Never Look at Mario the Same, Thanks to a Creepy Explanation for Mario Odyssey’s Lack of “Game Overs”

It was already weird enough that a game existed about a plumber who stomps on turtles, eats mushrooms to become giant, and spits fire, and his propensity for coming back to life after death has been explored before. Mario Odyssey, however, added several new layers of absurdity, with Mario possessing people, dinosaurs, and inanimate objects, and apparently never arriving at a “game over” Screen—which got a disturbing twist once news hit the internet.

The whole concept of a game over has become a little pointless in modern games, since most of them are incredibly long and save your progress along the way, rather than throwing you back to the start like the old days. That makes Nintendo’s choice to remove the game over screen from the upcoming Mario title little more than a technicality, as players can still lose lives and be sent back to checkpoints, and they’ll also be deducted coins for doing so—they’ll just never arrive at a game over screen that only serves as a momentary interruption before jumping right back into a saved game.

However innocuous the change, that’s still causing some debate among fans as to the worth of the game over in general, but I assure you that debate is not nearly as uncomfortable for this imaginative explanation for the change, originally posted on Reddit by user beeting:

It was already weird enough that Mario was running around the semi-realistic “New Donk City” when the game was first revealed, but this takes that and the possession mechanic—which has already seen its share of jokes online—to their logical, creepy end. It’s like Being John Malkovich, but all bright and colorful, which is really just more unsettling, if horror movies have taught me anything about juxtaposing happy things with terror.

(featured image: Nintendo)

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Dan Van Winkle

Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.

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