Do you like Mario Kart Wii? I like Mario Kart Wii and I have always loved the series. Part of what makes it so popular, aside from it being yet another Mario spin off, is the fact that the race tracks have just as much personality as the characters screeching across them. Fans of the series seem to dream up wondrous Plato like responses to the meanings behind each course and that’s why Nintendo puts so much effort into constantly rebuilding the retro tracks.
So I’m only slightly surprised to have some form of emotion over the Daisy track. At first I thought it was just because it’s serene, calm and is a circuit generally full of happiness but the more I pondered on it, the more I kept coming back to its central image- a golden statue of Princess Daisy dancing with Luigi; the first real, solid, visual evidence of these two characters being romantically involved. This piece of background detail in the Mario universe is the equivalent of Moulder and Scully, Frodo and Sam, Ron and Hermione and well…you get the idea. To the people who have lives: us Mario fans have been ruminating over the Luigi and Daisy pairing for almost over a decade now… OK this may require some explaining:
Daisy first enters the Mario universe in Super Mario Land where, instead of rescuing Princess Peach in the Mushroom Kingdom, you’re sent to the neighbouring Sarasaland to rescue Daisy… who looks just like Peach but we’re informed she is totally different because her clothes are a different colour. Soon after that she appeared on the NES Open golf game where she was Luigi’s caddy- this was the first time these characters were paired in any way. Not long after that the god aweful Mario live action movie opted to use Daisy as there leading Princess- please remember that at this point Peach was still known as ‘Princess Toadstool’ and a movie focused on dinosours and a lack of mushrooms would have made Peach’s mention rather awkward. Interestingly, they made Daisy the love interest of Luigi and not Mario. And then… Daisy fell off the face of the earth until the multiplayer Mario party games stacked up and Nintendo dropped her back in to make up for the lack of female heroes. With Luigi still single and a spare Princess running around, it became commonly accepted that the two had hooked up at some point.
The angle here is a joke on Luigi’s percieved Third Wheel stature- the notion that he is the buddy or brother of a megastar who hooks him up with an aqueintance of another megastar...call me a romantic, but I always liked to consider it in less cynical terms:
Maybe it was more like Daisy and Luigi kept running into one another socially at parties or charity conventions or whatever else you get dragged along to when you’re the sibling/ best friend of the Brad and Angelina of the video game world. You know, maybe they got talking about sidekick stuff, had some drinks, started doing stuff independantly of their richer halves and realised ‘hey, there’s something there.’ Doesn’t that sound nicer?
And the statue kind of backs me up about this. I mean, it’s a statue! You know what that says to me? It says that Daisy is so thrilled to be in love that she commissioned a public project to memorialise it: this is someone who doesn’t take romance for granted. Do you see Peach erecting statues to Mario? No and you wont- Peach is the kind of girl who feels she is always entitled to be adored: “Oh of course Mario loves me I’m the fucking Princess, hello?!” I’m sure it’s a great relationship but Mario and Peach are probably like an old married couple when they hang out but Daisy and Luigi are the ones who sneak off and baby talk like teenagers, aww.
The gaming world is full of romantic also-rans really; characters whose romantic goals don’t or nearly don’t work out for based on their hierarchy. You know who I always felt bad for? Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII: she’s smart, she’s practical, she’s tough, she’s got technical know-how and she’s got her own money. Tifa’s got a lot going on but she’s all alone with a welcome mat for Cloud who’s at best oblivious to it. The girl practically has ‘Free Lunch’ stamped on her forehead but he would rather mope around and be emo. What the fuck, right?! Tifa is the perfect woman for a typical Square Enix sad-sac like the young Mr Strife; maternal enough to snuggle up to after his latest Sephiroth related nightmare but strong enough to knock the bell jar out of his hands once in a while and make him get his shit together. This is exactly the type of woman emo brats like Cloud should be pursuing; she’ll make a man out of you as we say.
But you know who gets it the worst? Amy Rose from the Sonic the Hedgehog games. She’s technically Sonics love interest, but she gets very little of love. No, I’m not talking about from Sonic- he basically ignores her because he’s the ‘cool mascot’ and, well, girls are icky. Amy’s overlooking comes from Sonic fans because a pretty large number of them refuse to acknowledge her. They would rather see Sonic be paired up with Sally who isn’t even in the games! Sally is Sonics girlfriend from the Saturday morning cartoon and she has never been in a Sonic game save for a few meaningless cameos. Seeing as the games were hardly heavy on story, fans decided to pick up on the shows narratives instead to the extent where, when Amy first appeared in the games, the manual called her Sally…that kind of sucks for her don’t you think?
So err, I’ll be honest guys: I have got no clue as to where the punch line is or how I am supposed to wrap this one up so instead I’m going to clean up some business from last time:
1) Africa is a continent, not a country. I pooped, it was embarrassing and my bad… it wont happen again and I’m sorry if I offended an Africans or geographers.
2) For those who messaged me, asking why I didn’t insult Jewish people- Judaism is a religion, not a race. You pooped, it’s embarrassing and your bad. I hope it never happens again.
3) To those bilingual chaps out their- I speak only one language, therefore my Polish will not be grammatically perfect in any way, shape or form. We cool?