Mario Kart and Society

[Sarisa]

The more I think about it, the deeper the divide is between the sociology in the Mario Kart sub-series and the rest of the Marioverse. In Mario Kart, there are large modern cities complete with skyscrapers, two- and four-lane highways full of traffic, stadiums for monster truck rallies and a yearly kart race with huge attendance, an item box factory, and generally a modern world. In the other games, there are a few airplanes and ships but otherwise the only means of transportation is your own two feet, there are towns but no cities, and definitely no congested urban highways.

The world presented in Mario Kart makes a lot more sense overall; it takes no imagination for a world that wealthy and sophisticated to support kart racing, airplanes, the Internet, etc. On the other hand, no one ever accused the Mario series of realism; if an airplane is important to the plot it's there, and no one worries about where Peach orders spare parts from.

My headache is reconciling the two. What I've argued so far is that Peach's corner of the MK is an extreme rural backwater; you'd think the government that collects taxes from Mushroom City would start paving roads to Toad Town, but perhaps the whole area is too unstable to keep a road open or Peach refuses to allow cars to spoil the fresh air (and help her subjects flee). Bowser doesn't care since he flies everywhere he really needs to go but seems supportive of a modern economy (probably managed by a senior advisor); perhaps Koopa City, built over the northeast border from Peach's realm, appeared on the calendar this karting season because Bowser decided it looked more advanced than Mushroom City and wanted to show off wealth by building a custom track.

...anyhow, my point is that the Mario Kart world doesn't reconcile well with the lack of modern structures in the other games, and I don't have a good explanation. Does anyone else?

[Koopalmier]

Yeah. A modern world has been pointed at as soon as Mario Kart 64 (with the Skyscraper arena), which came out the same year as Mario 64 by the way.

Peach says she'd like to install arcades in the kingdom (obviously referring to the area we see in Paper Mario and all). It would seem to me that the part of the kingdom we see most of the time is indeed having major issues with keeping up with society and technology, as it seems to be in the 1970's or so while the rest of the world (or heck, just the rest of the MK) is in the 2100's.

I think it must not be the choice of the government, as Peach WOULD like to make things advance a bit at least.
However, I think the hundreds of holes in the ground, the pits that can only be crossed by going underground on foot and fighting your way through monsters, the many floating blocks and auto-generating coins, and the overall wideness of the area, make progress very difficult (heck, I bet you can't even get on Internet from Toad Town !).

As you said, the area seems way too unstable to allow for roads, decent Internet or phone connection, or tourism. The only actually advanced (oh so advanced) place in there is Neo Bowser City / Koopa City, which still seems to be relatively new (not even a street, just a few buildings around a castle-like city hall, flying vehicles, and a load of simple lights far on the ground) and definitely not entirely under Peach's control.

In Mario Kart, you just go farther than that. The Mushroom Kingdom is divided into three areas: the "poor" area, which is around Peach's Castle and is in such a state because of the barren area, the "modern" area, which is somewhere alongside the south coast and where progress went VERY strong and where Mushroom City is, and then you got the "unhabited" area, probably more inland, with the Moo Moo country, some mines Wario took over, Boo Woods, and probably where SMB and TLL happened (also, I'd assume this is where the people of the "poor" area go to work if they don't work at Peach's Castle or something).

Yeah. I think it's rather the OTHER GAMES that don't reconcile well with the Mario Kart world, and it's because of the area around Peach's Castle making progress pretty much impossible, the Beanbean Kingdom just being poor, and pretty much every area without a city we've seen being poor too (Jewelry Land is pretty small, has a little population, and we never hear about it) (Rogueport is an obvious one) (etc).

You may also want to point out Mario Party, Mario Strikers and Mario Soccer have given a more modern view of Mario's world too (also Mario vs DK if that counts).

[Sarisa]

It's interesting that, IRL, Somalia might not have safe roads but it has cell phones and Internet cafes. Even warlords want working phones. So, in that respect, Mario's Mailbox SP is realistic. Honestly, a place in a 2100s-style world so messed up it can't even get Internet is a sign of bad rulership. Do they not have any satellite downlinks or cell phone towers there? Come to think of it, do they have electricity?

Your poor Beanbean Kingdom is a better idea than I thought at first glance. The port facilities in what is now Teehee Valley are gone, the exchange rate fluctuates wildly, and brigands are out in force in the countryside even before (or immediately after) Cackletta attacks the capital. (Some countries in Africa had deliberately overvalued exchange rates to keep necessary imports cheap; the problem is exports are uncompetitive.) It might be a country that formerly kept up with the world, but due to its isolationist policy and the danger of Bean Fever is comparable to its northeastern neighbor. I wonder if Queen Bean is pouring funds into the Hooniversity to try to counteract this decline when she needs to build a new port.

How did you work out that the prosperous MK is on the south coast? Also, where could it fit on the PM map? I thought we'd concluded that the two maps are directly adjacent.

[Koopalmier]

Mario Party Advance's map is a part of Mushroom City, plus a few area to the west of it. t.cyol.com/cache/temp/35000/34494/img/wave/2010/07/img_1280473235_64.png

However, I just realized nothing proves north = up here, so maybe I'm wrong.
I think it's the south coast, but east to Toad Town. You know how the PM and TTYD maps are linked by the Shiver region ? I think the MPA map is under that region. I'd assume you can get to the Twilight region by going to the east of Mushroom City. But I'm just completely speculating - sorry for mixing it up with my observations.
Basically, I believe it goes like this (sorry for being off-thread):
s4.noelshack.com/old/up/mario_map_beta-f3603e0249.png

Hope you can understand my point of view better now.

Anyway...
Sure, Somalia can still have the Internet and phones. But it doesn't have massive and deep gapes on the ground a bit everywhere, or floating objects that just won't go away. I think it's impossible to install phone towers in the Mushroom Kingdom. As for the Internet, I think connection is just bad in comparison to the futuristic Mushroom City's. Even Mario himself would rather have an electronic mailbox than a full-out laptop.

Really, have you ever been in a little village ? Half the people don't know about Internet, half of the other half does but doesn't have a computer, and the second half of the overall second half (my brain is bleeding) is tired of having a crap connection.
Well, I don't think Toad Town, Koopa Village, Shiver City and Goomba Village's people don't know about computers, but, hey, it's their choice to stay there.

Anyway, yeah. I believe the kingdom's horrible geography is the reason the part surrounding Peach's Castle is kind of "blocked" from the rest of society. I also like your explanation for the Beanbean Kingdom's poverty (I also believe the kingdom used to be bigger, if only because it's, er, pretty small. Really, there are many cities bigger than the whole kingdom).

[Sarisa]

I think the climate belts on the map (north is cold, south is hot) strongly imply that north is up or close to it. Otherwise it's implied to be in the Southern Hemisphere, and the rest of the Mushroomsphere is in the Northern Hemisphere.

I visit my aunt regularly, and she lives outside a small town in the southern US (~2500 people). Not everyone has a computer and Internet service at home, but at the public library there are always people using the computers to check their e-mail, since the US has no Internet cafes anymore. She's also friends with a lot of retirees, 60s through 80s, and almost all the ones under 80 have a computer and Internet service at home. Maybe small American towns aren't as backward. (They do, however, have crap connections. There are people on dial-up because they live too far from DSL substations and nobody ever laid the cables for cable TV.)

I think Mario's electronic mailbox is meant to represent a Japanese cell phone. Japan had, until recently - they're converging - a very different Internet experience from the US or France. Relatively few Japanese had PCs at home ("relatively" here could still be 50%; I haven't checked the figures) and if they did only one. However, Japan was the first country in the world to spread the Internet-enabled cellphone. They aren't smartphones, since they don't run a miniature computer OS or have apps, but in 2000 a Japanese cell phone got e-mail, checked the weather, and let the user visit websites with a special cell phone interface. The result was the cell phone novel, which is why so little fanfic comes out of Japan (the cell phone novel appeals to the same demographic). Anyhow...after all that rambling, the point was that in 2004 a Japanese thinking about mobile e-mail would come up with a cellphone, not a laptop. It doesn't hurt that cellphone towers are much easier to build than a land-based telecom network.

I don't think the Beanbean Kingdom has ever been very large; civilized Beanish only live in the central valley, the hills are occupied by native Hoohooligans and immigrant Toads, and the islands are occupied by Oho Jees and Jellyfish. If it was ever larger, it occupied an area west of the map on the far side of Chucklehuck Woods or controlled a bit more of the Beanbean/MK borderlands, which don't seem to be heavily populated.

I think Peach's realm could be developed, if someone was willing to spend a lot of money on bridging pits and routing the roads around item boxes and such. (Someone must want them, since Toad's Factory makes them.) It's going to be hard to find anyone willing to put up the money with the nonexistent stability record of the area, though.

The real kicker is the lack of electricity. They need generators or some other power source to power the Mailbox SP and its email network, the lights of Mushroom City, the TVs tuned to Toad Force V, all that. The Marios have running water, but even they rely on kerosene lamps for light and a wood-burning stove for heat in the Paper Mario series. (SMRPG and MLSS may have a small electric light by their bed.) It's like that entire branch of technology is missing, which is odd since IRL it's not too hard to set up a small electricity generator. Inefficient, yes, but not hard. Maybe the MK version requires large power plants and small generators don't work, which would explain why Peach's realm lacks electricity but doesn't explain Rogueport and Flurrie's remote house having it.

[SMBBQ]

Did anyone here ever watch He-Man? That show had a mix of high-tech weapons alongside magic and much more primitive societies.

I think the Mushroom Kingdom, and, by extension, the entire Mushroom World.

[kingkoopa]

Never seen it, but I have heard about it. I'll have to get to it when I finish watching Kai.

[Sarisa]

My mom wouldn't let me watch that show, so I've never seen it.

[koopaul]

Isn't it possible Peach just wants to keep the old towns and cities of the past as they were? Building newer updated cities elsewhere.

I live in New England and I can say some parts can go from modern day to old timey fast. Its just that these old places are treasured to us and it would be a crime to bulldoze some of those old buildings down.

It doesn't mean the area is poor, people just want it to stay that way.

Heck one of those old building was built in the 1800's but has WiFi!

[kingkoopa]

That is actually a good point. It would explain why the area around Peach's Castle looks so different from the rest of the MK. Perhaps there really is the same level of technology everwhere in the MK, but we just haven't seen it in the area.

[Sarisa]

That's an interesting theory, although here west of the Appalachians old houses have been wired for electric lights and indoor plumbing.

[Banzai Bill]

Perhaps there really is the same level of technology everwhere in the MK, but we just haven't seen it in the area.

Yeah, and remember that part of Bowser's Inside Story when we see Toad Town's electric electric trap? I think Koopaul makes a good point.

As for Koopa City/Neon Bowser City, I can't help but wonder if the developers were making a sly reference to the live-action Mario movie.

[Koopalmier]

Mar 31, 2012 21:58:29 GMT -5 Banzai Bill said:

Perhaps there really is the same level of technology everwhere in the MK, but we just haven't seen it in the area.

Yeah, and remember that part of Bowser's Inside Story when we see Toad Town's electric electric trap? I think Koopaul makes a good point.

As for Koopa City/Neon Bowser City, I can't help but wonder if the developers were making a sly reference to the live-action Mario movie.

New Bowser City. What was the original Bowser City ? Dinohattan.