Super Mario Bros. Series Unfair to Turtles

Tongue firmly in cheek, University of Pittsburgh student Ben Korman has penned a column decrying the way turtles are portrayed and treated in Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. series of games.

While the in-game amphibians reptiles in question are labeled Koopas, Korman notes that, “The playful branding of these enemies is semantic at best.”

He continues:

These games, first and foremost, graphically depict innocent, healthy turtles being slaughtered by the hundreds at the hands of human characters. The main character, Super Mario, is consistently rewarded for these atrocities.

Are we really to believe that shelled amphibians were simply chosen arbitrarily as the series’ most pervasive antagonists? Was Bowser, the chief nemesis in the series, portrayed as a belligerent power-tripping-maniac-turtle-thing with no specific message in mind? Is the shelled community simply a capricious victim here?

GP: Excellent satire which shows that we sometimes forget that games are here for our entertainment and that maybe, just maybe, sometimes we take them a little too seriously.