A remaster of Mario: The Music Box
Mario has heard rumours of an abandoned mansion that has been close to the Mushroom Kingdom for over a century. Any person who dares step into the mansion's rooms, never returns. Mario and Princess Peach were supposed to investigate the strange place but Mario decided to go alone. Inside the home he finds a strange music box that was playing by itself. Little did he know that a "harmless" music box would've caused the home to try to eat him alive. Find out as you comb through a dangerous mansion and find out the story of it's residents and how they met their fate. Will you be able to guide the cheery hero of the Mushroom Kingdom back home? Or will he lose himself.
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despite having the mario cast in a very serious setting, i still admittedly liked the game in the end. it and ARC have very on-model art, and the gameplay is pretty much your typical horro rpg but i still like it. check it out if you want tho be warned this game doesn't mess around with the gore
I was giggling the entire time I played this. This entire game is played with an entirely straight face and I fucking love it. It's also just a very well put together rpg horror maker game. An amazing amount of effort was put into this and there are at least two dozen full art scenes of Mario/Luigi getting realistically strangled. Wahoo!
The Music Box is like a visual novel and Resident Evil had crossed paths. The game is very well written with the Mario cast and a set of characters made for the game having great character arcs and storybeats. The mansion itself gives off a very spooky vibe, while also keeping the player wanting to explore more of it as to help Mario find a way out of the mansion. The main part of the gameplay is going around the mansion and exploring every nook and cranny for clues to make progress in Mario’s escape. There are also very many choices that a player can make to to help Mario progress forward in the mansion or get one of many death scenes that are present in the game. So be sure to save often. Despite being an RPG maker game, I could only count two times where a fight would occur. While that would bother me in other games, The Music Box actually brings up tensions during its normal gameplay and uses the two fights to amplify that tension (as they are both placed near two different endings). For a game made in RPG maker, this games visuals are very impressive. The sprite work and lighting are fantastic for this title and really helps in selling that unsettling feeling. Having hand drawn pictures to show case certain scenes and paint a better picture of the surroundings. There is also the music, ranging from very atmospheric, emotional, and that boss fight feeling when it needs to be. My favorite being V.S. Alice, as it is a upbeat/haunting piece to listen to during that encounter. Overall, if there was ever a thought about what a Mario horror game would be, then this game should be tried. Even without the Mario characters I feel that this game could still stand on its own. Shouldn’t need to be said at this point, but at least give it a try.
Before having actually played Mario: The Music Box, most of what I knew was that it was a fairly standard RPG Maker horror game… which made the strange decision of starring the Super Mario Bros, of all people. Having now been able to play it myself, I have to say… yeah what an absolutely baffling choice. Like, way to just completely undercut the serious horror tone you’re going for. It’s hard to take the descriptions of all your gruesome fates so seriously when the main character is making Mario noises as he gets impaled through the throat. It’s hard to really read the interactions between you and the very edgy and serious original characters the way the developer intended when they’re anime OCs and Mario is precisely half their size. Maybe if it leaned into the premise a little and treated it in more of a… black comedy sort of way (watch Mario die over and over and over and over-) but as it stands it’s… caught in a little bit of a catch-22: Mario being the main character undercuts everything the tone is going for, but were Mario not in this game at all… there wouldn’t really be much notable about this, honestly.
The plot follows Mario, of the Super Mario Bros as he investigates an abandoned house on the edges of the Mushroom Kingdom. Upon finding a mysterious music box, Mario soon finds zombie ghosts converging in on him, and he now cannot leave this place. Now he, Luigi, andThe Third Mario Brother Byakuya Togami a stranger named Riba must find a way through the horrors of the house, with danger lurking along every corner the game explicitly warns you not to go down. Amidst it, one particular entity places its sight on Mario, and what follows is a conflict: one for Mario’s body, and one for Mario’s sanity………………………………………………………..
I’ll give this game credit: there’s an insane amount of effort put into it. That’s not a “you tried” sort of thing: the production value in this game is insane. Every story event, ending, and death has multiple hand-illustrated CGs visually depicting whatever’s happening. There are precisely 559 of these — multiple for each event — and they do a lot to show what’s happening, beyond the limits of what you can do with RPGmaker (unless you’re really good at sprite animation) and helping make each death feel, theoretically, that much more impactful. The sprite art, both for the characters and the general environment, is fairly aesthetically pleasing, even if the low saturation made seeing certain things sort of a pain. There are also, like, just straight-up custom animations made in the same style as the CG, both for… a Kingdom Hearts or When They Cry-esque opening video and also for a fully stylized RPG boss fight in one of the endings. Even with games such as Ib or The Witch’s House, most of what they had was limited to pixel art and ways to play around RPGMaker limitations. This… goes on a whole different level in terms of production value, and you can really tell that this game was made by an artist.
…You can also tell, however, that this game wasn’t made by a writer. This goes beyond the whole “story expects to be taken deathly seriously while also starring Mario” thing. For as much as the art works to make the many deaths you suffer feel evocative, the writing… does the opposite. Characters just matter-of-factly describe the way they die, and the sameyness (and also clunkiness) of these descriptions does a lot to undercut how varied and sometimes visceral these death sequences can be. Maybe if they were shorter, and leaned towards the visuals rather than the written, then they’d be more effective, but as stands most of them felt drawn out and kinda clunky. The plot, too, for as seriously it takes itself, has… issues. There’s a lot of characters (and also through this a lot of characters who just… drop out of the narrative) a lot of re-explanations of things the game forgot it already told the player, and a lot of cases where… the narrative doesn’t really have the effect it’s intending. Like, yes, this person who murdered their entire extended family because she wanted to be immortal like her boyfriend sure is actually a sympathetic victim of society. The titular music box… sure does matter a lot in the story. Ultimately, like, yes, it is incredibly silly that this story stars the Mario Brothers… but even if that wasn't there to undercut everything I really don't think this plot and story would be able to stand on its own.
And game-design wise… it’s no Ib or Witch’s House. The area design… leans linear, but areas are large enough that at points it’s easy to get lost on what you’re meant to do next. Puzzles… are mostly the sort of bread and butter “put a key in this keyhole to put a key into another keyhole-” that… doesn’t really feel all that unique or fun to play out — honestly, most of the puzzles I saw here were already things I’d seen in other games. Deaths are… very telegraphed: rather than the sudden, brutal ends you’d receive even if you thought you were going the right way, you’re kind of blatantly suggested that you shouldn’t go down this path and if you do then you get an overtly prolonged description as to why the obvious mistake was, in fact, a mistake. They’re also a little samey in that regard: literally every time you deal with a possessed person the answer is to violence the ghost out of them. Every time you're given the option to try to jump — y'know, like Mario is oft to do — it fails and you die. In terms of RPGMaker horror games it’s on the less ingenious end, and that could be fine… but I think the specific horror gameplay tropes they lean into are kind of the more irritating ones to deal with.
And in the end, when… a lot of the individual elements don’t really hold under scrutiny, and the only thing that particularly stands out in the first place is the strange decision to use Mario as the main protagonist, it’s easy to tell how this game has the little bit of infamy it has. And while there would be a way to make these particular ideas work, here… they don’t. Not in the way the developer intended. 4/10.
The plot follows Mario, of the Super Mario Bros as he investigates an abandoned house on the edges of the Mushroom Kingdom. Upon finding a mysterious music box, Mario soon finds zombie ghosts converging in on him, and he now cannot leave this place. Now he, Luigi, and
I’ll give this game credit: there’s an insane amount of effort put into it. That’s not a “you tried” sort of thing: the production value in this game is insane. Every story event, ending, and death has multiple hand-illustrated CGs visually depicting whatever’s happening. There are precisely 559 of these — multiple for each event — and they do a lot to show what’s happening, beyond the limits of what you can do with RPGmaker (unless you’re really good at sprite animation) and helping make each death feel, theoretically, that much more impactful. The sprite art, both for the characters and the general environment, is fairly aesthetically pleasing, even if the low saturation made seeing certain things sort of a pain. There are also, like, just straight-up custom animations made in the same style as the CG, both for… a Kingdom Hearts or When They Cry-esque opening video and also for a fully stylized RPG boss fight in one of the endings. Even with games such as Ib or The Witch’s House, most of what they had was limited to pixel art and ways to play around RPGMaker limitations. This… goes on a whole different level in terms of production value, and you can really tell that this game was made by an artist.
…You can also tell, however, that this game wasn’t made by a writer. This goes beyond the whole “story expects to be taken deathly seriously while also starring Mario” thing. For as much as the art works to make the many deaths you suffer feel evocative, the writing… does the opposite. Characters just matter-of-factly describe the way they die, and the sameyness (and also clunkiness) of these descriptions does a lot to undercut how varied and sometimes visceral these death sequences can be. Maybe if they were shorter, and leaned towards the visuals rather than the written, then they’d be more effective, but as stands most of them felt drawn out and kinda clunky. The plot, too, for as seriously it takes itself, has… issues. There’s a lot of characters (and also through this a lot of characters who just… drop out of the narrative) a lot of re-explanations of things the game forgot it already told the player, and a lot of cases where… the narrative doesn’t really have the effect it’s intending. Like, yes, this person who murdered their entire extended family because she wanted to be immortal like her boyfriend sure is actually a sympathetic victim of society. The titular music box… sure does matter a lot in the story. Ultimately, like, yes, it is incredibly silly that this story stars the Mario Brothers… but even if that wasn't there to undercut everything I really don't think this plot and story would be able to stand on its own.
And game-design wise… it’s no Ib or Witch’s House. The area design… leans linear, but areas are large enough that at points it’s easy to get lost on what you’re meant to do next. Puzzles… are mostly the sort of bread and butter “put a key in this keyhole to put a key into another keyhole-” that… doesn’t really feel all that unique or fun to play out — honestly, most of the puzzles I saw here were already things I’d seen in other games. Deaths are… very telegraphed: rather than the sudden, brutal ends you’d receive even if you thought you were going the right way, you’re kind of blatantly suggested that you shouldn’t go down this path and if you do then you get an overtly prolonged description as to why the obvious mistake was, in fact, a mistake. They’re also a little samey in that regard: literally every time you deal with a possessed person the answer is to violence the ghost out of them. Every time you're given the option to try to jump — y'know, like Mario is oft to do — it fails and you die. In terms of RPGMaker horror games it’s on the less ingenious end, and that could be fine… but I think the specific horror gameplay tropes they lean into are kind of the more irritating ones to deal with.
And in the end, when… a lot of the individual elements don’t really hold under scrutiny, and the only thing that particularly stands out in the first place is the strange decision to use Mario as the main protagonist, it’s easy to tell how this game has the little bit of infamy it has. And while there would be a way to make these particular ideas work, here… they don’t. Not in the way the developer intended. 4/10.
I remember playing the original when I was a kid and I last like 30 minutes because I was scared, and started watching some youtubers play it, and absolutely loved it.
Some days ago, I remembered this game existed and that they remastered it, so I was really looking forward to playing it.
I had such a blast playing it, enjoyed from start to finish and really wanted to play it till the end, and getting a 100% in the Gallery.
Such a good game, and makes it kinda funny that it has Mario characters, it is a pretty good experience after all.
Some days ago, I remembered this game existed and that they remastered it, so I was really looking forward to playing it.
I had such a blast playing it, enjoyed from start to finish and really wanted to play it till the end, and getting a 100% in the Gallery.
Such a good game, and makes it kinda funny that it has Mario characters, it is a pretty good experience after all.