I'm keeping the GBA Marios in my collection, even though there are the original NES classics still available, even though there's also All-Stars, even though the SNES originals are far better as well, even though they sound much worse and the screen crunch is not great, for the simple reason that the goofy Charles Martinet voices are in these. That's it. It's the end of 2023 and I have officially reversed my stance on Charles Martinet Mario voice. Gimme more wahoo! and letsa go! please. Oh, you want a patch for Super Mario Advance 4 that gets rid of the Charles Martinet voices? That already exists, dumdum, it's called Super Mario Bros. 3.

Weird how I never knew what I had all along until it's finally gone. On an unrelated note, I do tend to get into classic bands just as their members start passing away. My first major Beatles phase started not long before George Harrison died. Ramones? High school, well after Joey left this earth but right when Dee Dee got it. The Clash? Around the same time, RIP Joe Strummer. The Cramps? Oh, you better believe it was around 2009 when I was starting grad school and Lux Interior passed away. The moral of this story is if you want to live, you better not let me like what you do. Hideo Kojima is going to be immortal, I guess

I was lucky enough to get to spend a week at a lake "resort" for early summer vacation as a youth. They had a little arcade that no one ever went to that was just a concrete box with a couple games in it and maybe even a laundry. Choplifter was one of the cabinets there.

Now, you'd think that a rowdy youth would be obsessed with a helicopter that can blow up jets and tanks, but for some reason this game didn't take up as much of my time as the other cabinet in that concrete box: Pac Man. Probably because we found a way to cram our grimy mitts into that machine and activate the coin counter...

At any rate, I recall the controls on Choplifter were also a bit tricky to master. I mean, helicopters are a crazy thing to fly around and people crash them all the time. Plus, rockets on helicopters that can shoot down jets? Bananas.

Now maybe if we'd figured out how to play for free...

Review from thedonproject.com