BBC Learnings · Section 3

Why is Super Mario so popular

Now Georgina, you recently mentioned in one 6 Minute English programme about NFTs

Level: B1 · 94 sentences

Transcript

  1. Now Georgina, you recently mentioned in one
  2. 6 Minute English programme about NFTs
  3. and that you had a collection of Pokémon cards
  4. when you were younger.
  5. Yes, I did and I still can't find them.
  6. Why did you bring that up?
  7. Well... Pokémon started out as a video game series that turned into anime movies and trading cards,
  8. among other things.
  9. And in this programme,
  10. we're talking about a video game character that is iconic a word which means widely known and recognised.
  11. That character's name is Super Mario.
  12. Ah, I spent many hours of my childhood playing with Nintendo's Super Mario or his rival Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog.
  13. Now these days,
  14. Video games are everywhere and people of all ages enjoy playing them.
  15. There's also competitive e-sports events where gamers compete for what are often considerable amounts of money.
  16. Yes, and there are also streamers that appear on platforms like Twitch and YouTube
  17. who have become celebrities in their own right.
  18. Talking about celebrities,
  19. I have a question about the famous character we're talking about in this programme.
  20. Many people remember Super Mario Brothers as being the first time we saw Mario,
  21. but he first appeared in another game.
  22. Which was it?
  23. Was it... a The Legend of Zelda, b Donkey Kong, or c Pokémon?
  24. I'm not sure about that.
  25. I can't remember him being in Pokémon, so I'll go for a The Legend of Zelda.
  26. OK, Georgina. We'll find out if you're right at the end of the programme.
  27. So, we established at the start of the programme that,
  28. these days, the video games industry is thriving.
  29. True, but it wasn't always that way.
  30. It's hard to imagine now, but in the 1980s,
  31. the console market was struggling, particularly in the US.
  32. Keza McDonald, video games editor for The Guardian newspaper,
  33. explains what was happening in the early 1980s.
  34. Here she is on the BBC World Service programme,
  35. you and yours, speaking with Peter White.
  36. Well, back then, especially in America,
  37. there had been a flood of games that were just not very high quality.
  38. One of the games that often cited as a factor in the collapse was this game called E.T.
  39. on the Atari.
  40. which was so bad that they ended up burying
  41. thousands of copies of it in the desert because nobody bought them.
  42. And so we'd had, especially in America, this didn't happen so much in Europe,
  43. but in America, there'd just been lots and lots of software.
  44. None of it was all that great.
  45. There hadn't been anything really revolutionary in some years.
  46. So the video game Boom was really falling off a cliff
  47. and Nintendo is what rescued it in the US especially.
  48. meaning a large number in a short period of time,
  49. to describe the number of games that were coming out.
  50. She used cited, which means referenced or noted, when talking about the game E.T.
  51. being a reference for a factor in the collapse of the console market.
  52. And she said boom, a sudden period of growth.
  53. So as E.T.
  54. was mentioned, as a factor in the collapse,
  55. many people say that Super Mario Brothers was the reason that video games really took off,
  56. especially in the US.
  57. It's interesting to consider what might have been if its creator,
  58. Shigeru Miyamoto, had never created that character.
  59. The question is, why is that game so popular?
  60. What made it so fun to play?
  61. Here is Kezia McDonald speaking again with Peter White on the BBC World Service programme,
  62. You and Yours,
  63. explaining why Mario is just so popular and what makes the original game so satisfying to play.
  64. It's just such a joy to play.
  65. It's running and jumping and it's the joy of movement.
  66. When you play even the original Super Mario Brothers,
  67. you just feel this sense of joy in your movement.
  68. And it's one of the greatest games ever made.
  69. And a lot of games from 35 years ago are basically unplayable now.
  70. They might have been a step to something greater,
  71. but Mario is one of those few that really holds up today as well as it did then.
  72. Kezia McDonald said that some games from 35 years ago are unplayable,
  73. so not possible to play them.
  74. But she said that Mario holds up a term used to say that something's standards or quality has not lessened.
  75. It certainly does hold up.
  76. In fact, I played it the other day and I had lots of fun with it.
  77. It reminded me of my childhood and it's still as good now as it was then.
  78. Which reminds me of your quiz question, Rob.
  79. Yes. In my quiz question,
  80. I asked Georgina which game had the first appearance of that famous plumber, Mario.
  81. I went for A, The Legend of Zelda.
  82. Ah, which is wrong, I'm afraid.
  83. Mario's first appearance was in Donkey Kong.
  84. and his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, never thought he would be that popular.
  85. Well, I guess we've already learnt something today.
  86. Let's recap the vocabulary from today's programme about Super Mario,
  87. starting with iconic famously associated with something and instantly recognisable.
  88. Then we had a flood of,
  89. which means a large amount of something in a short space of time.
  90. Cited means reference as or noted.
  91. Boom relates to explosion and means a short period of sudden growth.
  92. Unplayable describes something that can't be played or a game that is very difficult to enjoy.
  93. And finally, holds up means that the quality or standards of something
  94. hasn't changed and still looks good or plays well.