A recent press release from market research firm NPD Group provides compelling evidence of what we all already knew in our hearts: Grand Theft Auto has usurped Mario as gaming royalty. NPD analysis shows that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for PlayStation 2 was the best-selling game in the United States in 2002, followed by last year’s Grand Theft Auto III. This one-two punch from developer Rockstar Games beat out other heavy hitters like Madden NFL 2003, Kingdom Hearts, and Super Mario Sunshine. In fact, Nintendo’s water-fueled GameCube adventure finished the year in a distant tenth place, despite being the first 3D game in the series since 1996’s groundbreaking Super Mario 64. I can only come to one conclusion from this data, and that’s that Nintendo needs to give Mario a gun. While violence has arguably been intrinsic to certain subcategories of video games since the arrival of Doom in 1993, the industry has seen a massive shift in overall popularity in recent years from the light-hearted adventures of Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda to the gritty realism pioneered by Grand Theft Auto. Kids who started out on Nintendo are turning into PlayStation adults desperate for adult entertainment, and I can’t think of anything more adult than Mario meets The Sopranos. Let me paint you a picture. Peach is dead after a botched kidnapping, and Mario believes the culprit is Bowser, his old rival. He has tracked the mafia boss, known on the streets as King Koopa, to a dirty warehouse in the heart of the Mushroom Kingdom’s slums. Goombas and Shy Guys package illicit substances for distribution, but Bowser is nowhere to be found. It doesn’t matter. Mario grabs a pair of Glocks and mutters one last “Let’s go…” before kicking down the doors and filling the thugs with lead. What follows are dozens of hours of drug deals, car chases and mob attacks as Mario embarks on a bloody wave of revenge to become the new king of the underworld. You can’t tell me that doesn’t sound like the coolest video game of all time. Just thinking about Mario going Tony Montana, with powdered mushrooms falling from his mustache while taking down a rival gang with an AR-15, gives me chills. I’m going to buy a second “Scarface” poster just to draw a little red hat on Al Pacino. It’s not that there aren’t precedents. Donkey Kong 64 was the second most popular game on the Nintendo 64 and the sixth most popular overall in 1999. It’s fun, sure, but I guarantee that what took it to the top of the charts was equipping the five apes with guns and grenades. And while I wouldn’t call Donkey Kong 64 a gritty game by any means (they even swapped out the realistic-looking shotgun from the early trailers for something more whimsical in the final release), it’s easily the grimmest 3D platformer on Nintendo’s console yet. They killed poor Wrinkly Kong and asked his ghost to give you advice, for crying out loud. Just a few years ago, Nintendo dominated the sales charts. PlayStation, however, managed to develop a winning formula by focusing on adult games like Grand Theft Auto. As a grown man, I find myself gravitating more toward the gritty realism that Sony’s console provides than the silly Nintendo distractions that once amused me as a child. And as we all know, adult men are the only demographic the video game business needs to take seriously. Do the right thing, Nintendo. Give Mario a weapon. The story you just read is part of the 2002 edition of Warp Week, a Kotaku series that takes readers back to gaming’s past through a combination of time-lapse reviews, retrospectives, and on-the-ground reports.
