Mario and Luigi: Playing the Same Game Different Ways
Most of my earliest gaming memories were on the original NES playing Super Mario Brothers with my sister… but while we were both playing the same game with the same […]
Super Mario 1-1: A Hostile Coding Problem
The very first time I loaded the original Super Mario Brothers on the NES, I was transfixed… I couldn’t wait to explore this colorful, magical world and unlock all of […]
Nintendo, Gaming, and Life: Designed for Community
While it might sound obvious in retrospect, one of the most critical design decisions Nintendo made when developing their home gaming console was including more than one controller port. Even […]
Nintendo – Playing With Power?
In the early NES console years, gamers looked to Nintendo to replicate our experiences with games we played in the arcade… but because the 8-bit platform lacked the power to […]
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out: An Adversity Advantage
Few games have been as frustrating but still addictive as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out… and even after all these years, I still remember the exact techniques required to dodge Bald Bull’s […]
Genesis Does What Nintendon’t?
The original “console wars” between Sega and Nintendo got a little bit feisty… both companies battled it out for the hearts (and wallets) of the gaming audience in each successive […]
Mario “World -1” and a Way that Seems Right
Back when the original NES Super Mario Bros. game first came out, I heard rumors that there was a secret level hidden within the game… the mysterious World -1. After […]
Mega Man and a Perfect Plan
My original console gaming experiences were pretty linear affairs… games like Mario simply took me from one level to the next, while Zelda gave me a rudimentary feeling of exploration […]
Shattering the Facade: The Truth Behind Super Mario Bros. 2 (Romans 7:15-25, Romans 8:1-2)
As a self-proclaimed Nintendo fan-boy, it almost hurts to make this admission. I suppose I should have been able to figure it out on my own. Maybe I didn’t want […]
Prison Break and the Secret Life of Plumbers (Acts 16:22-34)
Mario may be the most well-known plumber in the history of the planet, which is ironic since I have never seen him do anything that seems remotely “plumberly”. But while […]
Finding God in Video Games 