I’ve always written about the intersection of games and real life – that’s where the interesting stories are often found – but rarely do I get the opportunity to do so quite so literally as I have this week. Yesterday I visited the Universal Studios theme park in Osaka, where the world of Mario has been reconstructed in the real world. You walk through a green warp pipe and, when you come out the other side, through Princess Peach’s castle, you emerge into a primary-coloured, crowded Mario-scape, all green grass, yellow blocks and brown brick, with critters moving back and forth across banks of question-mark blocks and the yawning maw of Bowser’s Castle across the way.
My jaw dropped. I’ve been dying to see this Nintendo theme park since it opened, but I wasn’t prepared for how impactful it would be to walk into a physical manifestation of my eight-year-old self’s dreams. Super Mario World is constructed in such a way that you can’t see the outside world when you’re in there, helping you to disappear into the fantasy.
There are three rides in Super Mario World. The first is an on-rails sightseeing exercise where you ride a Yoshi around the park, getting a good view of all the details (I spotted a couple of hidden Pikmin). The second is an augmented reality Mario Kart race, where, after weaving your way through the queue in Bowser’s Castle, a spinning go-kart takes you around a track and you fire shells at Bowser and his underlings. (Alas, you can’t actually steer it.) And the third ride has you running around the park playing mini-games to earn keys, after which you confront Bowser Jr in a face-off. Your shadow is projected on to the screen, and you jump, duck and wave your arms about to collect power-ups and avoid Bullet Bills. Remember the Kinect, Xbox’s motion-sensing camera? It’s just like that.
Someone from Universal Studios guided me around, which meant I could skip the queues – otherwise I would have been waiting a an hour or two for any of these rides. This is standard for theme parks but obviously not standard for video games, which usually promise instant fun (download speeds and massive update files permitting). But I don’t think Mario fans need to do the rides to get a kick out of being in this space. Like the Mario Lego sets, Super Nintendo World was designed with Nintendo’s own game designers, so the park is surprisingly interactive. Buy a wristband and you can punch blocks and find secret Mario logos, which earns you stickers on a tie-in app. And the merch shops are downright dangerous: the standard of branded tat in Japan is extremely high, and the yen is weak against the pound at the moment, so I ended up leaving with so much stuff it looked as if Mario had thrown up in my hotel room.
Just as people go to Orlando for Disney, some tourists make the trip to Japan specifically for Super Nintendo World. It is a powerful thing to see beloved fiction come to life. And we will most certainly see more of this: during the Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Orlando Resort there was a haunted house themed after The Last of Us, with human actors taking on the roles of clickers, Joel and Ellie. Series co-creator Neil Druckmann seemed more thrilled about this than anyone when he visited it recently. “I was just like, oh my god, I’m in the game. You can argue that players are already in the game … but they’re seeing it through a 2D frame on their wall. What if you break that frame, and now you’re surrounded by it, and you can touch it, feel it, smell it?”
The parallels between theme park design and game design become very evident when you’re in a video game-themed space. The architects of theme parks and the architects of video game levels rely on visual details and environmental storytelling to guide people through, draw their eyes to the right places and keep them immersed in the experience. Both require a certain suspension of disbelief, and must encourage that with thoughtful and intentional choices. When you see a Disney castle peeking over a vista and want to head towards it, that’s by design.
Universal Studios Japan’s re-creation of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts is down a long, winding path, obscured by carefully positioned trees and and the village of Hogsmeade – it reminded me a lot of those “loading corridors” used to great effect in the recent Tomb Raider trilogy or God of War, where you’d find yourself squeezing through a narrow gap or wandering through a cave for a few minutes while the game frantically loaded the massive building or beautiful vista that you were about to emerge into.
Video game creatives and theme park creatives working together is a golden combination when it comes to Super Nintendo World. Both are in the business of designing and constructing fun. I highly recommend a visit if you get the opportunity to go, and given that it was easily the most popular area of the entire park, I expect we’ll see more video game theme park efforts before long. Meanwhile, I’ve now become fascinated with other video game theme parks, such as Dragon Quest Island, the Sonic section of Odaiba’s amusement park, the lost Pokémon theme park that existed in Nagoya in 2005, and the semi-secret Pokémon nature park experience that’s currently running in Tokyo. Great – I really needed another expensive special interest.
What to play
Keeping on theme for this week, my long-haul flight entertainment was Super Mario RPG, a remake of a gently strange 1996 Mario spinoff that was not originally released in Europe. It had mythical status for me as a child; I finally played it as a teenager, having tracked down an expensive imported SNES copy. Now, though, you can simply download this remake.
It’s beautifully done, turning the almost claymation-style visuals of the original into a miniature-toylike aesthetic, and it’s an interesting relic of a time when Nintendo was freer with its core franchises, letting other developers (Square Enix, in this case) do odd things with them. There’s distinctly unNintendo playful character banter, weird locations, slightly laborious turn-based battling. This would also make a good first RPG for kids eight-years or older who want to graduate from Mario platformers to something more narrative-focused.
Available on: Nintendo Switch
Estimated playtime: 20 hours
What to read
How cute is the trailer for Netflix’s forthcoming stop-motion Pokémon series, Pokémon Concierge? I can’t take it.
Valve has given the eternally brilliant science-fiction masterpiece Half-Life some long-overdue attention for its 25th anniversary, making it compatible with Steam Deck, releasing a documentary, and even creating new multiplayer maps for it.
I really enjoyed this nostalgic and insightful essay by writer Carmen Maria Machado on being a lifelong gamer, and what it means to share them with others – she is the editor of a new collection of essays on video games from fiction writers, called Critical Hits: Writers on Gaming and the Alternate Worlds We Inhabit.
The Last of Us Part II is being remastered. Great as it is, this isn’t a game I want to play again, but perhaps the success of the TV series made this rerelease inevitable.
What to click
Meet Yuzo Koshiro: your favourite game’s soundtrack wouldn’t exist without him
The creators of Bluey: The Videogame on making a kids’ game that’s also about parenting
Question Block
I won’t answer a question this week as I am still travelling, but please send in your queries about all things video games – or any other feedback you have for the newsletter – by replying to this email. I read (almost) everything that comes through, and it’s a highlight of my week. Here’s a recent email from reader Carole to illustrate that point:
“Keza, I’m going to argue that the first generations of gamers are not entering their 40s and 50s! As a 67-year-old woman who has been a gamer since her dad bought home an Atari many decades ago, and continues to play every day, I’d like to point out that the original gamers are in their 60s or older. My 73-year-old husband and I own a PS5, Xbox One and a Switch. I’m 250-plus hours into TOTK and see no reason to rush to finish it. Gaming has been a huge part of my life and I’ve always joked that I’ll be in the old folks’ home happily playing games until the day I die. I firmly believe that playing games helps slow down cognitive ageing, as well as helping to maintain hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills etc. I’m always amused when people are shocked to find out that I am a gamer. I guess they expect me to be sitting in a rocking chair knitting and watching game shows on TV rather than battling my way through Horizon Zero Dawn.
I have waited my entire adult life to be able to play games all day without feeling guilty, retirement is a wonderful thing! Who am I kidding, I’ve never felt guilty about the time I spend gaming!”
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
