Linking Together Mushroom Kingdom

N

NealP

Goomba
What would you think if one day Nintendo decided to finally create some continuity amongst all of its Mushroom World games (Mario/Wario/Luigi/Peach/Donkey Kong/Yoshi games)?

For instance, if Stanley (the bug-man) was made Mario's cousin. (the similar overalls and eye design make this possible)

Or if Booster was made Wario's cousin. (similar nose and beard)

Would you care if they created a timeline for all the games and confirmed all the little connections we always assumed? Not even necessarily in a game - perhaps a Mushroom World encyclopedia connecting everything together?

I'm not the fan-fiction type to sit down and try to create a whole timeline myself like many Zelda fans do. However, I do find little connections interesting as they create a sort of subtle continuity we don't always realize outright.

What connections have you noticed? Would you care if Nintendo finally made sense of all the characters that come and go with a timeline/family trees/etc?
 
How do we know Stanley is 'officially' Mario's cousin?

And one theory I have about the timeline placement of Sports/Kart/Party titles and why everyone is a lot nicer to each other (as in, depending upon the game Bowser/Mario may have to work together) is this:

The sports/party/kart titles take place in the future and are the furthest into the future events of all the games.

Bowser finally stops trying to kidnap Peach and there are no other new villains/foes for Mario and his comrades - so instead, they initiate races/parties/sports matches to feed Bowser's need for competition and keep Mario and pals from being bored since they got so used to adventure.

A while after I came up with this theory I saw "The Sky Crawlers" and it was interesting because (spoiler alert):








for much of the movie we think there is a war going between two countries on but we find out the war is fake. We find out that true war ended years earlier but people cannot thrive in a peaceful world so this 'company' must invent a war like a game just to sate people's bloodlust/desire for controversy.
 
While I certainly would have liked this if they had done it from the beginning, I don't think it would be possible to create a large coherent timeline that makes sense now. There is so many different Mario games with even more contradictions, trying to create a functional world out of all of them would result in something convoluted and weird. Look what happened to the Zeldaa series with all that alternate timeline nonsense.

So, no thanks. The carriage is already too deep in the mud. Although I'd certainly like a little more consistency...
 
Hmm, I can see it getting convoluted but for the most part I think they could properly match everything up.

I think what would be the nicest thing, however, would be less one-off characters.

Nintendo keeps creating new characters with each game, many of which fans love - and then dumps them, never to be heard from/seen of again.

Some 'obscure' characters I am a fan of that will probably never be seen again:

Perry the Parasol (Super Princess Peach)
Lubba (Super Mario Galaxy 2)
Yoshi Island Spirits (Yoshi's Topsy-Turvy)
Booster (Super Mario RPG)
Princess Shokora (Wario Land 4)
E. Gadd (Luigi's Mansion)

There are more... it's just irritating to find a character enjoyable but then they just never return again. This is not a problem in other long-running platforming franchises. Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon - those characters come back again and again.
 
Sonic, Crash, and Spyro are the heroes of their series, so of course they come back (just like Mario does). I'm not too familiar with either of these series, but I always thought the Sonic franchise had the same problem, with dumping old fan-favorite characters in favor of generic new ones. The chances that I am wrong here are astronomic though, since I've never played a single Sonic game in my whole life.
 
I thought we saw Professer E. Gadd twice. Once in Super Mario Sunshine as the creator of Flood, as well as Luigi's Mansion.

I do agree with you however in that they should go back and reuse the characters and lore they already have and give it more depth. I would love to see them bring it all together somehow.
 
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