As I mentioned in my memories of Mario Golf Advance, as I got older my video game adventure, as it were, went from one where it was a journey with my brothers to one that became a solo sojourn. With the burgeoning internet at the turn of the millennium, my journey was one of gathering knowledge as well as anything remotely videogame related. Games, consoles, peripherals, food, advertising, clothing, toys, and everything in-between. I feel like I was making up for having very little video game merchandise growing up by buying anything that wasn’t nailed down. (While this has borne certain fruits in recent years reselling on Ebay, most of it I still own.)
So, given we didn’t own a Super Nintendo growing up, many of the games and accessories that came out for that console were unknown to me. One such accessory was the Super Scope. The successor to the Light Gun (aka Zapper) for the Super Nintendo, the Super Scope was intended to be the next big thing in light gun technology.
So, as I learned about the Super Scope and its history, I came across compatible SNES games for it for extremely cheap. Like 0.99 cheap. And I found several Super Scopes complete in box. So, wanting to try out this new gun, I bought it all. (A process repeated with the Sega Menacer years later).
The game that initially caught my attention after the Super Scope Six video game that reminded me of the Police Trainer arcade cabinet, was Yoshi’s Safari. Because it involved Mario, wielding a gun. Yoshi’s Safari is a genre that Super Mario has really never ventured into outside of this game: Shooters.
Anyone who has spent 5 minutes on the internet knows how we adult gamers love to re-imagine ‘kiddy’ games as dark and gritty universes full of darkness, death, and teenage angst.
But beyond that, the idea of a rail shooter interested me as well as the game using the same technology that had blown my mind years earlier when my family went to visit relatives in Kansas and, during a massive blizzard, I was introduced to F-Zero for the first time.
Yoshi’s Safari has always interested me because, in a franchise that that has explored practically every genre imaginable (as evinced by this MAR10 event) shooters of any kind do not really exist within the Mario franchise and, if not created to try and push units, I doubt Yoshi’s Safari would exist either. The fact that this is one of a handful of games that utilizes Mode 7 graphics also adds to its uniqueness.
The relative obscurity of Yoshi’s Safari is a result, I think, of the fact that the shooter genre and what Mario represents will always be at odd with one another from now until the end of gaming. Sure, you have Super Smash Brothers, and that involves violence, fighting, etc., but it is a different violence than a character going through various levels with a gun shooting things. Mario with a gun is like trying to divide by zero. You just don’t do it.
Granted, the ‘bullets’ in Yoshi’s Safari are colored globules and there isn’t any blood. But still. It made for an interesting and novel gaming experience. It is essentially Super Mario World distilled down into a 60 minute FPS experience.
That is much of what defined those lonely years traversing the video game landscape alone; uncovering new gaming experiences new and old. From the Virtual Boy to SimPark, from Ratchet and Clank to bootleg NES games, I tried anything I could get my hands on. Before youtube and endless commentary about everything video game related, my journey was a more personal one and, perhaps, a more solitary one as a result. I had few people to share my discoveries with. This changed as the years past, but this window in time in my adolescence is one marked by exploration, experimentation, and defining my tastes and enjoyments (in gaming of course 😉 )
Yoshi’s Safari is but one game among many that were the outliers, waiting to be discovered by gaming explorers. It is a game I am glad I discovered. It is worth a play, and I recommend setting out on a journey to play it yourself.
The Arcade Mage loves video games new and old, cutting his teeth on the Atari 2600 and enjoying his senescence (i.e. 30s) with the Playstation VR. When he isn’t playing video games, or hanging out with his cat Belle (A level 17 Meowirror of Light), he can be found at www.arcadecastle.com. The Arcade Mage has the largest collection of video game licensed board games on the planet, and his website is the nexus of research into these games. How do you transform a video game into a board game experience? Can it be done? With a podcast, youtube videos, reviews, and news on this subject, The Arcade Mage attempts to understand video game history through the lens of the tabletop.
Wahoo! You are a Super Reader! But the adventure doesn’t stop here… There’s more of this project in another castle! This article is just one level in an entire Super Mario Multiverse, a galactic collaboration between writers around the world sharing a bit of our hearts and memories about our favorite Mario games. Visit the Center of the Multiverse to see more:
