After picturing our ideal Silent Hill MMO in the last instalment of our "Imagining MMOs" series, we thought that this time it would be nice to imagine a hypothetical MMO title set in the famous Mario Bros universe created by Nintendo, which would be geared towards families with children and enthusiasts of the franchise alike.

Everyone who hasn’t spent the last three decades in outer space without any connection to Earth will most likely be more or less familiar with the Mario Bros franchise, which has grown to one of the most famous ones ever. Called into being in 1985 with a Japanese videogame, it has expanded to nearly everything and has become a true icon for multiple generations. Even these days, Mario counts still among the most recognised fictional characters.

Nintendo continues developing and publishing games based on the franchise which involve characters from the Mario Bros universe; however, you wouldn’t find a sole MMO title among these productions as of now. But that’s what we’re here for, we’re going to take care of this.

First things first, we should mention that when it comes to the genre, we’re pretty unable to imagine our fictional Mario Bros MMO to be an MMO RPG, since we feel this wouldn’t truly match the franchise’s atmosphere and style. We would therefore opt for social hubs that would enable users to socialise and band together in groups in order to engage in platform section, take part in mini/ party games and so on.

Not forgetting about our goal to cater children and grown-ups alike, although we can’t say about ourselves that we’re particularly enthusiastic about this kind of game, our MMO should incorporate several features aiming at protecting the younger audience, e.g. allowing parents to activate an optional parental control for their children’s account, disabling chat and whispers altogether and avoiding that kids would be offended in any way by specific emoticons or words. We would additionally ensure to have a reliable reporting system in place. This way, we would be able to provide adult enthusiasts with a full-featured game they can freely use while children would be able to play in a safe and controlled environment.

When thinking about our playable characters, we’ve come up with something different this time. As the franchise sports such an incredible number of intriguing and beloved characters users are able to control in the various games around, we thought to offer pre-set collectible characters, each with their very own skills and style of play, in many ways similar to what we’ve already seen with MOBAs. Given our infinite resources for our hypothetical production, we could perhaps also provide compatibility with Nintendo's Amiibo, giving players real figurines of their characters that store character-related game data so that they can take them with them when heading to their friends’ house for a play session.

To start out, players would have access to a limited array of free basic characters such as Koopa, Toad, Peach and Luigi with the ability to unlock additional ones by spending regular in-game currency earned through playing the game or alternatively by paying with premium currency, which would allow for immediate access. While all characters would initially look the same, players would be able to unlock and customise them with multiple outfits/ skins as well as accessories available for each of them.

As already stated above, a completely explorable 3-D social hub in the form of a tiny village, for instance, would be the starting point for a regular game, allowing users to chat with each other, purchase characters, skins and other stuff from NPCs, team up in groups, create game, etc. Inspired by the wide variety of Mario games available throughout the years, we would be able to offer a massive amount of possible game modes, including the following (to only name a few):

• Kart Race: Exactly as in Super Mario Kart, players would be able to take part in tournaments and races across the most beloved tracks of the series as well as to customise their karts.


• Golf: With Mario Golf, another beloved and extremely popular game series would also be available for play within our MMO, allowing users to challenge computer-controlled characters or even real-world opponents across multiple golf courses.


• Adventure: Randomly generated, objective-based full 3-D PvE levels tasking players with fighting monsters either on their own or together in a group to gather coins (perhaps we could additionally provide a level editor?)


• Classic Adventure: Similar to the Adventure mode, this mode would provide nostalgic and pixel-addicted players with old-school 2-D visuals and levels.

• Party Games: Our selection of quick and fast-paced team vs. team party games differing in objectives and style would provide instant frenzied action and fun during short breaks.


• Arena Brawl: Interested in smashing the Bros? This mode would enable players to select their characters to face off against up to three other players as they participate in beat ‘em up-styled battles complete with items, power-ups and such.

Players would gain currency and EXP by participating and performing well in those game modes. As they rise in level, they would gradually get access to new characters, skins, skills, accessories, golf clubs, kart parts, etc., all of which would have to be purchased with their currency earned while playing.

Regarding visuals and the graphical style of our imaginary MMO, we would prefer to not touch that much in this field, since the franchise has already established its very own and absolutely unique style you wouldn’t ever dare to alter because of being an icon itself. We would therefore restrict ourselves to just providing the best engine possible in order to ensure that everything runs smoothly with the highest graphics quality possible.

There you have it, our perfect Mario Bros MMO game designed for enthusiasts of the Mario franchise as well as families and children. We would provide the younger ones with instant and simple fun alongside their parents with our adventure modes and party games while the more competitive-oriented users could have a blast in golf, kart or combat tournaments. But what do you think of our imaginary MMO? Would you do anything in a different way in case you were able to design your own Mario Bros MMO title? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2015 at 11:36 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.