Nintendo has rolled out the red carpet for Super Mario Bros. 40th anniversary party. As revealed during this morning’s hour-long Nintendo Direct, we’re getting a movie, Super Mario Galaxy ports, a Mario Tennis game, and a new Yoshi adventure to celebrate the milestone. But buried in that exciting slew of announcements is some dark news that should send a chill down your spine: Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s talking flowers have taken root all across the Mushroom Kingdom. There is no stopping their rise.
The dreaded flowers that quipped their way through Mario’s last adventure, interrupting the lovely score to drop in cornball one-liners, took center stage during the Nintendo Direct. First, we saw that they’ll be returning in Mario Tennis Fever as live commentators, no doubt stealing jobs from some gentle Toads. Then, Nintendo revealed that it had immortalized these affronts to God into a talking desk toy releasing next spring. Nintendo says that they can “talk on their own” which sounds like a threat.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen these fiends cameo in a game since Wonder’s release in 2023. Earlier this summer, they made their return to the series in Super Mario Party Jamboree’s Switch 2 upgrade. When you play the mouse-controlled Carnival Coaster mode, you’re trapped in a roller coaster with a talking flower. The horror. The horror!
Today’s Nintendo Direct now makes it clear that this was a mere tease of the plague coming to Mario’s quiet world. The talking flowers are gradually being positioned on the same level as Toad, standing in as the series’ new second bananas. As a creative decision, it makes perfect sense. At 40 years old, the Mario series is currently undergoing its first real transformation in decades. It’s gradually evolving into something that can appeal to more modern kids, adopting the tone of today’s cartoons. The Super Mario Bros. Movie leveraged that to great success, combining the visual splendor of Mario games with Despicable Me-style humor.
The talking flowers, I’m afraid, are Mario’s Minions.
Look, I’m not inherently opposed to change here. Mario has always been at its best when it’s willing to experiment with the design and tone of its universe. It’s why I’m a staunch defender of Super Mario Sunshine, a tonally unique game in the series that was bold enough to throw Mario in prison, and also why I love the hilarious Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. This was the exact appeal of Super Mario Bros. Wonder too, which transformed your average 2D Mario game into an expressive cartoon. The talking flowers were a big part of defining that playful tone.
All that said, I’m going to uproot these twerps. Watch me. The last thing I need in video games is more one-liners. Didn’t I suffer enough during my Borderlands 4 playthrough? Did we learn nothing from Forspoken? Nintendo’s sense of humor has often shied away from that kind of joke, instead getting great laughs on animation-driven physical comedy. Luigi is a regular Buster Keaton in Luigi’s Mansion 3! Kirby’s Mouthful Mode forms are the kind of sight gags that Charlie Chaplin would have killed for! The talking flowers, by comparison, are hack comedians that simply can’t hang with the greats. Stick to your open-mic nights, kids!
