Video Game Heroes or are they Villians?

Video game heroes.

A different perspective.

     Let’s start with the most basic and familiar of game heroes, Mario, from Super Mario Bros. This is the story of a fat little Italian man, who is probably no more than 5 feet tall, that gets sucked into a magical world of fungus and magic mushrooms. (Someone was on magic mushrooms.) Now in the first game you go through 8 worlds filled with angry mushroom men “Goombas”, turtles out for a nice walk “Koopa troopas”, and various other creatures in a nice landscaped setting.

     The Princess and her 7 retainers, (why does she need 7?) are captured and jailed, perhaps due to trespassing. Enter Mario, this man comes into, I might add, a densely populated turtle environment, starts his ruthless rampage on helpless land dwelling creatures by stomping on them and kicking them about. He also goes on a pyrotechnic rampage blasting everything he sees with fireballs. Not a good example for kids if you ask me.

     Let’s move on to game #2. In this version Mario wanders into a cave and enters a door. I guess he has no respect for people’s privacy. He runs around this world picking up locals and throwing them to the ground. He also rips up their crops and wreaks havoc on this small villa. This is an apparent farming community. They have turnips growing and carrots, etc. Mario in all his glory walks in, rips up their crops, beats up the locals and thinks nothing of it. Now by the time you get to the “worlds boss” they have already heard of a man destroying their world, so naturally the bigger residents are going to try and stop him.

     By game 3 Mario has established his rule over King Koopa’s old kingdom. However this does not stop Koopa from trying to take back what was his from the start. In a failed attempt to imprison the spoiled brat of a princess who claimed that it was her kingdom all along, Koopa and his kids are again bested by the dark underhanded forces of Mario.

     You can understand why Koopa said to hell with it and went on to find another place to call home. He finds an island filled with dinosaurs. Naturally he would feel at home, being a reptile himself. Sadly this too was cut short by the real estate tycoon Mario. So again, uninvited, Mario comes to this small island and starts to pick on the animals. Kicking turtles and beating on the dinosaurs, which were thought to be extinct, so of course they are endangered, but that doesn’t stop him. He also commits crimes, such as breaking and entering into these old houses and castles. The castles end up demolished by Mario after his home invasion and subsequent beating of the homeowner.

     He is abusive to animals and puts almost extinct animals completely off the wheel of life. Following games with Mario take similar paths. I hear there is a Mario galaxy out now. I guess he won’t be satisfied until he rules the universe.
Mario’s cruelty to animals doesn’t start in the mushroom kingdom; it can be traced back to Donkey Kong. This game is easy enough to understand, a large gorilla escaped from a zoo and was terrified. He took the zookeeper who feed him “Pricilla” with him for comfort. Oh, but wait here comes Mario swinging a huge wooden mallet, further scaring the poor ape. He chases him through three construction sites and at the third one, Mario removes support pins causing a structural collapse so the gorilla falls three stories onto his head. Mario is such a jerk.

            The cruelty continues in Donkey Kong Jr. where a young ape attempts to free his father from the vile clutches of Mario. Now Mario has caged this poor animal and is trying to kill his son. However, Jr. Triumphs and Mario finally gets his long awaited punishment.

    Mario has shown decades of violence and cruelty to animals. He supports violence in all forms as he has donated his time as a referee to boxing events in Punch Out.