Day by day, big screen video game adaptations are a sad (or happy, depending on who you ask) routine. From ‘Detective Pikachu’ to ‘Uncharted’ through ‘Mortal Kombat’, ‘Sonic’ or even the future ‘Gran Turismo’, the cinema has been slow to find the key to press to make a coherent and respectful version far from those ‘Street Fighter’, ‘Double Dragon’ or ‘Super Mario Bros’ that caused so many nightmares in the mid-90s. However, few remember that all this boom began in 1986… exclusively in Japan.
Mamma mia!
With the new Mario brothers movie about to hit our theaters, it is the perfect time to meet the heroes’ first foray onto the big screen, a milestone that is at the same time the first audiovisual version of Super Mario Bros, the first film based on a video game and the first isekai in a virtual world. Its title, ‘Super Mario Bros: Peach-hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen!’ or, what has been the same, ‘Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach!’.
In 1985, ‘Super Mario Bros’, the original platform game we all know, debuted on the NES. It was such a success that in just one year Nintendo developed the much more complicated ‘Super Mario Bros 2’ (known internationally as ‘The lost levels’) for the, let’s call it that, “disketera” of the NES (Famicom Disk System). The game introduced novelties such as poisonous mushrooms and, although it didn’t initially leave Japan due to the frustrating nature of its continuous deaths, Nintendo decided to promote it in style.
Grouper Studios, founded by two former Sanrio workers, took its first step in animation with this adaptation of a video game for which, paradoxically, there was no established lore of any kind yet. All the creators knew was that Mario and Luigi saved Princess Peach, trapped by Koopa, killing different enemies and going through various phases. Our heroes could modify their bodies with the mushroom, the flower, and if they were lucky, the star. And with this, they had to put together an hour of film. Don’t be surprised if it’s the weirdest piece of video game history you see in 2023.
We are the mushrooms
In the first scene, Mario plays the NES all night until a princess comes out of the screen and is kidnapped by the evil Koopa with the intention of a forced marriage. The princess leaves behind only a brooch that the future plumber, in love with her, uses to keep her continually in her mind. The next day, in the grocery store he runs with his brother, who is dressed in his classic purple jumpsuitMario makes the decision to go to the world of the video game and save Peach with the help of Luigi and a kind of worm that serves as a pet.
It is true that the film allows itself a number of artistic liberties that Nintendo would not allow now, but it is also true that He was leaving ideas that were used later in the saga, such as being able to control Lakitu’s cloud or grab Koopa by the tail to throw him away, something that they would inherit in ‘Super Mario 64’. Is it good? No, under no circumstances. If you are a fan of the saga, do you have to see it? Of course, especially since it was uploaded to YouTube in 4K (I’ll tell you more about this later). Never has a more mediocre product received such stellar treatment.
‘Super Mario Bros: The Big Mission to Rescue Princess Peach!’ premiered on July 20, 1986 in Sochiku theaters in a double session together with, believe it or not, a video-guide to pass ‘The lost levels’. This promotion thing still had to be perfected. On the same day, ‘Running boy: Star Soldier no Himitsu’, an adaptation of ‘Star Soldier’, whose first game came out that same year, was released. Both are, for two years, the first movies based on video games. The honor of being next goes to ‘Mirai Ninja’, a live-action direct-to-video Japanese film adapting Namco’s arcade.
dancing a goomba
Throughout the film it is curious to see how there is absolutely shameless advertising for other products of the character: Mario and Luigi hit a block, Mario ramen comes out and they eat it saying “This is very good guys” while winking at the camera. At the time, obviously, it was on sale as soon as the fans left the theater. It was not the only merchandising related to the film that went on sale: the Japanese were able to buy everything from the (extremely strange) soundtrack to the official manga, including riddle books.
Perhaps, seen now, what is most shocking about the film is that, in the end, Peach does not have an affair with Mario, but with a generic anime prince named Haru who has the same medallion. For whatever reason, Nintendo has never mentioned it again. But it is also curious to see how Koopa is a surprisingly affable monster with a disguise ability similar to Mortadelo’s and how Toad is taller than our two protagonists and contains disturbingly human features.
The film was released exclusively on VHS and BETA for rent and was never released or republished beyond 1986. Luckily, and although there are versions ripped directly from VHS with subtitles, Norwegian YouTuber Carnivol got his hands on a 16mm version and fan group Kineko Video was able to restore it to full 4K, a version available on the Internet for a year. Curiously, Grouper, the creators of this mix between fascination and aberration, closed their doors in 1995 after 14 jobs. It’s nice to see that, as much as Illumination is going to grab the headlines in the coming days, the Internet can make it so that the smallest and most insignificant thing in the world, a footer in history, will never disappear. It’s a movie, Mario!
In Espinof | ‘Super Mario Bros.’: when you take an unadaptable video game to the cinema in the strangest possible way