Philips CDI review: part 2 what have Philips done to mario?
So anyway, before we get to the Zelda CDI games, let's talk about Hotel Mario. As the game begins, you get a really cheesy cutscene. The story is that Mario and Luigi are heading to a picnic that Princess Peach invited them to. Bowser has kidnapped Peach, AGAIN, and holds her hostage in one of his seven (your not even gonna believe this) koopa hotels, and Mario and Luigi have to go through all 7 to find her. Have you noticed yet how crap the animation is on the cutscenes yet? This was in the 90s, so I expect more from the graphics! The CDI's predesesor, the SNES had better graphics than this!
The gameplay is NOT what you would expect, I mean with a title like "Hotel Mario", I probably would't know what to expect but not this (and this is even more unbelievable than the hotels): shutting doors? Yes, that's it, your main objective on each level is to shut all the doors on the screen before time runs out. Maybe they could have thought of something more original like "Kill all the koopa troopers and goombas" but, shut doors?!?!?!?!? And if that sounds like fun, it's even more fun when the doors keep opening again! Just when you think that your about to shut the last door and advance to the next level, another door opens and by the time you go and close that one, ANOTHER ONE OPENS!!!!!! And you won't believe this, this is all you do for the WHOLE GAME!!!!
What about the power-ups? Well first there are the coins. In most mario games, you get a 1-up for every 100 coins you get but guess how many you need for a 1-up in this game? 30. WHAT THE F***!?!?!?!? Then there's the mushroom, which at first you avoid cause they look like the shrooms (poisionous mushrooms) from Super mario bros: the lost levels (The real Super Mario bros 2, only released in Japan if you remember my Super Mario bros 2 (North America) review). Normally in Mario games, you collect a mushroom, you grow big, but that doesn't happen in this game, it instead makes Mario's pants glow. Yes.....I know. The fireflower makes Mario look like what he looks like when the picks up the fireflower in other Mario games so that's fine but he still has the radioactive pants.
The sound: horrific! When Mario jumps, he sounds like he's farting! Then there's the one piece of music that they play throughout most of the game, it loops OVER AND OVER AGAIN! It makes my freaking ears bleed!
Also, there always seems to be someone in your way for example, if you jump at the wrong time, you hit a goomba on the ledge above you and die. But thankfully you can hide in the doors on the elevators, which helps out a bit. And coming to that, the elevators are self explanatory. Where the arrow on them points is simple: they go up if the arrow points up, the arrow points down, they go down, but the controls for operating these things take some time to get used to: by instinct, if i see a down arrow, I press down, but that's not how it works: you have to hit up, regardless of which elevator your in front off and when you get to the desired floor, your in that hiding postition and depending on which elevator your hiding in, you have to hit up or down to step out. For example, if your hidding on an elevator that goes down, if you press down to step out, you don't leave the elevator, you go down to the elevator below you that goes up. So, you have to hit up to step out of the down arrow elevators and when you go down into an elevator that goes up, to step out, you press down. That's f***ing confusing! I asked text to try it out and what happened? Yeah, he lost it and went insane. "I sure did" And often, the elevators don't take you where you think they would!
Overall, Hotel Mario isn't actually as bad as some people say it is. Don't get me wrong, it's still a piece of s*** but it has some appeal. Originally, they planned to do a sequel to "Super Mario wrold". Yeah, it was supposed to be called "Super Mario's wacky worlds" but that was cancelled and what we got instead was this game. End of story.
Final score:
Graphics: 1/5
Sound: 1/5
Gameplay: 0/5
Entertainment: 0/5
Overall: 2/20
Tune in for part 3, 4 and 5, we're gonna be talking about the Zelda CDI games!