Episode 52 - Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick by Brick by Bob Chipman *Patron's Choice*

Our Patron Lynn chose this book as their once-per-year reward! Check out our Patreon here to get this and other rewards for yourself.

No substantial Content Warnings this week - brief mentions of death and terrorist attacks/shootings, and discussion of an infamous scene from the movie Blue Velvet but otherwise you’ve got nothing but our usual barnyard language to be concerned about.

Armed with our own childhood experiences of playing Nintendo games and Super Mario, we felt plenty prepared to dive into Bob Chipman's Super Mario Bros 3: Brick by Brick. Part text walk-through, part memoir, and part video game history retrospective, this book tried to do too much in its 208 pages. The author should've committed to one of these paths in a shorter form or found a better way to weave all three into a much longer, much more detailed narrative.

Chipman misses the opportunity to connect with his audience by avoiding deeper discussions of his own life and feelings. Strangely, the few times he does get more personal, he directs that emotion towards Mario and Shigeru Miyamoto and the unrefined phrasing of these moments is often uncomfortable. Like many books we've read, this book is in desperate need of an editor who would likely have caught these things and prevented them (along with some other inappropriate comparisons, spelling, and formatting mistakes) from making it to print.