The Evolution of Mario

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "NFG Games offers an interesting look at the visual evolution of Nintendo's Mario from his humble beginnings as a monkey-chasing carpenter to his more recent incarnations as a Koopa-stomping plumber. The retrospective doesn't stray into 3D Mario territory, but it does include every 2D version of Mario released between 1981 and 2004 -- including early consoles like the Atari 2600 and Colecovision."

Comments

"We are retro, therefore we are 1337"

[75th Trombone]

Paraphrasing the article:

Pre-rendered 3D marios look aliased and terrible!

When you show them as 80x160 images on VGA resolution monitors, of bloody course they do.

Quoting the article:

The 1996 release of Super Mario RPG ... saw the first appearance of a pre-rendered, aliased Mario. Notice the dark colours around the edges.

Dark colours around the edges. As opposed to his lovely hand-drawn sprites, which have BLACK FRICKIN' OUTLINES. More consistent, perhaps, but not inherently better.

Bleh. Dumb. This isn't the evolution of Mario, this is some kind of retro artist elitism. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but when you call your article "The Evolution of Mario," it'd be cooler to talk about the changes in his visual style than to flaunt your wicked cool retro-gamerhood. Please. That's, like, all of us.