“The Center of the Super Mario Multiverse!”

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms… But to carry on into middle life… this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

When I was ten, or close to it, I sat on the floor with my brother and my best friend, Jacob. Sheets of paper covered with our scrawling lay around us, their blank faces staring full of endless possibilities. We were taping papers together for this, our magnum opus: Super “Mario Universe”.

So enamored were we, young game designers and game critics, that we wanted to increase our love for the game Super Mario World by recreating it. No. By improving it. At least that’s what we thought. Our own imaginary game, this Super Mario Universe, had longer and more treacherous levels, fiercer enemies, bigger villains, deeper secrets, vertical-scrolling shmup stages, RPG elements, custom characters… everything we could imagine.

How delighted I am all these years later to present a new magnum opus: Super Mario Multiverse. I don’t know what happened to all those papers with their drawings and doodles, but their memory buried itself deep in my heart until this very moment when I needed it most.

But just what is Super Mario Multiverse?

It is a massive collaboration between bloggers, writers, critics, reviewers, content creators, musicians, and fans: over 100 writers from around the world, 123 articles and posts of all kinds describing history, development, architecture, memories, personal stories, fan fiction, poetry, and prose! This is the biggest written celebration of Super Mario in history!

I checked!

Since about August of 2019 when I began planning this collab, several people have asked me: “Red, why? Why do this to yourself?”

I get it. It’s not a cakewalk putting something like this together, mobilizing and organizing over 100 people I’ve never met. But we did it because we all love Super Mario. That’s what this is about. Super Mario Multiverse celebrates the joy, the imagination, the magic, the lasting impact of Mario and friends.

I defy any descriptions of Super Mario and his games and world as basic, average, or normal. We are merely spoiled by having known Super Mario and his games for so long! Besides, how many people do you know who are as relentlessly cheerful, as full of joy despite the challenges before them, as energetic, selfless, heroic, and good as Super Mario? I doubt you can think of many. Mario, as an archetype, is the ultimate virtuous hero, whom we could all stand to be more like. Mario remains an inspiration, and furthermore, he’s fun.

There’s no shame in playing games to have fun! Stories are great, performances are great, huge giant intricate game worlds are great, but what’s the point if you’re not having fun? That’s why Super Mario has been around for so long and why he isn’t going anywhere any time soon. My kids, already enamored with Super Mario games like I was when I was a kid, will be enjoying new Super Mario games after I’m too old to see them anymore.

Super Mario is one of the few constants in the rapidly evolving gaming industry, present in every generation of gaming since his inception, an icon, a monument. I challenge you to name another franchise with a comparable number of games under its belt that has enjoyed as much quality and as many beloved entries for so long.

Super Mario and his many friends and enemies mean a lot to people of all ages across the globe. This is more than just nostalgia. Nostalgia pales in comparison to what Mario really represents. This character, defeating our adultishness with his brazen smile and his abject simplicity, is our portal back to childhood, to our own simplicity.

Never close that door.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2020 but will be updated on a yearly basis to reflect new entries and discoveries in the vast Super Mario gaming franchise.

Here’s what we have for you to enjoy today:

You may browse the Super Mario Multiverse collab via the navigation buttons below. Each one will take you to a different section of the collab and accompanying posts for games in the Mario franchise organized by genre category. You may also check out “Complete” to view the entire catalog of Mario games, noting that we included as many as we could, though not all games received a writer and a post in time for this event. We excluded a few games here or there and included some which may make you scratch your head, but all in all, the purpose was to have fun more so than be technical.

If you have an article or post about a game that’s not been covered in this collab (check our Master List), you can contact me to have your content featured in this collab, too! I’ll link right to it.

Speaking of being technical, not everybody who joined would self-describe as a writer, but we didn’t prevent anyone from joining this collab. I felt that Super Mario himself would welcome anyone, whether they wrote for years or were brand new to writing online, whether English was their first language or not, and so on. Mario wouldn’t turn anyone away.

It’s in that spirit that I welcome you to the Super Mario Multiverse collab. A special thank you to everyone who helped put this together, and to Nintendo and to Shigeru Miyamoto for bringing us this character… thank you very much!

Enjoy!

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Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage, Mage Cast, or Story Mode.