Ten Features in Mario Games that Should Never Have Been Used

2010 is set to be a big year for Mario. Not only will the original Super Mario Bros. turn 25, but at least one new Mario game-Super Mario Galaxy 2-will be released for Mario fans young and old alike to enjoy. Over the years, many features in Mario games have proved to be useful and enjoyable. However, there have been times when features come along that are poorly implemented in a variety of ways. The following list will contain, in no particular order, ten features in Mario games (in the main series, official spin offs, and non-canon games) that should not have been created or could have been better utilized. The list is as follows...

Super Mario Bros. 3: Lack of a Save Feature: With over 90 stages, Super Mario Bros. 3 is a fairly large game for its time. While you can find ways to skip a lot of the stages, those who wish to visit every single one of them will be upset to learn that you cannot save your progress and come back to it later. You must beat the game in a single sitting, and doing this can take hours that a person may lack. This glaring oversight, which is really the only problem with this otherwise amazing game, would be fixed in the Super NES and Game Boy Advance versions, and the Wii Virtual Console port has a suspend feature that lets you save and continue the game right where you left off. Even so, Nintendo could have easily taken the time to add a save feature and save players the trouble of finishing the game without having to turn the NES off.

Mario Kart Double Dash:Blue Shell Attacks: In the higher difficulty levels of this game, staying in first place can be very difficult. Opponents whiz past you and send projectiles at you, but the worst comes when someone tosses a blue shell at you. These shells home in on whoever is in first place at the time, and when it hits, you will lose a substantial amount of time, and your chances of placing first will be much smaller or vanish completely. Blue shells can also hit your opponents if they are in first place, but their appearance is completely random, making the races more luck-based than skill-based. Good luck getting gold trophies in the harder modes, as the blue shells can make that task that much harder.

Super Mario Sunshine: The Blue Coin Side Quest: While many of the game's Shine Sprites can be acquired by solving puzzles, defeating bosses, finishing mini games, etc., some of them can be purchased with blue coins hidden in each world. However, Nintendo really dropped the ball by adding this side quest. For one thing, trading blue coins in for Shine Sprites seems to be an artificial way of adding sprites without adding more worlds, as if Nintendo was rushing the game out to retailers. Also, the coins are very well scattered in various missions, so much so that it can be tough to keep track of which coins can be acquired in which episodes. Worst is that many of the coins appear when you do things that you may not even think about doing otherwise. Add the lack of hints as to where to find the coins, and you have a side quest that may be tough or impossible to complete without the aid of a strategy guide. Nintendo should have axed the blue coin system and simply added more worlds and more challenges to earn Shine Sprites.

Mario Party: Excessive Control Stick Rotation: As fun and addictive as this first entry in the long-running party game series was, one feature would be almost guaranteed to destroy either your controller or your hands. A number of mini games required you to rotate the Control Stick, often aggressively, in order to be victorious. People who resorted to using the palms of their hands to rotate the stick could be injured, forcing Nintendo to issue a warning against doing this. Subsequent Mario Party games would eliminate the idea of rotating the Control Stick excessively, but the first game remains notorious for including such a painful feature.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: Mario the Crybaby: When Baby Mario is on Yoshi's back, he is quiet and well-behaved. It is when he is knocked off the dinosaur's back that he starts crying really loud. This crying can be rather annoying, and potentially induce headaches. It is worst when the timer that counts down the seconds until Mario is kidnapped reaches ten seconds or less, as Mario cries even more. I know the game is trying to warn me to save Mario before it is too late, but surely a less annoying feature could have been used for this purpose. Yoshi's Island is still a terrific game, but I could have done without the excessive crying.

Super Mario 64: The Camera System: This first 3D Mario game was experimental in a lot of ways, including the camera system. Unfortunately, the camera was not always as useful as it should have been. At times, it was tricky to rotate the camera to make it so that you could easily make a particularly tricky jump. Objects could obstruct your view on some occasions, and Mario's head would be in the way while you were examining your surroundings. The camera system would improve in later games, and I commend Nintendo for attempting to learn what does and does not work for cameras, but this first attempt could have been better.

Mario is Missing: Quiz Time: When you retrieve a stolen artifact from a Koopa, you will need to bring it back to its rightful place. However, you cannot just simply hand over the item, as Princess Peach (or at least someone who looks like her) wants to ensure that you are not holding a fake item by asking you questions related to the artifact. You can read an article that contains some of the answers to the questions, but other answers must be researched outside of the game or selected through trial and error. Get a question wrong, and you will be unable to try again for about a minute or so. This slows the pace of the game considerably, and since the majority of the game has you answering questions, you will get very bored very quickly.

Super Mario Advance 4: The E-Reader Levels: This remake of Super Mario Bros. 3 allowed players to access levels not found in the original game. The catch was that entering these special stages required them to use the e-Reader and special cards to unlock them. Having to buy additional accessories just to enter new levels is a hassle. What's worst is that outside of Japan, many of the new levels were unavailable, as Nintendo quietly dropped e-Reader support, preventing the release of more level cards. The company could have easily made the new stages available by beating the main adventure or finishing every normal stage, but they did not do so.

Super Paper Mario: The Lengthy Block Code: While exploring Chapter 5, you will come across a trio of blocks that, when hit in the proper order, will enable you to continue your quest. The problem is that you could hit them many times and still not get anywhere until you speak with a caveman who offers to tell you the right code. Not only must you say please to him too many times, but when he tells you the code, it is so long and complicated that you will likely have to write it down just to memorize it. You could always consult a guide for the code to save you the trouble in the first place, but Nintendo and Intelligent Systems should have known better than to make a puzzle more complicated than it needed to be.

Super Mario Advance series: Mario Bros.: All four Super Mario Advance games, as well as Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, contained a multiplayer game in the form of Mario Bros., based on the 1983 arcade game. The problem was that the same version was used in all four titles. Nintendo made no attempt whatsoever to either add features from other Mario games every time or include other multiplayer games. This is pure laziness at its worst, and made the games' respective single player adventures far more attractive than their multiplayer features. Including Mario Bros. once was fine, but all of the other times was merely a waste of precious game space.

So there you have it...ten features from Mario games that should have been improved upon or should never have been included. Some are minor complaints that do little, if anything, to ruin the game, but others can really spoil the enjoyment of players everywhere. Who knows what other methods Nintendo will use to annoy players in future Mario games? Hopefully, they will make every Mario game from now on absolutely perfect and never come up with features such as these ever again. Meanwhile, beware the features that I have mentioned, as they can be a real pain.