So back in the early 90s. Nintendo was in talks with a few different electronics companies to create games for a CD-based video game console. One of these companies was Sony who, after talks fell through, went on to make their own disc-based console not long after called the PlayStation. Who Nintendo went with was none other than Philips who had their own CD multimedia player which was called the CD-i.
Phillips developed an attachment to their CD-i which added the ability to play video games and have full video cutscenes. Nintendo lent the rights to The Legend of Zelda and Mario, and thus, we got 3 games for the CD-i. The CD-i ended up being a failure beyond the gaming aspect, but the quality of the games sure didn't help. These 3 games are often considered to be some of the worst video games of all time, but hey, at least they had full animated cutscenes. And those cutscenes are well remembered and memed to this day.
All Hotel Mario Cutscenes
We'll start with the Mario game, Hotel Mario. This game feels like some creepy dream world version of Mario. All the characters are here! You've got the deep-voiced and gravelly Mario, Luigi who is very excited for spaghetti, Peach, who sounds like a princess from one of those off brand theme parks, and Bowser, who is scheming harder than ever.
These cutscenes are classic! Every line in them feels like it's from one of the worst Saturday morning cartoons. There are so many great moments, but the stand outs have to be the intro cutscene and the "toast" cutscene. Who ever wrote the line "You know what they say! All toasters toast toast" deserves an award! I'm always saying that all toasters toast toast!
The Zelda games might be even better. Link is such a scamp in his game, Link: The Faces of Evil. Always saying stuff like "I can't wait to bomb some dodongos!". There is not a single other game in which Link talks or says anything more than grunts. I think Link: The Faces of Evil might be why.
Of course the real highlight is the shopkeeper, Morshu, even though he only has 2 lines. Despite original memes of these games coming from nearly 20 years ago, he had a resurgence in the last couple years. What people have made from the 30 or so words he said have been incredible. The real highlight has to be "Morshu reads the entirety of the Bible". Just amazing what humans can do.
You can't bring up the CD-i games without mentioning why they are so popular. That is of course the meme format known as "YouTube Poop" or YTP. YTPs have been one of the most consistent forms of memes going back 20 years to the early days of YouTube and even before. What people will do is use sentence mixing from existing forms of media to get it to say a completely new thing. And then hilarity ensues. The CD-i games were instrumental in the ongoing creation of YTPS. Now there are YTPs being made for virtually any kind of media, but I will always be partial to the ones that make fun of political commentators.
YTPs are truly an art form, and it’s a careful task making one into something that is consistently funny and understandable. There are so many excellent ones from the last few years now that people have had decades to master their craft. And we have the CD-i games to thank for them. Without Luigi saying spaghetti, who knows where the world would be today.
A really great video recapping the history of YTPs
Thank you, Jeff, for recommending this classic!
