Mario’s tiny tuchus is unrealistic.
(PIC: This. Broke the internet. Jeez. And wow - how reptilian are my fingers?)
Unrealistic? In a game where mushrooms grow legs and walk. In a game where turtles have weapons. In a game where a plumber gets together with a Princess. Oh NOW you want realism?
Jeez. Sometimes I wish we still had GamesMaster up and running because we would rip this reaction the piss it deserves.
And on that yearning bombshell that is it for the free version of this week’s Little Old Purple Column – please consider becoming a PAID subscriber for a version that is over five times the length of the FREE, plus you get access to the archive and the wonderful comments section which is a great wee community. Also, you keep me being able to make this thing. If not, then I hope you will join for next week’s free version once more. Until then? Keep it little, keep it old, keep it purple.
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