So I guess Mario fights sheep…

Laura and I are currently in a heated debate about the characters that Mario and Luigi fight against on the classic NES game Super Mario Brothers. Our debate was sparked when we discovered our old, beat up NES in the basement of my parent’s house. We brought it to our house only to discover that it was broken. After some preliminary research, we decided to order a new part for the NES online. Thanks to Google and YouTube, we were able to replace the part (new 72 pin connector) and get the ol’ girl back to working condition. After fixing a broken NES, it seems only right to play the best game ever made for the system, Super Mario Brothers. Thus the debate started…

Now as kids we all had our names for the different characters that Mario encounters on his journey to save the Princess, but what are they really?

I present to you… the turtle. This is the one character that we agree on. Although it is somewhat ridiculous that you encounter turtles with wings in the later levels, the shell on its back convinces us both that there is no possible way this could be anything other than a turtle. Some refer to it as a duck to which I say…when was the last time you saw a duck with a shell? Case closed.

The next character on the agenda is above. Laura commonly refers to these characters as OWLS…no seriously, an owl. Laura argues that their little eyes look just like owl eyes. I suppose I cannot prove her wrong since I have not spent much time looking at owl eyes. I tend to call these little guys goombas. I don’t know what that means either, but I have heard them called that on other Mario games. OWL vs. GOOMBAS

This one is the hardest to decipher. Laura argues that the above character is a sheep because it is “fuzzy” and it looks like it has black fur. I tend to disagree and say that the black hump on its back is some sort of shell, maybe like a beetle. In either case it is pretty hard to tell and neither one of us are too sure. SHEEP vs. BEETLE.

The last debate has not been over a character but rather the currency that Mario uses to gain extra lives. Some of us collected these things every chance we got and went squatting on every tube to make sure we didn’t miss one of the underground “secret” layers with tons of these in it; others of us could care less about them and were more concerned with getting through the level than spending 20 minutes punching them out of overhead floating blocks. The debate stems from Laura calling these units of Mario currency “Pennies.” She says they are the same color as pennies and once you get 100 of them you get a free life. Apparently free lives cost a dollar in Mario land. My argument is that these are called “Coins.” Coins are a neutral term and don’t refer to a specific currency. Coins are still coins in Japan, but pennies become yen… or whatever their penny is. And who says Mario lives are worth a dollar anyway?

Yes this may have been a ridiculous post, but since we have already spent lots of time debating these characters, we thought it would be fun to involve you in the enjoyment of arguing over useless things. Have fun and let us know if you come to any solid conclusions by leaving your thoughts in the comments section. We will keep you posted.