Famous Game Quote Of the Week
"Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!"
-Toad (Super Mario Bros. / NES)
One of the most popular quotes in video game history comes from the game that arguably saved the entire video game industry from oblivion. After the infamous video game crash in the early 80’s western electronic retailers didn’t want anything to do with video games at all. However Nintendo was determined to sell their newest gaming system in the United States and the rest of the English speaking world. To get their gaming system to be stocked by retailers they had to make a lot of decisions that were specific to the social climate during the time. One of those decisions was to include the now famous game Super Mario Bros.
Although it’s a household name now back then it wasn’t known very much outside of Japan until the Nintendo Entertainment System was sold with Super Mario Bros. as a pack-in game. People immediately realized the entertainment value of Super Mario Bros. and in turn video games which turned the industry around from being dead to all of sudden being in high demand overnight. The game is about a heroic Italian-American plumber that had adventures in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom. In his first adventure: Super Mario Bros. he had to save the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom: Princess Peach from the villain Bowser.
In his quest to rescue Princess Peach he has to defeat Bowser in a castle at the end of 8 different “worlds”. After completing 3 stages Mario then enters a castle that he must navigate through before fighting Bowser at the end. After defeating Bowser the player thinks they will see Peach but instead Toad is rescued along with the classic quote “Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!”. This quote is so famous it was even referenced in the Super Mario Bros movie released in 2023.
16 Bit Hottie of the week
Samus Aran Bounty Hunter Galactic Federation
- Metroid Zero Mission (Game Boy Advance)
Samus Aran is among the most well known characters in the video game world. Ever since Super Metroid on the Super NES when fans discovered that the cyber clad hero of the game is a female. Although she first appeared in Metroid on the NES it wasn’t as popular and it had to be played through to the end to find out the hero’s true identity. In Super Metroid you see her true form every time she loses all her health.
At the very end of the game you get a good look at her however it’s not until the Game Boy Advance games that the pixel artists portray her in any real detail. In Metroid Fusion (2002) and Metroid Zero Mission (2004) Samus she is shown as a well with an attractive, well endowed figure. Ever since then she has been considered one of the most attractive females in the video game metaverse.
Samus Aran is a bounty hunter that works for the Galactic Federation. Despite her obviously human form she actually has been infused with DNA from the alien Chozo race, who adopted her after space pirates killed her parents. She is big woman at 90Kg and 6’3 and has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Retro Gaming 90's Memory:
The Briefcase of SNES Cartridges
As regular reader’s of this website know I live in Australia, it’s where I was born and have lived all my life. When I was a born I was introduced to a household that had an Atari 2600 Jr. so my earliest memories involve seeing and playing simple 8 bit games on a CRT television. My dad was a gamer but he bought the cheapest gaming system that was available in 1985 (the year I was born) and that was the Atari 2600. By the time I became aware of the world around me my dad had accumulated quite 2600 games library, and I became familiar with every one of those games. Eventually I was in primary school and got introduced to the Sega Mega Drive and Master System at my friends house. About a year later my mum got a Super Nintendo with Super Mario World pack-in on layby at a department store.
It was the most amazing day of my life at the time when we setup the Super Nintendo for the first time. One day, (it may have been my birthday) my parents decided to buy me a game for the Super NES. Our neighbor was a massive tech-head, he had all the latest gadget’s for the time like a giant rear projection TV and a laser disc player. He was heavy into gaming and so he offered to come over with a range of cartridges that we try before we select what one to buy. This was an incredible day that remains in my memory to this day. It was unforgettable because when he rocked up to our house with his two kids who were my and my brother’s age, he came with a briefcase. When he opened this briefcase it was crammed full of Super Nintendo cartridges! I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was the equivalent of an adult seeing a briefcase full of cocaine or marijuana. I was only about 7 or 8 years old and being able to play all these different SNES games in one day was completely amazing. That was an awesome day, it was a long time ago so I can’t remember all the games we played but I do remember what I chose.
As I mentioned my dad was a keen gamer too so he played the games with us and I remember that he liked Starfox the most and he wanted me to choose that. But I had the final say, after all it was a present meant for me so I got to choose what game my parents would buy. Being a child of the 90’s TMNT was my favorite cartoon, I absolutely loved the turtles, my favorite character was Donatello. Obviously TMNT left a lasting impression on me because as an adult I learned Kobudo so I learned to use nunchaku, bo, sai and the sword all the weapons the teenage mutant ninja turtles used. So you can probably guessed what game I chose. I remember playing TMNT IV: Turtles in Time with my friend Jeremy who was over at the time as he was the son of Italo (the guy who brought the games over). I had so much fun playing this game with him and he urged me to choose that game which I wanted the most anyway. So it was a no brainer for me, that’s the game I chose and that’s the game my parents bought me. I was over the moon and I played the heck out of that game.
Later on in my childhood life my parents bought a UFO Super Drive Pro 6 disk copier system from Italo. That beast of technological marvel cost them a whopping $800 AUD, which was a lot of money at the time. Because it cost so much, they sold all our cartridge games to recoup the cost as this machine lets you dump cartridge games and save them to disk. So technically we didn’t need our old cartridges, except for one that had to be inserted in the top for it to operate. Unfortunately they didn’t choose to keep TMNT IV but instead kept our first game – Super Mario World. This was unfortunate because, as you are probably aware, TMNT skyrocketed in value both the PAL and NTSC versions. However it was included in 200+ disks that we got with the disk copier device. I’ll talk about this device another time, it was a staple of my childhood gaming experiences and I still have it even to this day and it still works. One thing I will tell you is the very first game I loaded up the night we got it was E.V.O. I had no idea what the game was I just picked a random game. After it finished it’s loading countdown a message came up, we saw there was another disk labelled E.V.O disk 2 so we figured this is what was needed so we put it in the disk drive and pressed B and it continued loading. When it was done the E.V.O greeted us on our TV screen, it was magic!
