He is clearly helping retain the absolute monarchy in power.
Bowser is not a freedom fighter either, he is comprador. But like all compradors, he doesn’t know it. He thinks once the USA lets him have power, he will be rich. In truth he is a Batista, only allowed in power if he succeeds and deposed as soon as he stops being useful.
How do you think he’s recruiting all the goombas and koopas for his army? And their weapons? Not to mention the logistics of maintaining and deploying such an army. Of course he has an international backer.
If Mario was a communist, he would let the bourgeoisie fight while building dual power with the many minorities of the mushroom kingdom’s past imperialist conquests.
To also settle this question, toads are NOT class-conscious workers. They are the elite, loyal guards of the monarchy (see the Sunshine leaks for example: Toads formed the Princess’ escort during her vacation to US-aligned Delfino island). They are a fiercely loyal, fascist guard meant to quell any worker uprising. Is it any surprise that this guard is all picked from the same ethnic group? Much like Banderites and Azovites in Ukraine, they have a few pogroms under their belt and terrorise civilians of the Mushroom Kingdom. Hopefully the opening up of the kingdom’s archives after a socialist revolution will shed some light on events that still have no conclusive answers.
In this struggle, you might think the monarchy is the progressive force compared to whatever the comprador Bowser will enact with help from the great Satan. It is true in a way, but this would ignore that the US is actually funding BOTH Bowser AND the Monarchy!
Much like Afghanistan or Cuba in their time, the US through the CIA and NED is funding everyone and their mother and will formalise relations with whichever group comes out on top.
The Mushroom Kingdom is not being funded, you say? Then how do they rebuild so fast after Bowser shells the country and the royal capital? The mushroom kingdom has no natural resources and their economy is predicated on tourism – what little there is. There is no conceivable way they should be as wealthy as they are.
Where do you think Bowser gets his bombs and weapons? In this way the USA is double-dipping: first it sells weapons to Bowser, then it sells loans to the monarchy to rebuild the damage those bombs caused. This is a Syrian scenario and is nothing out of the ordinary for Amerika.
In this analysis, Mario might be the synthetic left, appropriating common communist symbols (such as the color red) to prevent class-consciousness from forming and redirecting any revolutionary urge into the “left-wing” of the monarchy. He might as well be funded by the CIA for all we know.
It’s free (and open-source), so you might as well try it. You can switch to 3D models if you prefer that over the sprites
(I heard that the 3D parts of Sonic Generations were good, although very different from the style of the Adventure games)
Agreed but I recently broke my laptop so I’m PC-less currently 😭
So my gripe with the boost games like generations is it reduces what was a platformer in the adventure, heroes and even shadow the edgehog to essentially temple run on steroids. Like there’s very little need to steer as the sides of the level keep you mostly on track so it just becomes hold boost button, l1 and r1 to temple run side step past obstacles and occasionally jump.
Thing is I’d still enjoy the ridiculous element of speed in them but the forced 2D section in the 3D levels are like my biggest pet hate. We have classic sonic and sonic games for 2d, why force 3d sonic into a 2d section when the whole point of the game is to go fast? It kills and pace in the levels as you have to dead stop to do crappy platforming with 3d sonic controls which aren’t exactly tuned well for it. That and the fact that all the 2d sections throw environment out the window and look like they are made using a Mario level maker just sticking floating blocks and random spike balls in as arbitrary hazards djejwjrjejfjejfjejdjwjfe.
It’s why I was so hopefully for sonic omens another fan game as it was boost sonic but different where you HAD to steer not to fall off the level and sonic could actually turn and no forced 2d sections. I adored the first couple of levels but that game kinda went off a cliff in terms of quality and loads of controversy kicked off about the devs being dickheads and a very sus texture hidden in the game files so I deleted it.
I know I sound like a proper adventure purist but for context I did play generations to death and had a top 200 time on rooftop run so it’s not like I didn’t play them and got all G*mer about it but yeah… if people like then that’s cool I just miss adventure.
Sounds like you’d like Robo Blast 2 in that case.
I fully agree! It’s on my list of things to do after I crawl out of bed and stop feeling sorry for myself.
First on the list would be getting another laptop, I assume
Money is a considerable factor 😔
I recommend getting a used one, unless you’re planning on playing really demanding games. You can probably get a decent laptop that’ll play most older games (definitely Robo Blast 2, and maybe newer games on low settings, depending on how well optimized they are) on eBay or something like that. Depends on what specifications you’re used to on your current laptop
It’s one of those where I should really invest in a good desktop for when a PC game I want to smash that’s demanding comes out but yikes the money.
Yeah I’ll give it a look but that’s months down the line in terms of finance for me sadly.
Desktops are much cheaper than laptops for the initial purchase, but the electricity cost will be much higher (the wattage on a desktop PSU is often around 600-700W, although it will mostly use significantly less)
I’m currently writing this on a 15-year-old laptop and it can play Robo Blast 2 reasonably well (the framerate is capped to 30, which isn’t ideal for high-speed games)