http://wii.ign.com/articles/104/1047635p1.html

A little while ago, I stumbled across this article which offers an analysis of where the appeal of the long-running Super Mario video game series can be traced back to. The article gives an extensive, almost scholarly dissertation about what has made Mario a pop culture icon. To sum up, author Michael Thomsen compares the Mario games to Vaudeville, what with its cartoonish atmosphere and dreamlike sensibilities. Furthermore, Thomsen offers insight into his own admiration for the games, asserting that, "Before anything, Mario has been about the fundamental joy of movement". In a statement sure to have Mario fans everywhere swamping him in hatemail, Thomsen claims that he, "never liked the 3D Mario games very much" because their emphasis on open-ended play breaks from the, "Homeric dream odyssey" of the "classic" Mario titles.

Although I was interested by some of the article's insights, I find myself disagreeing with several of Thomsen's sentiments. My main issue with this article is that it overanalyzes what basically amounts to a series of video games (albeit very good ones) with cartoon characters. His comparisons of Mario to, "the Homeric dream odyssey" border on hyperbole. Why can't a Mario game just be a Mario game? Is Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto knocking on Thomsen's door to congratulate him for cracking the code? Another issue I have is that Thomsen seems to hold a purist's attitude, that the Mario games must adhere to a strict formula and that anything that detracts from said formula (such as the aforementioned 3D Mario titles) is not a "true" Mario experience. What he seems to have failed to realize is that the reason why the 3D Mario games such as Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy were so popular and critically-acclaimed was because they successfully captured the spirit of the "classic" renditions of Mario while simultaneously taking the series in bold new directions.