not being in to the backstories that much, I have 2 questions about nintendo games:
I’ve started playing Metroid with Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. Now that Echoes is out, I read again that Samus Aran is a bounty hunter. Where does this description come from? So far I’ve only killed space pirates in Metroid Prime and never once collected any bounty. Was there a prize on Mother Brain’s head or where did this whole bounty hunter business come from?
Don’t know enough Metroid history to answer #1, but I can answer #2.
Their surname is Mario. Hence, Mario Mario and Luigi Mario, “The Mario Brothers.”
I don’t remember it coming up in the games, but it’s made painfully obvious in the movie, “The Super Mario Brothers,” where they actually introduce themselves that way.
Ah, thanks for the answer. Mario brothers, now that makes sense. Although I can’t shake the feeling that they came up with the “Mario Mario” explanation afterwards and didn’t plan for Mario to be the surname from the start (it sounds odd somehow).
But her grudge against the Space Pirates is personal. They wiped out her family and the space colony they were on (she was resuced by the Chozo, who altered her genome and gave her the suit). It’s hinted that she was in the military, but left because she had problems with authority.
I think we’re to assume that when she isn’t on planet-spanning maze quests she’s hunting down lowlives in seedy bars across the galaxy. In the first game’s story (manual text), there was a bounty on Mother Brain, Ridley, and Kraid because they were the leaders of the Space Pirates, but the money doesn’t matter with regards to the plot. The other games could be seen as “tying up loose ends”/“enemies back with a vengeance”/“this time it’s personal” and she could be doing it pro bono (except for Fusion, and the Federation really screwed her over on that one - though the advanced medical treatment probably pays for it).
I guess they’re also not going to be showing the downtime between missions, in which she uses the vast sums of money she’d get from hunting down criminals to buy new spaceships, get wasted, and employ the services of Jude Law lookalike sex droids.
That’s my suspicion as well. I imagine it went something like this: (1) They came up with a character called Mario. (2) They made a game called Mario Brothers featuring this character and his brother. (3) Someone said, “Hey, how come they’re the ‘Mario Brothers’ if that’s his first name?” (4) They decided that was his last name too.
This is just a guess of course. But I’m pretty sure Mario predates the game Mario Brothers – didn’t he first appear in Donkey Kong? So I at least have the order of (1) and (2) right (unless the character was unnamed in Donkey Kong).
I believe Mario’s archetype back in Donkey Kong was named either Jump man or Stanley. And it was an ENTIRELY different princess he was rescuing (guess she ran off with the ape in the end :eek: ).
Samus’s original job was as a Bounty Hunter. But the whole presence/concept of the Metroids kind of complicated her career choice. I really got a kick out of the ‘baby’ Metroid that followed her like she was its ‘mommy’ (talk about bizarre) but it lead to a great plot twist in Super Metroid.
I’d like to see some kind of ‘mercenary-oriented’ game with Samus in a more Bounty Hunter type of way. Kind of more on the ‘Boba Fett’ end of the bounty hunter scale.
IIRC, the girl was named Daisy, and she was just his girlfriend. Presumably, their relationship did not survive repeated kidnappings by the Big Hairy One.
Also, remember Donkey Kong Junior, where Mario is the villain, and DK’s son is rescuing him from Mario?
There have been plenty of Donkey Kong games since then, but what happened to the kid? :dubious:
According to official Nintendo history, Mario has always been called Mario, since the first development of the Donkey Kong game. He was named for Mario Segali, the landlord of Nintendo of America’s NY headquarters building. And his girlfriend’s name was Pauline.
Stanley was a different character entirely, no relation to Mario, who appeared as the protagonist of Donkey Kong 3 in arcades in 1983.
A complete history of the game from it’s earliest development can be found here. It’s a fascinating read.
The Donkey Kong Country games feature Donkey Kong, who is actually the real Donkey Kong’s grandson! Donkey Kong Senior is named ‘Cranky’ Kong, and in the original Donkey Kong Country game, he used to ramble about the ‘state of affairs’ ‘back in his day’ which was pretty funny.
I guess unsucessfully climbing shoddily-built skyscrapers just drove the poor ape insane. Maybe he went crazy when Daisy and Princess Peach turned out to be an item…hey, it could happen! :mad:
