Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be Super Mario? To spend your days fixing bathrooms, rescuing princesses, riding dinosaurs, murdering weird sentient mutant mushroom creatures, and getting high on mushrooms to drive go-karts down a rainbow? Polygon's XTINA GG has certainly thought about it. And now, she's taken the extra step: she's lived an entire week in the shoes of Mario Mario, and lived to tell the story (without even relying on one of those green 1-up mushrooms).
Over the course of five days, XTINA-as-Mario wore a full body Super Mario costume and plumbed toilets, jumping a lot, eating Italian food, powering-up with (Baby Bella) mushrooms, go-karting, mini-golfing, and, of course, dancing. (Though it's worth noting that she did not shoot any fireballs out of her mouth after eating flowers.)
From Polygon:
Everyone knows Mario is cool. He can run, he can jump, he can stomp bad guys, he can rescue princesses, he can play sports, he went to medical school, he can paint, he's a top dog in a number of sports, and he's been made of paper. There's nothing Mario can't do.
And with a billion-dollar movie behind him, he may have just triple-jumped to icon status. But what does it really take to reach the level of the Mushroom Kingdom's No. 1 plumber? I wanted to know.
I do not resemble Mario, but I could fashion myself in his image with ease: red hat, blue overalls, mustache, ya-hoo. But becoming Mario, living up to his style, would require going to greater lengths. I would need to inhabit the daily life of Mario.
So over five days, I set out to uncover the essence of what it really means to be a plumber, princess-saver, kart-driver, and overall cool guy. This is my story.
