Transcript
Speaker: that's yeah it's like in a world where werner von braun never came over the united states the secret weapon is actually just jack reacher throwing the missiles yeah it's doing the cable sauce with the with the doodleburg v2 rocket uh you know what else is a v2 rocket oh my god what
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: My name is Kevin and with me on today's episode, while Phil is out on his baby leave, is James from Hot Cider Channel Gaming Place.
Speaker: James, aka Hot Cider.
Speaker: Gaming's had cider.
Speaker: Gaming, podcasting sometimes.
Speaker: Kevin, obviously, has been on that podcast.
Speaker: James from Bullet Time.
Speaker: I've been on this podcast a couple of times.
Speaker: So this is my third appearance.
Speaker: So I was on... Third time.
Speaker: Got to look at the monsters for Halloween.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I was on... We did an episode.
Speaker: We did an episode.
Speaker: Bionic Commando.
Speaker: And then... Yeah.
Speaker: Today as well.
Speaker: When do I get my challenge?
Speaker: Is it like Saturday Night Live?
Speaker: Do I have to be on this five times to get my challenge?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I think it's five times.
Speaker: So I think you and I feel like it's you and Jesse Gratia are like your neck and neck as to who's going to get to five first.
Speaker: So, yeah, like, who in that component, who's Steve Martin and who's Martin Short, like, out of that, like, who's going to get to the bar first?
Speaker: Yeah, I'll leave that between you and Jesse to see who would be that.
Speaker: I mean, Martin Short is a Canuck, isn't he?
Speaker: So that would feel like it's a better fit for Jesse.
Speaker: I mean, granted, I'm not a Yank, so, like, Steve Martin wouldn't be much of a fit for me.
Speaker: Where is Steve Martin from?
Speaker: He is from Texas.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He's from Texas.
Speaker: Seems like the least Texan guy I can think of.
Speaker: I feel like he did not spend a lot.
Speaker: He couldn't have spent a lot of time there because he started really young in terms of being a performer.
Speaker: He exudes New England Wasp.
Speaker: I couldn't imagine that man in a cowboy hat.
Speaker: Actually, I could imagine that guy had a cowboy hat and I'm laughing because I go, oh, you shouldn't be wearing a cowboy hat.
Speaker: That's still fitting.
Speaker: But no, apparently it's not.
Speaker: Apparently that is...
Speaker: exactly the attire that he should be wearing.
Speaker: Yeah, you couldn't imagine it until you remembered Three Amigos.
Speaker: Oh, well, here's the thing, Kevin.
Speaker: I haven't seen Three Amigos.
Speaker: When I think of Three Amigos...
Speaker: I think of the cartoon where it's Donald Duck and the parrot and the red bit.
Speaker: Oh, the three caballeros.
Speaker: The three caballeros, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, Donald Duck and the two... The other ones.
Speaker: The other ones who only appear in the three caballeros cartoons.
Speaker: Do you think they ever feel jealousy of just like Donald Duck can just go home and have like a normal life and do his own stuff, whereas they can only ever be part of the three caballeros?
Speaker: I'm pretty sure that there's probably been some backroom stealings and some talks of disrespect.
Speaker: Here's the real thing is Donald Duck did not vote for the strike authorization, but the other two caballeros did.
Speaker: It was Donald's scab during the... Donald, I mean, his daddy's Walt Disney, of course.
Speaker: I don't know how I feel about that.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Donald, I respected him.
Speaker: Now I know that.
Speaker: I bet he was pushing for the AI stuff as well.
Speaker: He was like, look, once the AI can do my voice, I'm fine with that.
Speaker: Yeah, he's been looking for a reason to retire for years.
Speaker: Because he's animated, he always stays young.
Speaker: This would just give him an out.
Speaker: And he was really pulling for it.
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: I'm just laughing at the idea of Sam Altman, like, you know, Donald's on the phone and he's like, have you got the voice done yet?
Speaker: And he's like, well, I can do natural voices for, like, other people, but Don, like, your voice is, like, I can't, like, the level of technology is not there yet for Donald.
Speaker: I don't even know what you're saying to me right now.
Speaker: This is like too much.
Speaker: This is why Sam Altman got fired, actually.
Speaker: Was Don the one who put the phone... He was the one who rang the board.
Speaker: He was like, get him out.
Speaker: He's a liability.
Speaker: Get him out.
Speaker: Donald Duck was the one who rang up the board and was like, listen, this clown has to go.
Speaker: Yeah, he's talking about Epic.
Speaker: Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Get him out.
Speaker: Musk...
Speaker: He rang up Musk and he said, put pressure on.
Speaker: You know what, Musk?
Speaker: You know what to do?
Speaker: Put pressure on.
Speaker: Get him out.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: So we're not here to talk about Donald Duck, though.
Speaker: We're here to talk about Mario and the Incredible Rescue.
Speaker: A character who famously... Wasn't there a thing, like, back in the 90s where they did a poll and Super Mario was a more recognizable character to children than Mickey Mouse, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it was either Super Mario or Sonic.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I think it's Super Mario because I think that was the whole reason that Sonic was invented is because, like, Sega were like, oh, God, Mario's, like, massive.
Speaker: Why haven't we got a guy like that?
Speaker: Mario is massive, yeah.
Speaker: Mario is famously massive, yeah, which is obviously why he's got... Famously massive.
Speaker: Why he's got so many books, such as the one that we're looking at today, which of course is Mario and the Incredible Rescue.
Speaker: Now, Kevin, do you know any... Did you look up anything about this book before?
Speaker: Yeah, I looked up the author.
Speaker: The author, her name is Tracy West.
Speaker: And there's...
Speaker: Not much else, not much out there other than she's from New Jersey and she's a children's book author.
Speaker: And she's written for Pokemon, SpongeBob SquarePants, Teen Titans, and the Powerpuff Girls.
Speaker: And she also did the novelization of the film Penguins of Madagascar.
Speaker: Which won her a Strybe Award for the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
Speaker: Now, I've got to ask.
Speaker: I feel like that, like, for Pixel, like, that's just where you should be looking, like, every year.
Speaker: Like, okay, these are our guys.
Speaker: Like, what's winning awards here?
Speaker: Because, yeah, I had a quick... I decided to look them up very quickly to see, like... So, they're still about... Mostly moved over to Facebook now.
Speaker: The website hasn't been updated in a while, except they did do the Scribe winners for this year.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Uh...
Speaker: Tom Clancy, funnily enough, video game related, won for best audio drama and for best general general novel.
Speaker: Tom Clancy's.
Speaker: Splinter Cell.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Splinter Cell Firewall, which I believe a friend of ours has covered.
Speaker: Ashley from.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ashley from Game.
Speaker: What's her channel name?
Speaker: Game Library.
Speaker: Covered it at some point last year, I believe.
Speaker: Well, it must be good if it won an award, if it won a scribe from the International Association of Media Italian Writers, or I am Twi, to give them their acronym name.
Speaker: Not quite E-A-T-C, but... Not quite an E-A-T-C, which, you know, I am Twi.
Speaker: it's where graphic novels short story oh wow they got a whole they got a whole thing it's wild though that a video game novelization won the award um yeah i'm gonna have to i'm gonna keep have to keep an eye on that for i think you should get them on the pod and be like like we do media we do we do game times let's collaborate a little bit i should get all of i am i am tw on the pod right
Speaker: At once.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I was thinking more just like you push them to do an actual in-person event so you can go there dickied up, like handing out the awards.
Speaker: That'd be pretty good.
Speaker: I think that would be good.
Speaker: Mention with Mario and the Incredible Rescue, the Nintendo book.
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: I have a feeling why I know why you asked me on to have a look at this.
Speaker: And we'll get to that in a bit.
Speaker: But one thing you did mention about this is that it does come with stickers.
Speaker: Now, unfortunately, the version you sent me, which was an EPUB, did not have any stickers in them.
Speaker: Does not have stickers, no.
Speaker: I do wish I had eBayed a copy with stickers to send you, but that's on me.
Speaker: That's my bad.
Speaker: Now, that's also fine.
Speaker: You'd be...
Speaker: It's even better than that.
Speaker: So the Super Mario wiki, as expected, does have the book fully detailed out.
Speaker: But not only that, they do have pictures of the sticker sheets, and they even tell you every single game that the renders are taken from.
Speaker: Because I would like to describe, by the way, for the people at home, who, you know, I'm not sure if this will be the episode art or whatever, but the cover of Nintendo Heroes Mario and the Incredible Rescue by Tracy West.
Speaker: is a picture of Mario jumping, Luigi on a mushroom, and two ghosts.
Speaker: Now, these renders are from 10 years of Mario games.
Speaker: Like, there is no consistency between them.
Speaker: Yeah, the two ghosts are completely different renders.
Speaker: Yeah, so Super Mario is a render from Super Mario 64 from the manual.
Speaker: The ghost in the back is a ghost render from Super Mario 64.
Speaker: The one in front of it with his tongue out is from Luigi's Mansion.
Speaker: And then Luigi himself is from Mario Party 4 for the GameCube.
Speaker: So two completely different generations of consoles.
Speaker: Which I think is a good summation of this book, which is written in 2006...
Speaker: And yeah, all of its Mario touchstones are from a decade prior, 1996, which is, I guess we'll tap on that when we get to it.
Speaker: But yeah, I think, I don't know whether it was Tracy, like what information that she had or whether it was Scholastic.
Speaker: Will I use the Mario Bible?
Speaker: We haven't updated it in a while, but don't worry about it kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah, it feels like if I was to guess, wildly speculate, is that Scholastic goes to Nintendo.
Speaker: Like an editor at Scholastic goes to Nintendo and is like, hey, we want to do Nintendo, like a Nintendo Heroes series.
Speaker: We're going to have Mario.
Speaker: all right um and uh they're like and scholastic is going to nintendo of america i'm thinking nintendo of america is like yeah sure sign over the contract sounds great here's the here's the rules you got to follow for what mario can and can't do and here's some uh here's like a folder of graphics you can use i
Speaker: Here's our sticker sheet to you.
Speaker: Here's our sticker sheet.
Speaker: Let's slap some shit together.
Speaker: They literally just put them on, like, whoever was from Scholastic.
Speaker: He had a briefcase, and somebody from Nintendo was just, like, putting them on.
Speaker: And, like, the Scholastic person was like, can you please stop doing it?
Speaker: And the Nintendo person just kept doing it, just kept putting stickers on the briefcase.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That's how it went.
Speaker: That's exactly how it went.
Speaker: And then a poor Scholastic graphic designer just slapped this cover together and called it a day.
Speaker: Just grabbed the first few that he saw.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Took a green mushroom from Super Mario 64's render book, but then for the rest of the book used mushroom renders from New Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker: Do you know what Nintendo was using for their... What they would have been using for their renders back in 1996?
Speaker: Would it have been like an SGI or something like that?
Speaker: Yeah, so all the Super Mario 64 renders were done on a SGI Onyx, I believe, which I think is very close to what...
Speaker: They built Doom on.
Speaker: Oh no, Doom was built on an NXT.
Speaker: But the SGI Onyx, they used them for all sorts.
Speaker: Like Softimage and Maya could run on that sort of stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like the same computers they would have done Jurassic Park on.
Speaker: The liquid guy in T2 I think was all done on Onyx's as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Phantom Menace I think was also done on Onyx's as well.
Speaker: And then they decided, can we try to make these smaller and make them run quick?
Speaker: And they're like, okay.
Speaker: If you want.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: So it's my arm, why don't you?
Speaker: There's a really funny bit in Jack Reacher, by the way.
Speaker: We were talking about Jack Reacher before the show started.
Speaker: There's, what's his name?
Speaker: The guy who played the cop in Terminator 2.
Speaker: Oh, Robert Patrick.
Speaker: Yeah, Robert Patrick.
Speaker: He's like the bad guy in season two of Jack Reacher.
Speaker: And this goon calls him up and he's like, they they checked in under the hotel name.
Speaker: And he goes, he says it's the first name is a guy and it's a reference to some movie.
Speaker: It's like Reacher and the girl checked in under so-and-so and Sarah Connor.
Speaker: And he goes, what the fuck does that mean?
Speaker: And then the guy on Robert Patrick is like, I don't give a fuck who Sarah Connor is.
Speaker: That's pretty, kids.
Speaker: I was like, just the meta level of that joke is chef's kiss.
Speaker: I always think of the one in Wayne's world where he stops the car and he holds up just the kind of a random kid and said, have you seen this child?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Love it when Robert Patrick appears in things.
Speaker: He was good in, what's it called?
Speaker: Peacemaker.
Speaker: He plays John Cena's dad in that.
Speaker: Yeah, the white supremacist villain in Peacemaker.
Speaker: And then I remembered out of nowhere that he was the replacement for David Duchovny in The X-Files.
Speaker: Oh, what?
Speaker: During the season where... During the last... Went off present and then it was... Yeah, it was just like Gillian Anderson and Robert Patrick.
Speaker: And then Gillian Anderson left and it was Robert Patrick and...
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: X-Files went on much longer than people remember it did with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then it came back twice.
Speaker: And people went, oh, it only came back once.
Speaker: It was like, no, it came back twice.
Speaker: Twice.
Speaker: And it had like free films as well.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's more X-Files than you think.
Speaker: And multiple games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some would say too much X-Files.
Speaker: Some might say too much X-Files, but if you carve it out right, you have just enough X-Files.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: And if it wasn't for X-Files, we wouldn't have got Breaking Bad.
Speaker: We would not have gotten Breaking Bad, would we?
Speaker: And we also wouldn't have gotten Nintendo heroes, Mario and the Incredible Rescue.
Speaker: We're going to put this body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's do a big fucking dog, man.
Speaker: Let's see here.
Speaker: We're going to start off with chapter one.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Chapter one.
Speaker: I made a couple of notes with these as well, which... Mostly just the fact that when Mario talks and stuff, I just find it incredibly weird.
Speaker: It's very off-putting.
Speaker: Mario should just be somebody who grunts, and yet, no, in this he's saying four sentences, like...
Speaker: Mario took a deep breath of fresh air and said, nothing.
Speaker: Absolutely nothing.
Speaker: The merchant kingdom is safe.
Speaker: Nothing is causing any trouble.
Speaker: Princess Peach is safe in her castle.
Speaker: For once, you and I can just relax, okay?
Speaker: Like, I guess I can sort of hear Chris Pratt's Mario say.
Speaker: I mean, I was going to say, so is this like... It's more like Ron Livingston.
Speaker: Like, I think it was like Ron Livingston's character from Office Space is what they were channeling.
Speaker: yeah that's what i'm sort of feeling as well i was gonna say do you think this is gonna be the bible for the second mario movie it's like oh fuck what do we do for that uh oh hold on tracy west she sent something in mario and the incredible rescue got it saw it but i i wouldn't be surprised it has a pretty like you know we gotta go instead of like we gotta go get the macguffin we gotta go find six macguffins
Speaker: Yeah, let's get to those six MacGuffins then, which is basically just so, to kind of summarize the first few pages, it is just they're chilling, and then in classic Mario fashion...
Speaker: Princess Peach gets kidnapped, that's usually the thing.
Speaker: Kidnapped by a bunch of ghosts.
Speaker: Yeah, so ghosts are involved.
Speaker: So Toad comes running in, he says, I need your help.
Speaker: Luigi cries, oh no.
Speaker: I mark down Mario saying, calm down Toad.
Speaker: Which I just, in Mario's voice, I just find very... It's just Mario being condescending, being like, Toad, calm down, please.
Speaker: Like everything else is in the Charles Martinet voice somehow.
Speaker: And then he breaks character to just say, calm down, Toad.
Speaker: I was thinking of, have you ever seen the classic YouTube video where it's the Nintendo sex ed video or whatever it is?
Speaker: And it's Mario speaking in the Captain Lou Urban or Spaghetti kind of voice.
Speaker: Here comes my brother, Luigi.
Speaker: Hello, Mario.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And Luigi just has a completely waspy white American guy voice to explain.
Speaker: So that's what I imagine Mario sounds like in this book, is that he sounds just like a very normal Anglo.
Speaker: Very Anglo, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: While Luigi's doing pizza pasta, Mamma Mia, and Toad's got the really screechy-ass voice.
Speaker: Mario!
Speaker: Mario!
Speaker: Oh, no, Mario.
Speaker: She's been captured by ghosts.
Speaker: Ghosts.
Speaker: Ghosts.
Speaker: They really Scooby-Doo the crap out of those ghosts.
Speaker: Both Luigi, which is just a slight criticism, Luigi and Toad are both afraid of the ghosts.
Speaker: I feel like that weakens the overcoming moments that were due of them overcoming their fear.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And again, this was published in 2006, so let's assume it was written in 2005 at the earliest.
Speaker: Luigi's Mansion has come out at this point.
Speaker: Luigi shouldn't be surprised at the existence of ghosts.
Speaker: No, he shouldn't.
Speaker: He knows what ghosts are.
Speaker: I mean, he's also in Super Mario World, technically, if you play in two players as well.
Speaker: And there are multiple ghost houses in that game.
Speaker: Of all the characters in the Super Mario canon, Luigi is the only one who is a part-time Ghostbuster.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like Ernie Hudson famously said, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you want.
Speaker: I'll believe anything you say.
Speaker: Yeah, Luigi famously also said exactly the same thing.
Speaker: Like in his measly voice.
Speaker: He said that to Miyamoto when Miyamoto was saying, Luigi, we're having trouble fitting you into some games.
Speaker: Luigi's response was, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll be in any game you want.
Speaker: For some reason Luigi also had Ernie Hudson's voice for some odd reason.
Speaker: For some odd reason.
Speaker: People didn't realize this, Ernie Hudson was the voice of Luigi.
Speaker: All along.
Speaker: All along.
Speaker: Oh gosh.
Speaker: So that's chapter one.
Speaker: Yeah, no, oh yeah, so this is great.
Speaker: I love it when you ask me on Pixel 8 because it's like, oh here's a kid's book, it's 46 pages, but finish it up.
Speaker: Now I do always struggle with reading anyways but yeah I did manage to blow through this but yeah all you gotta know in chat is peaceful no longer peaceful Toad comes in Mario says for them to calm down they're all scared but Mario's like no problem we saved Princess Peach from Bowser We're gonna do it
Speaker: Let's go straight to Bowser's Keep.
Speaker: They're going to take a shortcut in Chapter 2.
Speaker: They go through a warp pipe to the Karo's sewers.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which is when I started to realize I think I know what source material that Tracy's pulling all this from, but that will be confirmed properly in Chapter 3, so I'll hang on tight.
Speaker: Hang on to that.
Speaker: Very much like Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker: First level is in the overworld.
Speaker: Second level, you go underground into a pipe.
Speaker: And where are we going in chapter two?
Speaker: into a pipe we're into a pipe and we're in that pipe and they're they're bopping some goombas who are in the way uh yeah they run into an army of goombas though uh they go the other direction they run away from the goombas and then they do uh they kick down a brick wall which is yeah yeah they do
Speaker: I forgot about them kicking, don't I?
Speaker: Mario ran as fast as he could and then he came to the exclusion hall.
Speaker: The tunnel was brought by a brick wall.
Speaker: What do we do now, Mario?
Speaker: We kick!
Speaker: We do what Mario is known for, kicking.
Speaker: Yeah, you know Mario, he's very good at punching bricks, you know, straight up, but he's also very good at just solidly just kicking walls, like doing just a standing kick in small wall.
Speaker: That's where, you know, Shawn Michaels got the inspiration for the sweet chin music was actually from Mario.
Speaker: Famous.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was thinking that the motion of it is like when Bart Simpson's like, I'm going to start kicking the air and if you get in the way, it's your own fault.
Speaker: There's a very solid can-can star kicking to the air.
Speaker: I will say, though, something interesting from that brick wall, which I did make mention of, is that a gold coin is produced, to which Luigi says nice, grabs it and stuffs it into his pocket.
Speaker: Now, I've never thought about that in the Mario games, of the, where do the coins go?
Speaker: And in this case, because they don't just turn into the ether, which is what I assumed.
Speaker: No, like, he has a physical pocket for the coins.
Speaker: That thing's going to get pretty stuffed, I would have thought.
Speaker: Yeah, he's they they got to have some sort of I mean, Mushroom Kingdom physics, just every everything I've learned about the Mushroom Kingdom through the games, through the the the obviously very canon books and movies is that pockets are all pockets are bags of holding.
Speaker: In the Mushroom Kingdom.
Speaker: So after they kick the crap out of that brick wall, they go through the brick tunnel and now they're in a spooky forest.
Speaker: And when they turn around the brick wall, the exits that they just came through is now gone.
Speaker: Mario blinked.
Speaker: They had just crawled through a brick tunnel, right?
Speaker: But there was no sign of the tunnel or wall anywhere.
Speaker: I made a note of this because when I read through this the first time, I made this funny note, and I don't quite get it, but it was like, why is the author asking for confirmation here?
Speaker: I think it's because it's written, they just crawled through a brick tunnel, right?
Speaker: And I guess maybe in my head I was like, why are you asking this?
Speaker: You're the person who wrote the book.
Speaker: Why are you asking me for confirmation?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: right you should know and i'm like yeah i guess so george rr martin should do that where it's like uh just the next uh song of ice and fire book is just like uh this character was dead at least i'm pretty sure they were is that right is that right if they're dead or not can you go back in the old book i don't know i've never read the old books yeah
Speaker: Oh, I was going to say, it's like a fighting fantasy book, and it's like, if you think this character is dead, keep reading.
Speaker: If you don't think they're dead, go to page 40.
Speaker: I've changed the plot.
Speaker: That's really what's taking so long, is that the next book is a choose-your-own-adventure that's going to total like 9,000 pages.
Speaker: I'm good with that.
Speaker: I think they should bring those back, and if Georgie Boy is going to be the one to do it, by all means...
Speaker: But yeah, they're in a forest though.
Speaker: And this is when we were introduced to one of the few female characters in the Mario canon who isn't a princess.
Speaker: Granted, this isn't a character that's actually in any of the games.
Speaker: I did double check.
Speaker: Yeah, so her name is Cybele or Cybele.
Speaker: Yeah, Cybele or something.
Speaker: Well, the name is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Rhea, the wife of Crotus and the mother of Zeus.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Okay, so this is a pretty smart reference then by the sounds of things.
Speaker: I did make a note about this because there's a line, he knocked on the door.
Speaker: Come in, a woman's voice came from inside.
Speaker: That doesn't sound like a ghost, Luigi says cautiously.
Speaker: Ergo, Luigi confirming that ghosts can't be women.
Speaker: No!
Speaker: I guess it's only men.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess men, only men can be, only all men are ghosts and all ghosts are men in the Mario universe.
Speaker: So there we go.
Speaker: So do you think Saibeli was there when Cronus was eating his kids?
Speaker: Do you think he was just watching?
Speaker: Yes, he watched.
Speaker: Don't eat them all at once, dear.
Speaker: Don't eat them all at once.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got you some Pepto.
Speaker: It's in the cabinet.
Speaker: I got you some Pepto.
Speaker: I'll owe me the best, my growing boy.
Speaker: Another growing boy.
Speaker: So, yeah, she tells them how to deal with the ghosts, which is get the six magic mushrooms and cast a spell.
Speaker: And then everybody else leaves, and she's like, wait, Mario, I got one more thing for you.
Speaker: And she gives him an envelope.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And she's, don't open until there's no hope left.
Speaker: And he's like, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What does that mean, though?
Speaker: What does that mean when there is no hope left?
Speaker: That's pretty hardcore thing to say.
Speaker: Pretty bleak for a Mario movie.
Speaker: Or book.
Speaker: I mean, this could be Mario Movie 2.
Speaker: That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker: If you think of this in Chris Pratt's voice, that's who it is.
Speaker: I would say, I did make a note earlier on... Or Prince Pratt's voice.
Speaker: It is Prince Pratt's voice, yeah.
Speaker: I did make a note earlier on where she was like, I can help you defeat ghosts and say Princess Peach, but it will cost you.
Speaker: Like, she does actually, like, look, this is a really serious situation, but I want to get paid from it.
Speaker: And Luigi gives her the gold coin that he found in the tunnel, and that's, like, good enough.
Speaker: Not particularly heroic.
Speaker: I mean, I guess I can see why she got ostracized to the forest for being a witch, if she's, like, you know...
Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, it's a trend of weaving capitalist propaganda within the works of children's literature.
Speaker: And Mario.
Speaker: And Mario, clearly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That people, when they are turned into bricks, as is canon in the Mario world, it's okay to destroy them, now that they are bricks, to get gold out of them.
Speaker: Let's just say Marx would have had a field day with Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker: There is an enemy, one of the bosses in Kirby Superstar is literally called Marx.
Speaker: What on Nintendo's saying with that?
Speaker: What is Nintendo saying?
Speaker: Do they know?
Speaker: What are they cooking?
Speaker: What are they cooking?
Speaker: Who let this man cook?
Speaker: Um, so yeah, they, uh, the first clue is in the, uh, Kiro sewers.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In chapter three, the first clue is Kiro sewers.
Speaker: It's written backwards, uh, on the, on the clue that they gave.
Speaker: And they're like, ah, I figured it out.
Speaker: And there's a, uh, warp pipe nearby and they hop down the pipe, uh,
Speaker: And as they're walking, they gotta dodge piranha plants.
Speaker: There's piranha plants all over the place.
Speaker: And they're moving and grooving and they get to a ravine.
Speaker: And it's one of those things where they gotta time the jumps because there's four pipes and they're ascending.
Speaker: But the...
Speaker: The piranha plants are coming up at different timings, and if your timing is wrong, you're going to get bit.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You're going to be planting food.
Speaker: You don't want that.
Speaker: You're going to be planting food.
Speaker: I want to say, by the way, for the folks at home, so right at the beginning of the chapter, they give you this puzzle, which is, yeah, as Kevin said, it is Kerasu is written backwards.
Speaker: They literally give you the solution to this.
Speaker: Go backwards for the answer.
Speaker: They have absolutely no hope that a child will ever figure this out.
Speaker: And I will say, there are some puzzles, quote-unquote, later on, which are so kind of obscure that, yeah, of course you would give the answer immediately after that.
Speaker: But, yeah, I just thought I was a bit of a funny one, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, a lot of puzzles are basically like children's show puzzles where it's like Dora the Explorer looks at the audience and says, can you solve the puzzle?
Speaker: And then waits like 20 seconds.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Whereas with this, you know, I wouldn't have minded like, you know, I'm 32.
Speaker: I wouldn't have minded it's a little bit more challenging.
Speaker: But you can't hope for everything, really.
Speaker: I will say as well, I also made a note of, then something dark and sparkly caught his eye.
Speaker: A black mushroom glittered in the distance.
Speaker: That's it, Mario cried.
Speaker: He ran towards the mushroom and stopped just in time.
Speaker: I always... Cry as a synonym for say or said, I always find kind of weird.
Speaker: Because when I just hear the word cry, I just think like, tears braying out kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah, just as a synonym for saying something, I just... I don't know.
Speaker: That's it!
Speaker: Mario cried.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I understand why in on writing by Stephen King, Stephen King was like, just don't use anything else other than said.
Speaker: Just put said and that's it.
Speaker: You don't have to write anything.
Speaker: Just put anything else.
Speaker: I've read on writing, but I don't think I ever got that far.
Speaker: But that is like such a perfect Stephen King thing of like,
Speaker: yeah i'm just sitting here and i'm just writing this whole thing out i'm just gonna use said for everything who cares that's that's what you need to know yeah like if you're yeah he's i mean he's written like five books this year probably so oh and the rest yeah stephen king's great like the story that he tells about like he got the idea for carrie from his um wife talking about
Speaker: like being a teenager and like what yeah but also him like helping like paint somebody's house going in and just like this terrifying crucifix of jesus up on the wall and she being like what do you think are you being saved steven and then just being like god who would want to be saved by that and then he was like hmm this gives me an idea for a fun book what if somebody has psychic powers
Speaker: Yeah, he does a lot of.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: How many books has he released this year?
Speaker: Oh, OK.
Speaker: Where is it?
Speaker: I am scrolling down.
Speaker: 2023.
Speaker: Oh, only one.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He put all his eggs in one basket for 2022.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like in the past, he's been averaging two, it seems like for the past few years.
Speaker: But yeah, only one this year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I remember like even when I was like in the in the Norts, he was still sticking out like what, 10 bucks a year at that point.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, he's got a lot, and a lot of short stories, and he's got his Dark Tower stuff, which is the only... I need to read Dark Tower, but... Yeah, I've only seen the film with McConaughey in it, and one with it is all I'll say.
Speaker: Isn't Idris Elba in... Yeah, so Elba's the gunslinger, and McConaughey's the man in black.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Apparently none of the adaptations really get it right.
Speaker: No, and I know they're doing a TV adaptation of it, either on Showtime or Amazon or something, which I think is, like, that's the one that people are putting in hopes on, like, oh, there's going to be money and there's going to be enough time to tell this story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I just totally remember that McConaughey was at the Game Awards.
Speaker: Was he?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He literally came out to just announce some game that was being made by a Texan game studio.
Speaker: He had nothing to do with it, just apart from the fact that he was from Texas, that he pretends like he is, but, you know.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it was literally like he came, like you can tell from his face, it's like, there's a bit of a room full of nerds here.
Speaker: I don't want to be out here for too long kind of thing.
Speaker: Don't know why my McConaughey sounds like Glenn Quagmire from Family Guy.
Speaker: All right, all right, all right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Giggity, giggity.
Speaker: Speaking of which.
Speaker: Speaking of which.
Speaker: Mario, they do their timing thing correctly.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: Toad and Luigi nearly die.
Speaker: Yes, they do.
Speaker: I forgot about that.
Speaker: Yeah, they do nearly die.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: They nearly fucking die, man.
Speaker: But they're fine.
Speaker: They're all fine.
Speaker: And they get across and they get their mushroom, which takes us to chapter four.
Speaker: A song for Tudovsky now.
Speaker: Oh, so Todovsky and Frogfuchus are both characters from the 1996 video game Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars, which people probably would have played recently because it had a remake on Switch, except Omid Todovsky kept his name.
Speaker: Frogfuchus, they just changed his name to Frogsage because they were worried that no one in 2023 knew who Confucius was anymore.
Speaker: Maybe they were worried it was racist or something.
Speaker: Frog Fuchsias?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Well, if that's the case, the frog model still has a giant Fu Mon Chu and speaks some broken English, so they didn't really care that much about it.
Speaker: They didn't try that hard.
Speaker: They didn't try that hard.
Speaker: No, obviously not.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I feel like more people would get the Confucius pun more than they would the Tchaikovsky pun, but I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: um a song for todovsky the clue they get tells them to look we're in a place where frogs and toads live in harmony which is tadpole pond as we all know is tadpole pond yeah as we all know uh which is where frog fuchsius and todovsky uh live together in harmony get it harmony because todovsky makes music
Speaker: On their way, they run into some Koopa Troopas, a pair of them.
Speaker: They get a little cocky.
Speaker: They beat up on the Koopa Troopas.
Speaker: They send them spiraling out.
Speaker: The shells come back off of a wall and hit them and knock them into a stream.
Speaker: But it's all good.
Speaker: because because the stream is another um it's another um set piece from super mario rpg it's when you're rolling on the barrels so yeah there we go and it's it's it's a feeder stream right into to tadpole pond uh yeah and they're okay because frog fuchsius is like right there when they get out of the water
Speaker: Oh no, obviously right there To go again with how easy This adventure has been Mario, we're on a quest to save the princess We're looking for six magic mushrooms We think one of them may be near here So, Luigi and So they climb up on the rock Trying to get them, and it's like, okay, crap Do we need to do some?
Speaker: Frogfutius, ah yeah, the magic mushroom The item you seek is in Melody Bay Okay, great, I know that Yeah, I'm glad you need, alright, thanks Thank you, Frogs That was easy
Speaker: It's just him hitting the Dow's Easy Office Depot button the entire adventure.
Speaker: Isn't Office Depot in the States?
Speaker: As soon as I thought it was Staples.
Speaker: Oh, was it Staples that did it?
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: It might have been Staples.
Speaker: The Staples Easy button.
Speaker: I think I only know this because I had one when I was in university.
Speaker: Yeah, I used to have one somewhere.
Speaker: It's, you know, a nice but annoying little desktop thing to have.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a fidget spinner.
Speaker: It's just cool to play with.
Speaker: It's cool to play with.
Speaker: It's cool to confirm to yourself that something's easy or not.
Speaker: They go around to Melody Bay and they meet with Todofsky, who's like, you can't take this mushroom.
Speaker: It's the thing that inspires me to write music.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Unless, Mario, you can inspire me with this sick ass flute chops you got.
Speaker: Because apparently it's like, it's like, was it Anchorman where he, where Will Ferrell plays the flute randomly?
Speaker: Or there's like some...
Speaker: Is it Anchorman?
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: So Anchorman 1 is just like he's... It's either he's at his house party or he's just at a club.
Speaker: And yeah, he is just randomly a floutist.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: He just plays the flute.
Speaker: Yeah, that's just his thing.
Speaker: And then in Anchorman 2, he keeps bringing it out now and again as well.
Speaker: So Mario, much like Will Ferrell in Anchorman, just breaks out his flute and...
Speaker: and lets it rip yeah and start speaking like um robber goulet as well robber goulet robber goulet oh look a mountain goat the only things i know robber goulet from is that will ferrell's bit juice and beetle juice and
Speaker: It's really, it's like I, cause I watched Feetal Jesus a couple of weeks ago and I was like, I had the IMDb XJ on, it's like Robert Goulet and so I don't remember.
Speaker: And so I then started watching the, go get a bangers ball, and Robert Goulet bit, where he kept saying the end words.
Speaker: And I was like, Robert Goulet probably isn't exactly like this.
Speaker: And then it's just a clip from the fucking seventh, like the last TV appearance of Robert Goulet in the 80s, where it is like, vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Speaker: I don't know whether it's because I've seen Mr. Show and stuff like that, where it's like, I've never seen actual lounge singers, but I've seen all the Gen X people who've made jokes about lounge singers.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Seeing Robbie Goulet do that, but like genuine, where it's like, these are a few of my favorite things.
Speaker: I was like, how did people watch this, like, unironically in the 70s and 80s?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Yeah, so Mario channels his inner Robert Goulet.
Speaker: He is Goulet, yeah.
Speaker: He Goulet's it, and Todofsky's like, oh, yeah, shit, yeah, the mushroom, you can have it.
Speaker: Take the mushroom.
Speaker: Hey, I know that you need this to stop, like, an invasion of ghosts, but sure, you've impressed me enough that you can have it.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: You know, if this was a video game, this was a video game, it would be like a timing thing, like a guitar hero.
Speaker: You gotta hit the buttons while the things are coming down from the sky.
Speaker: I was thinking it'd be like a David Cage game, because it is very kind of... There's not really a lot of player input in this.
Speaker: It's just mostly just... Yeah, it is.
Speaker: It's just timing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It would be like a David Cage game, and Mario would be played by...
Speaker: trying to think of somebody who would make sense for David Cage Mario game.
Speaker: So the only like big actor that I know that was in a, well, I know that Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe were in Beyond the Uso's, but then the only big get that he could get for Detroit, well, it was the guy from Altered Carbon whose shtick seems to be I'll play an android in like anything.
Speaker: But also Mr. Krabs himself, Clancy Brown, he's the... Oh yeah, Clancy Brown is literally the best character in that entire game.
Speaker: He's...
Speaker: Yeah, the only good bit of that game, which is the buddy cop between an android and a human, and he's the washed up human detective who has a big dog.
Speaker: And he's like, this is great.
Speaker: It's, you know, why wasn't the whole game this?
Speaker: Why wasn't the whole game just Clancy Brown doing his Clancy Brown stuff?
Speaker: So yeah, it would be Clancy Brown.
Speaker: Yeah, as Mario.
Speaker: As Mario.
Speaker: And Willem Dafoe as Luigi.
Speaker: Willem Dafoe as Luigi.
Speaker: As the thick guy, thinny guy aesthetic.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I guess Willem Dafoe's more of a Waluigi, isn't he?
Speaker: He is kind of Waluigi, isn't he?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He plays Waluigi in the lighthouse.
Speaker: He does.
Speaker: And that's kind of Wario-ish.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 5, The Maze and the Mushroom.
Speaker: Chapter 5, The Maze and the Mushroom.
Speaker: Yeah, they get a new clue, and they got the clue to solve it.
Speaker: The puzzle is jump to find the answer, and Luigi figures it out.
Speaker: You got to jump...
Speaker: because it reads like f-c-o-b-r-e-e-l and you have to you have to skip every second lesson which again like i if i was even like even at f32 i don't know how i would have figured this out it's a bit like right confusing especially since it has like the at symbol in it do you ever have you did you notice that randomly the at symbol was is is in the middle of these
Speaker: I don't know if that's the EPUB book version or if that was actually in the printed version too.
Speaker: No, because I converted this to a PDF so I could annotate it.
Speaker: But no, it changed it back to a regular A for me.
Speaker: But no, I just double checked on the EPUB now.
Speaker: And yeah, that is the at symbol.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's the forest maze.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We do the forest maze where there is a sleeping.
Speaker: What's his face?
Speaker: This is a sleeping wiggler.
Speaker: They try not to wake up the sleeping wiggler and they seem they're seemingly lost when the mushroom pouch starts glowing and leading them toward the correct path.
Speaker: And they find the mushroom and it's a sparkling orange one.
Speaker: And the next, they get another clue.
Speaker: It's a traditional text.
Speaker: It's a traditional, it's just a scramble.
Speaker: And it's a scramble just like Mama Mario used to make, like scrambled eggs.
Speaker: Just like Mama Mario.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they figure out that it's to go to Yoster's Isle.
Speaker: Where all the Yoshis live.
Speaker: Another famous landmark from Super Mario RPG.
Speaker: As was Wiggler Forest as well.
Speaker: So yeah, if you're a fan of Mario RPG, this is the book for you.
Speaker: I feel like Tracy West probably based everything on Super Mario RPG.
Speaker: So that's what I think.
Speaker: I think that this book was probably written in like 98 and she was like, oh, Super Mario 64 hasn't got any plot in it.
Speaker: What's like the next?
Speaker: Oh, I had an SNES.
Speaker: Oh, my kid had an SNES.
Speaker: I'll just play the Mario game.
Speaker: Oh, this has got all sorts of stuff in it.
Speaker: And it's funny because it's like, it's very obvious as well that she only played it to a point, which is fair enough because I only also played Mario RPG to a point, but I was a bit long.
Speaker: I can't be bothered with this.
Speaker: She trails off when she gets to the Yoshi Island.
Speaker: And I was like, yeah, that's where I would trail off as well.
Speaker: Stop paying attention.
Speaker: So, but, uh-oh.
Speaker: Oh, no, there's Hammer Brothers blocking the way out.
Speaker: And then they're throwing hammers and they do what they do best and they kick the bricks that the Hammer Brothers are standing on.
Speaker: The thing that the Mario Brothers are most famous for?
Speaker: Kicking.
Speaker: Kicking and they knock the hammer brothers down and then the hammer brothers fall and land on the sleeping wiggler and, you know, wake up a sleeping wiggler and the wiggler just wakes up and starts beating the absolute shit out of the hammer brothers.
Speaker: But they do thank the wiggler.
Speaker: They thanked the Wiggler.
Speaker: They say, thanks, Wiggler.
Speaker: We owe you one.
Speaker: We owe you one.
Speaker: The thing is, I don't think Mario would be very thankful if he knew that the Wiggler murdered those two Hammer brothers.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: And then buried their bodies in the forest.
Speaker: And both the Hammer brothers left behind two little kookaling children.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: Shit.
Speaker: Baby Hamlet... Hamlet?
Speaker: Baby Hammer Brothers.
Speaker: Baby Hammer Brothers.
Speaker: It's funny, you get Baby Gumbas in the Mario games, but you don't really get a lot of Baby Coopers, which is very weird.
Speaker: You think that'd be something they'd capitalize on.
Speaker: Because they don't love doing babies.
Speaker: people love baby like uh reptiles and amphibians like that's really what i mean star wars headed out of the park with grogu you know they're like here's a fucking baby yoda it looks like a little lizard thing with ears and big eyes and everybody's like yeah you know we're thinking of 2024 what do you think the next big baby character could be
Speaker: Because there's always got to be a baby character.
Speaker: There always has.
Speaker: Every year has to have a big baby character.
Speaker: Like this year, I guess, was kind of like... Actually, yeah, who was the famous baby this year?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't have to dive into that.
Speaker: Because Oppenheimer didn't have a... I mean, Oppenheimer, I guess, had the bomb.
Speaker: I guess that's kind of... The bombs are kind of a baby.
Speaker: Yeah, ticking time bomb versus coughing baby.
Speaker: That's a famous argument.
Speaker: That's what Offenheimer was all about.
Speaker: We'll circle back around to Famous Baby.
Speaker: I will think on that.
Speaker: We'll circle back around to Famous Baby's... I mean, honestly, that might be... That's a video essay right there.
Speaker: That's a... Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That's the next H-bomber guy, is it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: H-Bomber guy.
Speaker: He's going to cancel the next famous baby.
Speaker: He's going to cancel the next famous baby before it's born.
Speaker: Because that's what anybody with a time machine would do.
Speaker: Kill baby Hitler.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: so i wouldn't i see i wouldn't kill baby hitler i would just be like look let's have a conversation here okay let's uh you know let's let's struggle session this let's figure this out you know let's figure it out what's what is what is your comp you know i think isn't mine comp your comp let's you know let's try to meet in the middle of this one
Speaker: Hey, everybody.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening to part one.
Speaker: Part two will be out next week.
Speaker: In the meantime, thank you so much to our patrons, friendly friend, Ruthless Mutter, and Jesus loves you.
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Speaker: And speaking of Patreon, please go to patreon.com slash pixelitpod or type pixelitpod.com into your web browser, and it'll take you right over there, right over there.
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Speaker: You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, wherever, at PixelitPod.
Speaker: You know the drill by now.
Speaker: You can find James on YouTube at Hot Cider.
Speaker: His channel is amazing.
Speaker: Go check it out.
Speaker: He'll be back next week.
Speaker: Come back next week to hear the rest of the book.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: Have a good night.
Speaker: Bye.
