So it’s the offseason, lets talk about Mario. If you listened to the podcast this week, you know where this is going.

When the reveal for the new Mario game happened a while ago, I got nervous. Mario was running around what looked like New York City, next to actual human people. It…didn’t look good. It gave me very very bad Sonic 2006 vibes. Basically, when you have a distinct character like Mario or Sonic, putting them in a world next to regular looking people is just wrong. Mario works in his own universe. When you stick him in ours, all it does is highlight how grotesque and weird it all is. You start questioning everything. It drives you slowly insane. Listen to the above podcast if you want to hear it happen in real time to me and Sam.

Then E3 happened and it showed the main gimmick to Mario Odyseey: Mario can possess things with his hat now. Mario is a skinchanger. Mario can literally possess humans in the game with his hat. I am so on board with this. A+, Nintendo. I wasn’t going to buy a Switch for a while, but now I might have to. That is an awesome game mechanic. Nintendo looked at the horror of putting Mario in a realistic world and said “Hmmm, lets go full on existential horror and make Mario a demon, but you get to play as the demon, it’ll be great”. He can also possess dinosaurs. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS GAME EXISTS.

It makes me wonder if Chargin’ Chucks are in the game, and if you can possess one. I want to play as Mario playing as Chargin’ Chuck. I want to kick footballs at goombas. I want to charge through koopas. I want piranha plants to look at their former friends and wonder when they grew a mustache and OH GOD CHUCK NO YOU’VE BEEN TAKEN BY THE MARIO OH GOD THIS GAME IS HORRIFYING. Invasion of the body snatchers, and the body snatcher is Mario. What if Mario finally defeats bowser not by stopping him…but by BECOMING him? Trapping Bowser as a prisoner in his own mind. Bowser is trapped in his own mind, unable to control his body, seeing everything like John Cusack at the end of Being John Malkovich or the main character in Get Out when he’s hypnotized. This is the most horrifying game ever made, Silent Hill ain’t got shit on this.

Also, one last thing about Chargin’ Chucks: it never really occurred to me, but it’s kind of weird they exist. They showed up in Super Mario World first. Why did a Japanese game developer stick a reference to American Football in their game? Japan doesn’t care about football, do they? Is that a thing? Why are almost all the enemies very unique to the world of Mario, but one enemy wears real world football gear? The very existence of Chargin Chucks are strange. I hope I can pull a Pazuzu and control one.