Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

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Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Mario, Princess Toadstool, and King Bowser stand together as Exor looms in the background plunged into Bowser's Keep on the North American cover of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.[1]
Developer(s)	Square[2]
Publisher(s)	Nintendo[3][4]
Designer(s)	Shigeru Miyamoto (producer) Yoshihiko Maekawa (director) Chihiro Fujioka (director) Yoko Shimomura (music composer) Hironobu Sakaguchi (production supervisor)
Released	Super NES JP March 9, 1996 NA May 13, 1996 Virtual Console (Wii) JP TBA NA TBA [5]
Genre	Adventure, role-playing
Mode(s)	Single player
Ratings	Super NES ESRB: K-A (Kids to Adults) Virtual Console (Wii) ESRB: E (Everyone)[5]
Platform(s)	Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Virtual Console
Media	32-Mbit SA-1 cartridge[6]
Input methods	Super NES Super NES controller Virtual Console (Wii) Classic Controller, GameCube controller

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, released as simply Super Mario RPG (スーパーマリオRPG, Sūpā Mario RPG^?) in Japan, is a hybrid adventure/console role-playing game, developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) and Nintendo.^[2][3] Nintendo first released the game on March 9, 1996 in Japan and on May 13, 1996 in North America. Neither Nintendo nor Squaresoft ever released a PAL version. Super Mario RPG is the final Mario game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console,^[7] as well as being one of the last games Square produced for Nintendo hardware until Chocobo Land: A Game of Dice in 2002.^[8] Square mainly developed the game, with direct guidance from producer Shigeru Miyamoto.

Gameplay

Super Mario RPG is the first game in which Mario and Bowser fight as allies, and the first console role-playing game (RPG) in the Mario series containing token similarities to many other Square role-playing games such as Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series with a story and action-based gameplay based on the Super Mario Bros. series.^[9]

Mario and Mallow battle the boss Belome in a battle screen.

Mario's enemies are visible in the field; a battle ensues only if he comes in contact with one. This allows the player to evade unnecessary battles. It should be noted that some fights are necessary to advance the plot. Avoiding battles also means acquiring fewer experience points, causing characters to take greater, and inflict less, damage from attacks, making battles more difficult.

Battle system

The battles themselves are a blend of platforming elements and traditional role-playing game battles. As well as selecting attacks, the player is usually required to perform action commands to increase the damage done. These consist of timed button presses and other movements (such as rotating the control pad or pressing Y repeatedly) to determine the power of the character's attack, a concept that was carried over to some later role-playing games such as Final Fantasy VIII. As with many other role-playing games, items are an important tool in battles. The need to perform action commands in between navigating menus requires the player to be engaged in the battle the whole time. However, much of Super Mario RPG's gameplay is outside of monster battles. In the field, the game plays much like an isometric platformer, in which traditional Mario features and new ones (such as magic spells) play a key role. There are five characters the player can control: Mario, Mallow, Geno, Bowser, and Princess Toadstool. Each character has a unique set of attacks and techniques.

Plot

Setting

Main article: World of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Characters

Main article: List of characters in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Story

The story begins with Mario entering Bowser's Castle to rescue Princess Toadstool. Mario defeats Bowser, but a giant earthquake caused by a sword named Exor shakes the castle, sending Mario, Bowser, and Princess Toadstool flying in three different directions.

Croco attempts to escape from Mario and Mallow.

Mario falls through the chimney into his house and returns to the Mushroom Kingdom with Toad to inform the Chancellor of the current situation. The Chancellor insists that Mario locate the Princess, defeat Bowser once and for all, and discover the truth behind the sword's intentions. Upon exiting the Chancellor's castle, Mario finds a new character named Mallow, who starts crying after his grandfather's coin is stolen; Mario helps Mallow retrieve the coin from Croco. Mario and Mallow return to Mushroom Kingdom so Mallow can complete his errand, but they find the Kingdom under attack. After defeating Mack, they discover their first Star Piece, which the Chancellor suggests is connected to the arrival of Smithy. Mario and Mallow head to Tadpole Pond to see Mallow's grandfather, Frogfucius, for more information on Smithy's forces. However, Frogfucius is unable to help them and instead urges Mallow to aid Mario in his quest. With the assistance of Geno, a star spirit who assumes the identity of a doll, Mario and Mallow manage to get the second Star Piece. Geno thanks them and introduces himself as a visitor from the Star Road. He explains how Exor shattered the Star Road into seven Star Pieces, and that all seven must be recovered to repair the Star Road. With the mystery behind the origin of the star pieces finally solved, Geno joins the party and they set out to search for the remaining five pieces and Peach. The heroes next arrive at Moleville where a shooting star has crashed into the hollowed-out mountain on the outskirts of town and trapped two kids that had been exploring inside. The party retrieves the two missing kids and the third Star Piece. While in Moleville, Mario also sees Bowser trying to reassemble his forces. When the crew receive word that someone was seen falling from the sky and landing on the roof of Booster Tower, the home of a rich and greedy madman, they decide to check it out. When they arrive, Bowser is seen standing outside the entrance, reminiscing about his own castle and how much he misses it. When the party explains how Smithy's involvement has affected Star Road, Bowser reluctantly decides to join up with Mario and his friends and works to stop Smithy in order to get his castle back. Bowser's help comes in handy, but Booster manages to escape with Peach and takes off for the nearby town of Marrymore in an attempt to marry her. Upon arriving in Marrymore, the heroes learn that Booster has kicked everyone out of the chapel and barricaded the doors. Fortunately, they find the Back Door, and manage to rescue Peach after Booster gets distracted by the enormous wedding cake. Finally, with the Princess found, the party returns to the Mushroom Kingdom and explains the situation to both her and the Chancellor. Against the wishes of the Chancellor, the Princess decides to join the party. On Frogfucius' advice, they head to Star Hill, where the party discovers the fourth Star Piece. The quest for the three remaining Star Pieces brings the party to Seaside Town, where the elder of the town informs the party that a Star Piece has fallen into the ocean and likely is controlled by a ruthless pirate called Jonathan Jones. The party finds Jones' Sunken Ship and manages to defeat Jones, earning the party the fifth Star Piece and Jones' respect. They return to Seaside Town and find out that the elder of the town was Yaridovich, a spear-themed member of the Smithy Gang, in disguise. In exchange for releasing the citizens of the town, Yaridovich demands the fifth Star Piece. Yaridovich's departure is delayed by Jones, which allows the party to defeat Yaridovich to regain the Star Piece. The party's journey continues through Land's End, a desolate conglomeration of mountain and desert regions, and Monstro Town, a place teeming with reformed monsters. With some help from the town's residents the party scales an inaccessible cliff in order to get to Bean Valley, which leads to a city in the sky. The city, Nimbus Land, is made up of inhabitants who look just like Mallow. As the party arrives, the royal adviser Valentina announces that the King's ill condition has turned critical. However, she also claims to have found the lost prince who takes over for the ill king; Valentina becomes the new queen when the prince asks her to marry him.

Valentina (top right), with Nimbus Land citizens.

Looking around the city, Mallow learns from the royal sculptor that he is the real prince. Garro, a Nimbus Land citizen, is able to sneak the party into the castle in order to rescue the king and queen. Seeing the real prince, Valentina and the impostor Dodo flee. After briefly falling out of Nimbus Land, the party defeats Valentina and Dodo, making them flee to Booster's Tower. They get the key and rescue Mallow's parents, the king and queen. Both are unharmed and perfectly healthy. After Mallow's reunion with his parents, the party continues onward, told by the queen that a star fell into the Barrel Volcano. The party finds the sixth Star Piece, but it is stolen by the Axem Rangers, an elite Smithy Gang fighting force. After chasing them onto their warship, named Blade, the party defeats the Rangers. The last star piece is in Bowser's Keep. After battling through many of Smithy's elite forces, the party battles Exor. Defeated, Exor transports them to a dark and lifeless factory, the center of Smithy's operations. The party makes its way through the factory and confronts Smithy. After being defeated, Smithy destroys the factory, and reveals his true form. Despite this, he is defeated and explodes. With Smithy gone and the final Star Piece in hand, Geno thanks the party and returns to the Star Road to repair it. The party heads outside in time to see Exor disintegrate.

Game Development

Concept & Creation

The game was officially unveiled by both Mario creator and producer Shigeru Miyamoto and co-director Chihiro Fujioka at the 1995 V-Jump Festival event in Japan^[10]. Miyamoto led talented teams at Nintendo and Square Soft who spent more than a year developing, as Nintendo Power wrote, “the most stunning graphics of any RPG at the time.”^[2] The story takes place in a newly rendered Mushroom Kingdom based on the Super Mario Bros. series. A town of mining moles (Moleville), tropical forest (Forest Maze), mushroom castle (Mushroom Kingdom), thundering waterfall (Midas River), giant bean stalk (Land's End), and villages crowded with mushroom people were a few of the exterior locations at the time Square Soft reported the game was about 70% complete in October 1995, when Nintendo Power announced Mario finds himself riding Mode 7 rail cars, which exist in the Moleville mines. Square Soft created all the interior elements such as columns and stairways and exterior elements using Advanced Computer Modeling (ACM) techniques. Special lighting effects create the shadows and reflections that give the 3D elements such a full, realistic appearance.^[3][11] With guidance from Miyamoto, Square Soft developed the game in Japan combining parts of its traditional RPGs, Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, with Nintendo's platform games. Square's Final Fantasy series was the model for the battle sequences while the tradition of Super Mario Bros. games demanded a lot of action. During visits to town, Mario talks to people, buys items, and learns secrets just as in a standard RPG, but the 3D graphics show Mario does more than previous RPG characters, even highly animated heroes such as Crono.^[12] Mario must dodge a salvo of Bullet Bills in the Sunken Ship, recreate a tune by hopping across musical tadpoles in Tadpole Pond, and hop to turn a huge nut so that it travels along the thread of a bridge made from a giant bolt in the Factory. Mario's ability to jog in eight directions and jump up or down in three–quarter perspective gives him complete 3D motion. Mario's radically new screen perspective is reminiscent of action games such as Equinox, but at the current stage of completion, the mix of adventure and action game play elements placed it in a category closer to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.^[3][11] When Nintendo of America (NOA) received a 60% complete version in November, the biggest surprise was that there was an actual RPG battle system, contrary to what NOA heard earlier. Mario stomping on enemies launches the battle screen sequence. The battle screens, rendered just like the rest of the game, include attack animations of equipped weapons.^[12] Compared to previous Mario games, where characters only moved left, right, up or down, there are four times as many ways to go, the most dramatic change in the character's 15–year history up until that point. Created by SGI workstations, the game's graphics could only compare to Rare's Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble, and Killer Instinct.^[3][11] In December, further development delayed the game for the translation as well as improvements to the game play.^[13] For example, the Chancellor (キノコ大臣だいじん, Kinoko Daijin^?, lit. "Mushroom Cabinet Minister"), before named the Mushroom Retainer,^[3][11] was now the "minister".^[13] Plans were to continue through February for the North American version,^[13] forecasting the release from Winter to Spring.^[14][15] Nintendo first released the game on March 9, 1996 in Japan and May 13, 1996 in North America.

Mario's radically new screen perspective is reminiscent of action games such as Equinox. Compared to previous Mario games, where characters only moved left, right, up or down, there are four times as many ways to go, the most dramatic change in the character's 15–year history up until that point. Created by SGI workstations, the game's graphics could only compare to Rare's Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, and Killer Instinct.^[3][11] Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is one of only three games outside Japan for the SNES to utilize the Nintendo SA-1. (The other two are Kirby Super Star and Kirby's Dream Land 3.) Compared with standard SNES games, this additional microprocessor allows higher clock speed, faster RAM, greater memory mapping capabilities, data storage and compression, new DMA modes (such as bitmap to bitplane transfer), and built-in CIC lockout (for piracy protection and regional marketing control).^[16] The graphics are much like Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis .

Sound Engine

The game's sound effects employed the SPC700. The sound chip's built-in function was not something unique to this game, with a primitive simulation of a reverb effect through a short delay (or echo). The game features 210 sound effects.^[17]

Audio

Main article: Music of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Yoko Shimomura (Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, and the Kingdom Hearts series) composed the music for this game. She incorporated arrangements of music by Koji Kondo (Super Mario and the Legend of Zelda series) and Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy series) as part of the score. Three tracks from the Final Fantasy series appear. The Super Mario RPG soundtrack was released on CD as [[Music of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars#Super Mario RPG Original Sound Version]|Super Mario RPG Original Sound Version], with the code PSCN-5047 / PSCN-5048. The publisher was NTT. Although it contains 61 songs, the game features 73 tracks.^[18]

Reception

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars received very good reviews, including an 8.75/10 from Electronic Gaming Monthly,^[19], and audience-made "best game of all-time" lists consistently feature the game, such as 26th on GameFAQs^[20] and 30th at IGN.^[21] Japanese audiences also received Super Mario RPG well with 1.47 million copies sold, making it the third best selling game in Japan in 1996.^[22] Though various aspects of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars have received somewhat mixed opinions, the setting of the game have been well received overall and have garnered praise for the quality of the graphics and visual style in particular. Nintendo Power’s review claimed the excellent 3D graphics helped the game appeal to a much wider audience than most traditional RPGs. In March 1997, Nintendo Power nominated the game for several awards, including "Best Graphics", in a player's choice contest,^[23] though Super Mario 64 won "Best Graphics".^[24] 1UP.com praised the graphics, stating that they "are the best seen on the Super NES."^[25] Electronic Gaming Monthly stated that "the graphic element is strong enough to resemble a Mario title but still retains the role-playing theme at the same time",^[26] and commented that the "graphics of Mario RPG is typical of Nintendo, using clean and colorful graphics along with nice animation."^[27]

Legacy

Officially, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars does not have a direct sequel, especially in terms of a sequel based on the original game's plot. Considering to be its "spiritual" and thematic successors, two successive RPG-themed Mario series, the Paper Mario series and the Mario & Luigi series, followed certain conventions established in the original. For example, the use of "Flower Points" instead of Magic Points, timed action commands during battles, and the collection of the seven stars. In fact, Nintendo originally titled Paper Mario as Super Mario RPG 2.^[28] Square's involvement in the original game made direct sequels legally impossible without Square's permission, involvement, or both, so Nintendo changed the title to Paper Mario.^[29] Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga did feature the Geno doll,^[30][31] with "Regardless of the above-mentioned, the copyright of Character "Geno", reserved by SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD." in the end credits.^[32][33] Some of the game's team members, including some from Square, went on to work on the Mario & Luigi series. These developers include the two directors Yoshihiko Maekawa and Chihiro Fujioka, as well as music composer Yoko Shimomura. However, they provided different styles and mechanics than those of Super Mario RPG.

Rerelease and rumored sequel

On Wednesday, November 8, 2006, Mark Bozon of IGN provided an updated list of 2007 video game titles for Wii and wrote, “When it comes to gathering clues for potential Virtual Console titles, Nintendo isn't always the best source to get answers from. The company has its priorities during this holiday season, and for that reason fans have been looking elsewhere for details in regard to what the Wii's unique retro catalog will offer. The ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) has already helped us confirm multiple titles expected to hit Wii early next year, and we've received an updated list just this morning.”^[5] In the fall of 2007, The Virtual Console Archive changed the release information from “ESRB rated” to “(No longer) ESRB rated”, meaning the ESRB rated the game, but since removed it. However, The Virtual Console Archive does list the price at 800 Wii Points.^[34] On Friday, November 23, 2007, RPG Magazine’s issue number 5 wrote, “Square-Enix is considering bringing back Super Mario RPG by making a sequel on the DS. The sequel would include more characters from the Final Fantasy universe.”^[35] However, there has been no such confirmation from either Nintendo or Square Enix.

References

See also

Nintendo Portal

Video games Portal

• List of SNES games
• List of Super Famicom games
• List of Virtual Console games (North America)
• Tomato Adventure

External links

• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars at Nintendo.com (archived at the Internet Archive)
• Games by Year 2000-1996 at Square Enix
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars at the Open Directory Project

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