Instead of finishing up Signalis or putting more time into Pokémon Violet, I spent a night getting a CD-I emulator up and running. Kind of a pain in the ass and was not worth it. This is just shitty Elevator Action! Don't know if it's just the emulator, but the controls felt a bit unresponsive. I legitimately did want to finish this, but every world seems to go on forever. Using save states also crashes the game after finishing a level, so fuck it! Maybe I'll come back to this when CD-I emulation gets better. I can at least say I've played Hotel Mario now.

Wow some people seriously sat down one day and said let’s make a masterpiece because that is the only way you can create something as godly as Hotel Mario. I gotta give props to any company nowadays that stick to their creative vision and don’t try to appeal to everyone for profit.
That is the reason some of you think this game isn’t good your IQ simply is too low. People will always tell you about Fromsoftware and the great games they produce. Fuck them, Miyazaki is shivering his timbers after he played this masterpiece. Little fun fact for all of you Miyazaki himself said that this was the best game he ever played he even quoted following famous line after finishing this game “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad“. We all hate modern games for their
repetitive Ubisoft like gameplay open worlds, boring stories, lootboxes, in game transactions, battlepasses and life service bullshit. This game has none of the mentioned bullshit, you have a game that was created with a clear vision because it knows a game for everyone are games for no one. It has a clear level structure with a great not WOKE Story and a soundtrack that makes the final fantasy soundtrack look like the average Hazbin Hotel song. The effort and care the devs seem to have put into this game is outstanding. In an age of games that are released buggy, broken and unfinished, Philips Interactive deserve a thank you for making such a masterpiece.
When it released a lot of replies saying Final Fantasy VI is better. Can't we just agree with Hotel Mario and Final Fantasy VI releasing in the same month that it must have been a great time to be a gamer?
But Jokes aside now if you disagree with me you are nitpicking and biased I win bye bye.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Hotel Mario. The Gameplay is extremely Subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the button options will go over a typical player's head. There's also Mario's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Nintendo Sex Hotels, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of the gameplay, to realize that they're not just fun- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Hotel Mario truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Luigi's existencial catchphrase "I hope she made lots spaghett" which itself is a cryptic reference to, once again, Nintendo sex hotels. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as the genius of the controls unfolds itself on their Video game console. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a Hotel Mario tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.

Writing this from the UK where I’ve been on a spring break trip for the past week or so, today I went to the Science and Industry museum in Manchester and they had a video game thing, so of course I wanted to go to that. Turns out among many better and cooler games, they had a Phillips CD-i running Hotel Mario and you know I had to play that. I can now finally say, even though everyone already knew this, this really does suck! Gay Luigi, Toasters, and Lotsa Spaghetti aside, the actual game really feels like it drags on, with each hotel being so much longer than it has any right to be. Mario, when jumping on enemies, just feels irritatingly out of my control. Just a slog of an experience aside the cutscenes. Moral of the story, don’t play Hotel Mario but I do recommend the museum I played it at. Power Up is super cool.

This cutscene in particular boggles my mind on so many levels Ok, so Mario goes to Roy Koopa's hotel to look for Peach and the gimmick for the stage is that lights turn on and off (very fun idea btw) and when you clear it, it shows Mario finding a room solely dedicated to making toasters. Why? Who needs that much toast? Can't you just use a microwave or an oven if you need that many toasters?

"Aha, Here's the problem, too many toasters!" Mario says, like it's a common household occurrence to have a toaster room like it's a bitcoin mine. Why does Bowser have his own patented sourpuss bread? Who tf would eat sourpuss bread? Is this what he feeds his kids? Why does Mario look so smug when he says "You know what they say, all toasters toast toast"? No one has ever said that. Is this some sort of Mushroom Kingdom Haiku? An inside joke from the devs? Because if you take it literally it sounds stupid, you can make plenty of things with toasters, and toast is only toast after it's been in a toaster, if you toast a toast you'll be left with burnt bread. Why does the outlet look different than before? Why did the unplugged toasters shoot the toast at 20 mph? Where did they go? Are they stuck on the ceiling? How does anyone frequent this hotel if Roy prioritizes making toast over having decent lighting?

You know what they say, where there's smoke, they pitch back.

With how heavily this gets memed I figured it was going to be awful, but it's actually just... fine? The core gameplay is a bit awkward but serviceable. I've played much worse single-screen platformers. Feels like they were trying to come up with something new to do with the old Mario Bros arcade game, and it's not great, but it's fine. It's fine!

The cutscenes are awful but in a way that's kind of funny to watch, while the rest of the game is just kind of bland. I'd struggle to tell you what the levels look like; they're not offensive, definitely competent, but not distinctive, and each level blurs into the next. The music's actually pretty fun, but it needs more variation. Guy has a way with a bassline though.