It is not so much strange but haunting. Much like the addict searching for the euphoric sensation of his first binge, I am searching for that feeling of an open environment. Morrowind is guilty of creating. I speak of an environment where I make all my decisions good or bad. I had to suffer from these decisions, and in essence I was really roleplaying for the first time. I was roleplaying the very character I created. I was in charge of his direction, style, persona, every little tidbit of what I wanted my character to be. With Morrowind however came a nagging disdain for the character design. The dated models do not bother me too much; however the game designers took many liberties to create a very organic and insect inspired world. I admire vision very much, however Morrowind’s did not appeal to me, actually, and it turned me off. I turned my sights towards the open world of MMO RPGs.

Before I go too deep into my ramblings allow me to make one thing very clear. I do not log into a MMO RPG to role-play with other players. I have given up on my romantic visions of players actually roleplaying in the environment that the developers have created. Instead I am accustomed to Online Gamer in all his glory. Online Gamer and his urge to purchase a game intended for role-play and butchering it to the point of unrecognizable stature. It is not “his” fault, Online Gamer is not a role-player, he is just that, a gamer. I do understand this, and yes it still gets to me.

My fascination with MMO RPG is that I am a character in a world. A world open to do anything I feel like doing, much like the sensation that Morrowind first gave me but could not finish delivering. Perhaps this is why I ache for Fable already, so that I can have that feeling again this time in a setting that I do find stimulating. In the MMO RPG I very much quest alone, building my character to my liking. I have a vision of what I want him to look like, and how he should act. Unfortunately the MMO world is not based on a single player effecting events or attitudes but it serves as a gateway for questing only. There is not real plot or point other then leveling up, so again I feel that something is missing.

I do want to enjoy a role-play setting like I have experienced in Neverwinter Night’s Online Multiplayer Servers. I want to log in and just converse with another player who will tell me his character’s back story and maybe some tales of what he has done. Then we go and quest and share in spoils. I do think that a MMO RPG setting is a perfect chance to role-play, however I have yet to find that role-play, even in Dark Age of Camelot’s roleplaying only servers. Instead I meet a person very much playing the person PLAYING that character, and that is very different from meeting a person playing THAT very character. I don’t know why, but I do cringe when I see the player named “Crazydutchguy” or perhaps a drug reference thrown in his name. It is just, not right.

I would have to say that even to this day I not satisfied with the opportunity for real role-players to converge in a setting that is indeed truly open. I, in short, want Morrowind online with players that want to role-play in a world that reacts to the role-play. Since I can remember I have been an idealist. I do know that when I do find that that rare role-play on a MMO that it is only for a fleeting moment. Bottom line is that I want to take full advantage of what I paid for, and continue to pay for each month. I do not know if that is too much to ask.

There are times that you wish that someone would put some sort of regulation on what is allowed to be portrayed in the movies, as we found out in the last venture to movie world with Mario Bros. Then there are sometimes when you are pleasantly surprised. Yes, I am admitting that Mortal Kombat was actually a descent movie. I will even go as far to say that I liked it. So here it goes, Dots likes the movie…so what about the game?

My goal is to play each game and then watch the movie. The only thing we have Mortal Kombat on in my little household is the good old Sega Genesis. Well this posed a little problem for me seeing as how I didn’t have a Genesis growing up, we were Nintendo girls at my house. I was in for a bit of a challenge; being that I had never even held a controller. We pulled out the old Sega and hooked her up and Cone put the game in to show me how to play. I watched him punch and kick and jump over and over, only to get his butt kicked over and over. At this point, I was less than amused with this fighting game deeming it too hard to play. I then decided that I needed to give it a shot even if I couldn’t beat one person in one fight. I picked up the control and I punched and kicked and jumped and then those words you long to see while playing Mortal Kombat popped up on my screen; “Fatality”. I somehow, on my first try, had won. I tried not to gloat, but I couldn’t help myself. I must say though, that is where my fun ended. I found the style of the game a tad too redundant to keep my attention. I am not one for fighting games at all, so it is no surprise that I didn’t take too kindly to Mortal Kombat. After playing for a while, I found myself thinking of my mission at hand…video game to movie. I had no clue how they were going to turn this game, with almost no plot, into a movie.

So, I did the naturally responsible thing as a writer and put off watching the movie for a week. Once Cone finally convinced me that there was no way it could be as bad as Mario Bros. I agreed to put it into the DVD player. I was a little taken aback at first with the, uh, catchy Mortal Kombat theme song and cheesy opening scene. But I pressed on into the actual plot of the movie. I am not usually one for kung-fu type fighting movies, but there was something about the supernatural aspect of the story that kept me watching. Plus, it was kind of fun to see the characters in the game portrayed as “real” people. Perhaps the story seemed to flow so well because some key members of the video game staff, Ed Boone and John Tobias, had a writing part in the movie. They were able to take the story that was in their minds for the game and make it a reality on the big screen. I would say they did a good job in taking the somewhat shallow characters from the game and turning them into pretty decent living breathing human, and some not so human, characters in the movie.

To sum up the movie in a few sentences is pretty easy: Three martial arts experts end up on this mysterious ship that takes them to this island someplace very much not on the map. They are then instructed by Rayden, the wise old goofy guy, that they must fight for the lives of all mortals in the ultimate match on martial arts combat. They fight, they kick butt, they get their butts kicked a little, but ultimately they win. It of course ends in the sequel set up, which I suppose came around a couple of years later. Whether or not it started where this one ends…I don’t know, haven’t seen it. Mr. Boone and Mr. Tobias are now also behind a third installment of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Domination set for release in 2004. We shall see how that next endeavor goes.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. It, by no means, deserves an Oscar, or even an MTV Movie Award for that matter, but it kept me entertained for over an hour and that is pretty impressive. I would say, if you like the game, you will like the movie. Even if you didn’t like the game, if you are the kung-fu action type you should check the movie out. (I am saying this like the movie just came out or something) I may even venture into the world of Mortal Kombat: Total Annihilation and see how our champion mortals fare.

Excuse me for one moment while I get this out of my system. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Okay, I think I can go on to calmly and rationally write this piece. Well, at least I will try. You may be asking yourself at this point, what in the world could she possibly be so distraught over? Well, I will tell you. Super Mario Brothers, the movie.

I have seen this movie before, but I honestly don’t remember it being I this bad. Putting aside all of the normal reasons I would trash a movie, such as bad acting, poor editing, boom mikes hanging into a shot, etc. this movie hurts me in ways that most movies cannot. It butchers my beloved childhood friends and puts them into a plot so hideous that you can’t help but say “what in the hell were they thinking???”

The movie stars Bob Hoskins (of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Maid in Manhattan) as Mario and John Leguizamo (of Moulin Rouge! And The Pest) as Luigi. The movie also stars Samantha Mathis (American Psycho) as Princess Daisy (read Princess Toadstool in the game) and Dennis Hopper (EdTV) as Koopa (read Bowser). It came out in 1993 along with movies like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven and Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino; comedies like My Cousin Vinny and So I Married an Axe Murderer. So if you think about the time we were at in movie making history, there really is no excuse for the poor quality of this movie.

It starts out with Mario Mario and Luigi Mario, the Mario Bros. plumbing company in the Bronx minding their own business. Then they meet Daisy, a local university student who found evidence of a meteor where “corporate America” is trying to blast to build something. She is fighting to protect the dig site that she feels “strangely connected” to. She and Luigi (yeah, Luigi) promptly fall in love. She gets kidnapped by two of Koopa’s minions and they discover a warp in, where else, but the sewer pipes. To make a long story short, Koopa (who should have just been called Bowser, in my opinion) is the dictator of this industrial city that is running out of resources. He looks like a human with really funky hair…scary, huh? It is formed out of a parallel dimension caused by the meteor crash 65 billion years ago. The inhabitants of this city have evolved from dinosaurs, not mammals, like the people from the other dimension (where Mario and Luigi are from). If you aren’t confused enough as it is, Daisy is King Toadstool’s long lost daughter who was brought to the other “mammal” dimension by her mother when she was still an egg and she wears the missing piece of the meteor around her neck which does, guess what, merges the two dimensions! Oh wait, there’s more; Koopa has de-evolved the king into fungus which grows all over the city. He plans to de-evolve all of human kind into monkeys and take over their resources. Toad is a musician, a sort of hippie that sings anti-Koopa songs, that gets turned into a Goomba. Oh, and there is this rather large black woman who helps them out – and I have no idea who she is supposed to be. To make this little synopsis end quickly, they have to save Daisy and beat Koopa. Not to spoil the ending, but they do.

Now that your head is spinning from all that confusing information, you are probably scrolling up to make sure that the movie I was talking about was indeed called Super Mario Brothers. It is. I too was a tad baffled that someone could take Super Mario Brothers, the classic video game and make that out of it. Honestly, I don’t know. The worst part is that the ending actually leaves the door wide open for a sequel, which thank God, didn’
t get made. I could spend hours upon hours talking about what I would have done differently. The point is this – I can’t compare this movie to the video game. I mean, sure I could find the little things they put into the movie that I appreciated, like the presence of Yoshi as the enslaved royal family pet or the Ba-bomb that helps Mario kill Koopa. I think the lesson learned from our first endeavor into the video game-movie crossover is this: don’t try and make a “back story” to a video game. If you can’t make a movie out of what the game already gives you, then you shouldn’t make a movie out of the game.

To say the least, I was a bit disappointed in the outcome of the movie. Although, you will be happy to know that the writers and directors responsible for this abomination have yet to come out with another movie in their careers. Hrm, I wonder why? Hopefully, the next movie-game combo I am going to tackle will actually relate to each other so I can actually compare the two. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Next up: Mortal Kombat. My first time to see the movie AND to play a game on a Sega Genesis. Fun times ahead!

If there is one thing that I like more than a good video game it is a good movie. I would even go as far to call myself a movie buff. The definition of a movie buff, if us movie buffs are honest with ourselves, is this: a person who watches way too many movies and spends that much more time analyzing them, thus becoming a movie snob. Yes, shamefully, I will admit that I am a movie snob. I turn my nose up at any movie with the name Vin Diesel in the credits. I shudder at the thought of Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme attempting to do the thing that others call acting. I just can’t help it. Really, I can’t. Let me explain…

Once upon a time when I was in high school (and actually this started way before then, but high school is as far back as I will go) I was an “actress.” I was put in the Senior Drama class when I was just a sophomore (the earliest point in which this could occur) and all was well. I was happy and I loved just about all movies. That was until Mr. Sweatmon, the theatre teacher, got a hold of me. We watched countless classic movies, pausing every fifteen minutes to discuss which famous millionaire actor was “indicating acting” or “forcing emotion.” I critiqued them all; James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Catherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, the list goes on and on. So, it was at this point when I became a movie snob. Once you critique the people you were brought up to respect as the pioneers of their medium, you can critique anyone. But enough of that…back to what we want to focus on here…video games and movies.

Every once in a while someone will come along and attempt to take a video game that we all enjoyed, like Super Mario Bros, and try to make it into a movie. And that is where I can’t help but ask “what were they thinking?” I have a bone to pick with a lot of movies and the people who write them…but to take a beloved classic video game and put someone like John Leguizamo as Luigi??? (alright, before I get killed by some John Leguizamo fan, Mr. Leguizamo has since proved himself to be a fine patron of the arts) I honestly don’t know what happens when people try to turn video games into movies. Do brain cells get lost in the process? Are the creators so out of it that they can’t see that the video game already has a storyline and characters? Why change what was already a good thing?

So here is where my little harebrained experiment comes into play. For the next couple of months I am going to do the unthinkable (well, previously unthinkable to me anyway) and I am going to watch the movies I so despise. I will put the movie snob in me aside and I am going to travel down the video game made into movie road with all of you. For each movie that I watch, I am first going to go back and play the video game (be it for the first time or for the millionth) that the movie is based on. The first up on my list is the first, the classic, Super Mario Bros. If you have any movie that you want to see compared to its video game counterpart, let me know. I am going to try to tackle them all, seeing as how there aren’t too many of them.

So the next time you hear from me, I will be up to my knees in cheesy movies and video games. So wish me luck, and kiss the movie snob in me good bye…well at least for a little while.

Next week: Mario and Luigi make their big screen debut!