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Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Is Valentina from Super Mario RPG a Jimmy Buffett Reference or Not?

2024-01-24T19:10:49-08:00January 22nd, 2024|

" Sometimes you connect two things and think that this link you’ve made *has* to be intentional. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not. But also I’ll take any excuse to talk about a woman who wears a parrot on her head for the purposes of fashion. " Read [...]

Smart Mouth Newsletter: The 20 Billion Cold War Survival Biscuits that Were Never Baked

2024-01-24T18:51:12-08:00January 20th, 2024|

by Alicia Bones " In 2017, a Massachusetts city hall was overrun with millions of drugstore beetles. When a pest control company was called to the building, they discovered the source: rotting civil defense crackers. Since the early 1960s, the crackers had been stored in aluminum cans in an [...]

Smart Mouth Newsletter: Peeking Inside London’s Cab Shelters

2024-03-18T20:28:01-08:00January 18th, 2024|

by Ciara Ainsley McLaren " If you are hungry and broke in central London, follow the black cabs. Eventually, they will lead you to a glossy green shed, roughly the size of a horse and carriage. Look for the takeaway window. Order tea for £1 and a sandwich [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Localization Strangeness in the Super Mario RPG Remake

2024-01-08T16:15:56-08:00January 7th, 2024|

"In this post, I will list off some of the notable localization changes made in the remake of Super Mario RPG as well as some of the changes that seem like they should have been made but were not. In general, the remake swaps out certain choices Ted [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Hard Hats in the Mushroom Kingdom

2024-01-08T14:34:07-08:00December 31st, 2023|

"Sometimes things are a lot like other things! This is one of these — and despite the thumbnail image telling you that there is some Mega Man content here, this is, alas, also a Mario-related post. In an early post on this site, I wrote about Pac-Man’s name [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Christmas Eve on Shooting Star Summit

2023-12-27T19:00:22-08:00December 27th, 2023|

"This is not a Mario blog, although you could be forgiven for thinking that. Personally, I blame Nintendo. The one-two punch of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and then the Super Mario RPG remake was just too much in a short amount of time, and as a result, the [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Koopa vs. Kappa

2023-12-27T18:59:45-08:00December 22nd, 2023|

"You’ve got your Koopa. And you’ve got your kappa. They sound alike. They kind of look alike. Surely, they must be related, right? Not so fast. To quickly recap the previous post, the Super Mario Bros. big bad was called Koopa in Japan but Bowser in English-speaking territories, [...]

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