Bubble Baby

There are countless Super Mario games and remakes featuring the famous Italian plumber, but in almost all of them Mario looks the same, except maybe for the outfits he wears in some situations. However, he seems to be ageless and always ready to defend the Mushroom Kingdom from the forces of Bowser, his arch enemy and prime suspect whenever a princess goes missing somewhere.

Bubble Baby has a different take on the subject and presents a situation where Mario is just a little baby, trying to live his childhood in the beautiful Mushroom Kingdom. Unfortunately, evil does not wait for your baby teeth to be replaced in order to do its bidding, so tragedy strikes the kingdom when Mario least expects it. Hence, the action pretty much evolves like in all the other Super Mario platformers, with a few changes when it comes to gameplay.

Story-wise, everything starts when Luigi, Mario’s beloved brother, gets kidnaped by Bowser, who intends to harm Luigi in all sorts of horrible ways. To avoid this, Mario goes on a journey to rescue his brother and start a life-long feud with the mighty dragon by the name of Bowser. However, both Mario and Luigi are merely babies, so they cannot really tackle the dangers like they would later in life.

In essence, Mario still lives in a bubble, which allows him to float around the Mushroom Kingdom with total disregard for gravity. On the other hand, any kind of encounter with a sharp object or an enemy can burst his bubble and send him tumbling to the ground. Thus, you must carefully navigate the levels and deal with the enemies using various items you find laying around.

One of the more unusual things about the game is the fact that the controls are mostly mouse-based, which means that you control Mario by simply moving the cursor around. Clicking on certain objects allows you to interact with them, such as when you use fire stones to torch obstacles or enemies. As far as the visual aspect is concerned, the resolution is a tad too tiny for modern screens, but you can still make out what happens most of the time.

All things considered, Bubble Baby is at least an original concept in the world of Mario remakes, so you can rest assured that it won’t feel exactly like all the other clones. The difficulty level can pose quite the challenge at times, although that may also be because things are not properly explained most of the time.