Joystiq [Nintendo]

Assembly Line Worker

Job experience: Mario Bros. (Game & Watch, 1983), Game & Watch Gallery 3 (GBC, 1999)

Little-known fact: Mario was once a factory man. Hey, the contracts to a multi-billion dollar gaming franchise don't just drop from a tree. You've got to grind on that time clock first. It takes a certain kind of man to tolerate the daily monotony and general malaise of a factory job, but with a Super attitude and a couple of mushroom power-ups it's a piece of cake. Seriously, that's what it is in the GBC remake of Mario Bros.--piece after piece of cake rolling by on the conveyor to be boxed and shipped. Surprisingly, it seems to have never occurred to anyone that a terribly repetitive real-life occupation might just make for a terribly repetitive video game (sans Animal Crossing). Then again, this early, alternate version of Mario Bros. was originally played on the constrained LCD platform, and anyway, the repetitive nature of Tetris threw everyone off.

02/07/08