Anniversary

When folks think about Nintendo and its systems, nostalgia, happy characters and kid-friendly storylines probably come to mind. At the very raciest of the Nintendo spectrum, a game that draws its visual style from graphic novels such as Frank Miller’s Sin City and embraces over-the-top brutality like a longtime friend probably still seems well out of left field. It felt that way back in 2009 too, but that didn’t stop Sega and PlatinumGames from unleashing MadWorld on the Nintendo Wii. Though it was somewhat controversial back at launch, today we celebrate the classic 3D brawler that hit the Wii like a running chainsaw and left us loving its sardonic hero: Jack Cayman.

When mash-ups endeavor to become something bigger than simple art, it will often go one of two ways. Either things fit together and complement one another or they don’t. Even then, to go about making a mash-up idea into an enjoyable product is a much more arduous process than simply slapping one enjoyable brand together with another. It’s certainly been the source of both good and, at best, mediocre products over the last few decades. That said, who would have thought that back in 1996 around this time, one of the biggest success stories of one of these mash-ups would have come from applying the Final Fantasy RPG formula to the Super Mario universe?