More than Pac-Man with a Bow: Part 2

"Yeah, well, just keep your Power Gloves off her, pal."
- The Wizard, 1987

The character of Princess Peach originated as one of pure captivity: A literal damsel-in-distress, held captive by Donkey Kong, who must be saved by the heroic Jumpman. At the time, her name was simply "The Lady", and her long hair, pink dress, and frequent shouts of "HELP!" communicated all that you needed to know about her: That this was one long haired, pink-dressed lady in serious need of some HELP.

Re-christened as a princess in Super Mario Bros., a crown was added to the number of signs that communicated her character. But it wasn't until the North American port of Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic that she was given legs, so to speak.

While originally Yume Kojo contained characters from a Fuji TV television event, it was Marioified for a North American release as Super Mario Bros. 2. It was in this translation that the character of Lina, a young girl who could fly, was replaced by Princess Peach (or 'Toadstool' in the English version). Grouped alongside Mario, Luigi and Toad, each of these characters range in abilities such as their jump height and ability to lift objects.

The Princess' performance is on par with one might expect from a formerly-distressed-damsel: Peach has the most difficulty lifting objects and had the second-worst jump height, drawbacks that were mitigated through her ability to glide on her dress for short distances.

Though the end result is a playable character that still carries the signified femininity of a captured damsel, the messages that is conveyed treats women as both an exception and a burden: "Women can play games, too... it's just that they're weaker and slower." Even the benefit of being able to glide fits within this negative context. Jumping in the Mario Bros. games was difficult - so difficult that the original version of Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn't ported for fear that certain tricky jumps would frustrate novice North American gamers.

With such footwork an early badge of video game acumen, the idea of a female character - designed in part to appeal to female gamers - who could 'float past' the trickiest sections of the game serves only to re-iterate notions of handicap and inability.

It can be tough hiking up your skirt to make those jumps.

With Peach as a character serving the role of the perennial victim, and her victimhood dependant on notions of female paralysis, notions of gender and ability are inevitably linked. That is, her signified femininity defines not only the ways in which she is rendered incapable, but also sets the context through which she is playable. In Squaresoft's Mario RPG, Peach (as Toadstool) is armed with a wide variety of weapons including a parasol, a hand-fan, a frying pan, and, of course, good ol' fashioned slaps.

In the TOSE-developed Super Princess Peach, Peach is promoted to the role of protagonist, and navigates the game through the power of her emotions. In turns angry, happy, sad and calm, (calm?) each emotion changes music tempo and alters her ability set. Rather than discard the rudimentary signs of a hysterical female, these games extrapolate them to the point of caricature.

Peach, then, proceeds as a hyper-woman: Through femininity, weaponized.


- Rook

Jump, man, jump!

At the dank, cryptic arcade I frequented when I was young, there was one machine that towered above the rest: An original Donkey Kong. Set apart from the other games, it loomed monolithically, promising dark portents to any who dared plumb its depths. I’m talking real “hit a monkey with a bone” stuff, folks. Serious business.

"Huh.. it says 'insert quarter.'"

Despite my fascination, I never touched it. There was always a line of dull-eyed teenagers barring my way, menacingly clutching their cans of New Coke. Instead, I would gaze longingly at the art on the side of the machine, where a lumpy Mario-before-he-was-Mario was shown mid-spring. Underneath was a helpful protip, one as curious as a zen koan: “PRESS A TO MAKE JUMP MAN JUMP.”

It seems like we’ve been making Jump Man jump ever since. Since their inception, there have been video games about navigating space. Even pre-graphics classics like Adventure and Zork have a layout and a sense of motion - so much so that the ultimate threat is for your light to be extinguished, giving you no idea of where you are going. But with the platformer came the final ingredient to the recipe.

There is something supremely satisfying about jumping on a goomba. The way it remains squashed down, comic in defeat, while you spring upward and onward. It has a consistency: elastic, spongy, slightly al dente. (I have always suspected that they would be delicious in an omelet.) Though a lowly peon, one to be stomped with impunity, it has substance in a way the soulless blips of previous games never did.

The moment that physics are brought into the equation, the simple acts of running and jumping conjure a experience of the heft of the game: not simply the presence, but the experience of mass. In learning to move, we are not only learning to control a character but experiencing the scope of the world, the tactile sensations of bashing blocks and kicking about turtle shells. In coming to intuit how a character will jump, swim, fly, we encounter one of the first immersive experiences in gaming: the sensation of existing in a internally-consistent world.

Le saut-homme original.

In these cases the physics represent the grammar of these games, relating a language of motion. How Mario moves about the screen is not merely a character trait, but his essence. Compare to other 2D platform figures like Sonic the Hedgehog, Samus Aran, and Kirby: The way that the characters are defined relates directly to how they navigate their respective spaces.

King mentioned Cave Story in an earlier post, in tandem with Metroid. At first glance they seem to have nothing in common, due to their drastically different visual tones. But in beginning the game, the physical parallels are immediate and unmistakable. In both games you don’t so much jump as glide through the air, drifting in a way that is both crisp and surprisingly graceful. The connection is a kinetic one, as is the realization: “I have moved this way before.” They may not resemble each other, but they speak the same language.

So now we have a slew of 3D platformers, whose successes and failures have hinged upon how well they have provided navigable spaces. We have games like Portal, which translate first-person experiences into experiments with movement and space. We have Little Big Planet, which follows through on earlier experiences of tactile physics. We have Braid, which meta-textually examines this whole “jumping about from ledge to ledge” business we’ve busied ourselves with for decades.

So jump on, Jump Men and Jump Women. O’er pit of spikes, o’er lava deep, jump on. Jump on, Jump ever on, into the future. Because the one thing that we haven’t jumped yet?


THE SHARK.


- Rook

p.s. For an immediate and simple example of what I call heft, consider: Space Invaders don't got none. Asteroids does.