Superlatives are interesting things. Even though most reduce down to simply “better” or “best”, countless hundreds have become mainstays of the English lexicon. Just pick up any thesaurus and take a look. Seriously, try it. Oh, and when you’re done, look up the word “lexicon”. You know what it means? Thesaurus. I know, right? It’s all so meta. So meta in fact, it’s beyond meta. Fun fact: Meta comes from a Greek root meaning “beyond”. What does all this have to do with the Super Nintendo you ask? You’ve got some nerve mister.

One day, way back in the summer of 1986, my friend Franklin called me and said he had just got something called a “Nine Ten Doetainment Sister” for his birthday and that he wanted me to come over and “play it”. I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed Franklin was high (again) and was seeing ‘skin spiders’ (again). But you know Franklin, what a nut. Anyway, I didn’t really have any friends and I was intrigued at this whole ‘Doetainment Sisters’ idea. So over I went. Once there, I discovered two things: 1) Franklins’ parents had actually got him a “Nintendo Entertainment System” for his birthday and, 2) Franklin wasn’t high at all. He was drunk. Very, very drunk. Seriously kids, stay in school.

That summer Franklin and I played his NES (a term I just invented just now) until school started. I remember it well. There were so many games. My favorite? It was a tie. Between all of them. I found it to be an amazing toy game system. It was better than an Odyssey, taped to the back of a ColecoVision, stapled to an Atari 2600. But as often happens, time passed and Franklin and his NES (mostly the latter) grew apart. Little did I know at the time, but the best was yet to come.

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It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the launch of the Super Nintendo. It may have taken us an extra nine months to get the machine here in North America, but I’m sure we can all agree it was worth the wait. My friends and I had been drooling over the screenshots in gaming magazines for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few months. They showed off the latest Mario, where he was riding some kind of crazy looking dinosaur.

There were screenshots of games we had no idea what they were about, like Act Raiser. There was this flying game that looked like they were pulling off actual 3D. Our minds were sufficiently blown.

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On a very special one-hundred and seventeenth episode of the Barrel Roll Podshow, we are joined by not one, not three, but two Adams. Tomfoolery results.

In our standard issue “Games We’ve Played This Week” section of the show, Jonah, Jesse, and the Adams discuss a bunch of old crap that only the retro crowd probably cares about. This includes Super Mario World, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Mega Man Legends 2, X-Com, Yar’s Revenge, and the Metroid Prime Trilogy. There are also a few newer games discussed, like Inside A Star-Filled Sky and SpaceChem. Also, Jonah’s guilt drove him to purchase and play The Witcher. Also, not a new game.

In the news, we discuss our thoughts on Gotham City Imposters, and our hopes that it is a fun video game. There is also more Monster Hunter and Minecraft talk. I mean, this is Barrel Roll afterall!

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"The true successor to Super Mario World."

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the follow up to the DS game entitled New Super Mario Bros. It was only a matter of time before having the word “new” in the title of a game would become terribly confusing. Despite what the poor naming choice might suggest, this is not a port of the DS game, but rather a completely new Mario game.

Like any 2D platformer in the franchise, the game will have you running and jumping on the heads of enemies through eight themed worlds before finally reaching Bowser and rescuing the princess yet again. But this time around, Mario has new powers, multiplayer, and some of the zaniest level design (in a good way) the series has ever seen.

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