My Adventure with the Nintendo Comics System

I see. Well, that is one way to start off a Nintendo comic, I guess. We have a grown man, I’m guessing a dad, who asks an out-of-frame person if they just saw what he did in his game. A game he is playing on a handheld console. How would the person see what happened, exactly? Our mustachioed man leaves his house and a homeless man asks him for change, to which he responds, “Beggars should all be shot!”

Okay, then.

(Upon further review, the man was talking to his caged hamster. But still, the hamster couldn’t see the action either)

We learn that our man’s name is Herman, and Herman fancies himself something of a Rorschachian, anti-liberal stormtrooper. He also stole his Game Boy from the electronics store that employs him.

Good stuff for the kids. Is he going to steal another one?

Two kids who appear to be brothers named Rick and Josh get dropped off at the mall where Herman works. They go into his store shopping for Mario 3 cartridges, because duh, and Herman completely ignores them so he can continue playing his newly stolen Game Boy. The kids leave to chase some girls at the food court, and then, out of nowhere, we are treated to this page:

Must have been a Game Boy Advance. Zing!

With absolutely no explanation (though I’m sure it’s coming), Herman’s new, stolen Game Boy becomes a dimensional doorway through which the characters of Super Mario Land emerge.

We come to find out that the evil Tatanga, main antagonist of Super Mario Land, was searching for other worlds to conquer in the hopes of impressing his captive Princess Daisy. Herman serves as a contact point for his own world because he is “weak-willed, bitter, full of fear and hatred,” and he was hypnotized by Tatanga to open the inter-dimensional gateway, or something. The video game baddies proceed to take over the mall. And who better to stop these baddies than Rick and Josh, the Nintendo fanboy brothers? Part one wraps with the brothers devising a plan, which involves summoning Mario from the game as well, which they do, albeit without much explanation aside from an “extra door.”

Well that was easy.

Part two explains the opening as a dimensional Warp Zone. We also get a legitimately funny self-aware panel early on, in which one of the brothers asks Mario how he’s appearing in color, despite the Game Boy being in “black and white,” to which Mario responds, “You’re getting reception all the way from Sarasaland on that gadget and you want it should be in color, too?” DON’T QUESTION THE BIG N, KIDS.

Anyway, a battle ensues in New York City because, as we find out very late in the story, they’ve been in New York all along. Mario and the brothers chase the bad guys up World Trade Center Tower One. Some more inter-dimensional stuff happens, and question blocks show up. Mario gets an invincibility star, Tatanga flees back into the game with Daisy in tow, and then, um, then it just ends. Mario jumps back into the Game Boy in pursuit, and we get no plot resolution, no climactic battle, no nothin’.

“We can tell all our friends… To buy more Game Boys!”

Okay. Well. On to the next story! Here we have… Oh, okay. A second Game Boy story. This one is called, “It’s a Small World After All.”

Cripes.

So, we have Link and Samus and Little Mac all on board for this book here, but instead we get a second Game Boy title. But hey, Herman is back, and we return to his home, which we learn is the magical realm of Piscataway, New Jersey.

My dad theory has been thrown out the window. Herman is just a 40-something single guy who steals Game Boys and talks to his caged hamster about the games he plays.

In this story, he is shown explaining to his mother over the phone that he has not been outside in weeks as a result of his Game Boy trauma. I’ll spare you the minutia, but Herman breaks into a different electronics store, steals another Game Boy, punches a cop, has frightening hallucinations of Super Mario Land bad guys, opens up another dimensional portal, and more chaos ensues. The action ends up in outer space in order to (I think) show off Mario’s spacesuit power-up from Super Mario Land 2.

What we have here, people, is a four-part advertisement for the Game Boy and Super Mario Land.

But wait just a minute, now.

*Flips through the rest of the book*

WTF.

Apparently, the Game Boy stories are the extent of the Mario stuff. No attempt at taking us to the Mushroom Kingdom. No Luigi, no Toad, no Bowser (or “King Koopa”). Just Daisy, Tatanga, and a bitter, lonely, impotent shill named Herman. The cover art was a lie. How could you lie to me through cover art, Nintendo?

Anyway, time for The Legend of Zelda!

The Legend of Zelda, Issue 1 (not from my book, but you’ll see the less-exciting title panel below)

Obviously, these versions of Link, Zelda, Ganon, and Hyrule are based on the cartoon iterations. If you’ve never seen the 1989 Legend of Zelda cartoon, allow me to sum it up with a succinct and representative clip: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxY8lpYAUM[/youtube]

Despite what some idiots may have once thought about Wind Waker‘s Toon Link, there is no version of Link as infuriating as Saturday Morning Toon Link. And his representation in the comics is pretty much the same. At least this story takes place in Hyrule, as opposed to New Jersey, and I can’t spot a single “Excuuuuuse me, Princess!” Let’s see what we have here.

The first Zelda story is a simple, two-page retelling of the legend of the Triforce.

Hey! It’s a comic version of an actual Nintendo story! Now we’re getting somewhere. This could be good, right?

Wrong.

As previously stated, this version of Hyrule is styled after the cartoon, and that cartoon depicted Link and Zelda as a gratingly annoying teenage couple. In one of the later stories, Link literally says, “Aw heck! Something always happens every time I’m about to get a smooch!”

So, lucky for us, page two of this story added a dash of Saved by the Bell to the proceedings.

The Hero of Time, as foretold in legends

The rest of the Zelda stories pretty much go from there. For some reason, maybe to make up for the lack of stories involving Mario, there are a bunch of Zelda titles (10!) to drag the reader through the adventures of Link and Zelda. Some of them are several pages long, while others are more like shorts, which are easier on the brain. My favorite short is about tips for shopping in Hyrule. No, really. Look!

While it’s all pretty dull, it is interesting to note that, at the time these stories were published, there were only two Zelda games, one of which a lot of people didn’t like. Hyrule was not the expansive world we would see on later Nintendo consoles. They were making up characters and stories as they went along here, because there wasn’t much to work with in terms of Zelda lore.

If they were really lacking story ideas, I would’ve been okay with more Error.