G.E.T.M. – Gamers for the Ethical Treatment of Mario

I’m starting a new non-profit, and you can probably guess what the name is by the title of this post. The point of this non-profit is to look out for the little guy, or in this case the big guy. While Mario is an icon and responsible for millions of dollars for Nintendo every year, I feel someone still has to have his back. After all, even though Mario has given us some of the most treasured moments of our shared youth, he also gave us the Super Mario Bros. movie and a never-ending stream of Mario Party titles.

Because of his portly stature and friendly affectation, and the role he shares in all our hearts, gamers time and again are willing to forgive Mario his trespasses. Other people, it turns out, are not quite as forgiving.

The people in question are the organization known as PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The group tries to promote vegan lifestyles and protect the rights of animals, which is an admirable goal. But, as with any good natured cause with a pure ideology, there are some not quite as balanced who join up and throw the whole thing for a crazy loop. I’m not going to use this space to get into the politics or ideology of PETA or animal rights in general, but when they start trampling on the good name of Mario… (?), they have crossed a line!

Today, PETA posted a Flash game on their website called “Super Tanooki Suit 2D“, a side-scrolling game that puts the player in the role of a skinned tanuki running after Mario to get its fur back. Mario flies at the top of the screen, wearing a brown coat like a cape, flapping behind him and dripping blood. The decor isn’t much happier either, as the warp pipes are smeared with the blood and the phallic mountains in the background sport kitty ears and Xs over the eyes. The description for the game reads:

When on a mission to rescue the princess, Mario has been known to use any means necessary to defeat his enemy—even wearing the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers.

Tanooki may be just a “suit” in Mario games, but in real life, tanuki are raccoon dogs who are skinned alive for their fur. By wearing Tanooki, Mario is sending the message that it’s OK to wear fur. Play Super Tanooki Skin 2D and help Tanooki reclaim his fur!

While I don’t line up with PETA philosophically, I’m not against a game that tries to raise awareness of a wrong or shed light on an issue. After all, the purpose of art is to challenge our perception of reality and make us question what and why we think. I can credit PETA for introducing me to what a tanuki is (I thought it was just a made-up word for the game), this is not the way you raise awareness on what goes into fur coats. It would be like calling those jailsploitation films of the 1970s a critique of the penal system. The game is just a quick throw-together job to shock and hopefully drive more people to the PETA website. What really creeps me out is the drawing of Mario, soaked in blood and gore, holding the severed head of a small raccoon and mugging to the camera like a pro-wrestling bad guy. Even the renderings of Mario in Real Life are not that scary!

I would’ve thought that a non-profit called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would have gotten on Mario’s case a lot sooner. After all, isn’t this the game where you jump on the backs of turtles and use their shells as weapons?! Turns out that stomping anthropomorphized turtles isn’t enough to get PETA’s attention, but if you look like you’re wearing the fur of a cute animal, that’s when they put their foot down. I should cut them some slack, though. They aren’t named People for the Ethical Treatment of Reptiles.

But really, this flash game and the attention its getting from gaming pundits like myself isn’t going to help or hurt PETA’s message that wearing fur is wrong. It’s at best a lateral move. Kids who might be influenced won’t care or might be outright horrified by their perversion of Mario, and older people will either already agree with PETA or just shrug this whole thing off as chaff. But if I could dispense some free advice… animals and how they are treated are not the focus of the Mario games. Plus, they’re made up! There is animal cruelty in the real world that needs to be dealt with before we can can start thinking about how many Koopas can dance on the head of a pin. And if PETA’s goal is to stop people from killing animals for their meat and fur, shouldn’t they be focused less on Mario and more on this guy: