Publisher: Kitsune Games
Developer: Kitsune Games
Single Player
PC (Steam)
Texas complete!
You have defeated Ted Cruz!
Having this review at all will immediately alienate some readers. Politics is a concept which now separates individuals into camps, hills to die on or part of tribal mentality, but with the obvious issue that, for all for me that contributes nothing, it can unfortunately influence how the world works with disastrous results. This is strange to have to begin with, when the game here is a parody of older Mario games starring the liberal politician Bernie Sanders as Mario, an inherently ridiculous premise, but this was made by developers Kitsune Games back in 2020 to promote voting in the elections, so regardless of your views, this is a propagandist work which, whilst encouraging voting, still takes a side and needs to be talked of as such.
It clearly knows it is absurd, as I have quoted the dialogue of Ted Cruz, the right wing attorney and politician, being dunked in a cage after defeating him as the first boss, but I come to this neither a liberal nor a conservative but as already a historical piece. It is a work which after the November 2020 elections, when the 45th president Donald Trump was defeated in voting by Joe Biden of the Democrat party, has already become a time capsule, in the same way old newspaper satirical illustrations of the past reflect what politics are like, or the pro-Trump illustrations by Ben Garrison, with his giant hair and bulky He-Man physic, all part of an era where a Mario videogame parody is far less stranger than the era of Qanon, terms of like "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and the entire four year run of the 45th presidency.
I admit a bias, but one that I feel neither liberal nor conservative despite my politics being liberal originally in nature. I consider myself a progressive who wishes to actually live up to that title, not a fence sitting choice but a sense of disconnection from either side, neither I feel I know enough of, neither side above poor comments and attitudes even by a minority. I come with a bias that, yes, I did not consider Donald Trump appropriate as a president, but not as an Antichrist as some liberals did, but looking at him as someone, in the history books, historians will scratch their heads about his four years of presidency and how it came to be, including how the internet and concepts like memes influenced it, and how it went. Even something like Qanon as mentioned sadly had real world influence, all from a conspiracy strange for me on paper, from origins developing him as a true messianic figure, absorbing various conspiracies and even converting an old anti-Semitic blood libel theory into Hilary Clinton eating children's adrenaline glands1. For me he was the president who spent a lot of time on social media, on Twitter, but never felt he was going anywhere, and among the cultural items from the time - from written work from former aides who questioned his legitimacy to the memes from the right, left and far-right still online - there was a game which is just a replication of an old legendary Nintendo property which nonetheless gathered my interest, as Bernie Sanders in his politics, like Trump, developed his own cult of personality in this time, and somehow he is here bouncing off turtles with the heads of old white Republican politicians.
It is the kind of work easy to be lost, when it was itself part of the history of this era called Donald Trump's presidency, and that of a figure like Bernie Sanders, of this time as a liberal who had suddenly become more than the Democrat party as a one man band, and even antagonistic as a more liberal version of them in himself, itself something to scrutinise in the future for historians even in just five or ten years as a direction of politics at this time. This is really heavy, from an amateur writer's perspective, to write of when this is a broad parody of politics to laugh at too, only not having Donald Trump as a fire breathing turtle shelled version, a la Mario's antagonist Bowser, among its weird aesthetic choices as some may have wished. The severity of modern politics for many makes this more caustic to write of, when the result is a simple parody which had to be converted into an interactive game.
I thought of Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill (1993/2018) in fact, a game originally meant to be released on the SNES which, developed by Realtime Associates, was a platformer staring former president Bill Clinton's cat, a work never released until unofficially in 2010, when the prototype cartridge was found. Super Bernie Worldhas a perverse humour of Sanders literally needing a big cheese as a growth spurt power up that allows you to take another hit, but comes in a more antagonistic time in North American politics. Socks the Cat... had him as a mascot of a divisive president fighting the likes of Richard Nixon from a time, the early to mid nineties, when politics was very different in the USA, and would have possibly not causes anyone to bat their eyes to, especially as you also had to beat up protestors in one level. That game is a difficult one to play, due to Socks having unreliably short attack distance and a difficult curve of an awkwardly put together old game, whilst Super Bernie World is a short game regardless of politics I enjoyed, helped by the fact it is playable - over four worlds, three levels each - and went into its parody of a famous franchise for Nintendo by making sure its mechanics were solid.
The game does not hide it is a re-paint of Mario, which as a game released for free on Steam probably helped avoid Nintendo having words, especially as a blatant copy called The Great Giana Sisters (1987) back in the day did2. The mushroom kingdom is now U.S states like Texas, whilst the third level of each world is always a lava pit dungeon, which is sickly funny when the last of this short game is Washington D.C., in mind this was made by unapologetic Bernie supporters at the tail end of the Trump presidency. This parody was as fascinating for me too as someone who, baring a Gameboy, never grew up with Nintendo, another factor I came in with. I was briefly a Sega Saturn kid, but especially the first two PlayStations, so baring Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992), I did not grow up with any other versions of the Mario franchise. This franchise has changed its mechanics over the years too, so Super Bernie World is also based on the earliest games, something to bear in mind too.
As a result this "Electoral Platformer" has another side of note as, the game as a very short work to complete offers both a history for me too of this franchise which may actually help with appreciating it, without a save mechanic at all for progress but short enough to be able to complete in a night. The run button here is vital for example, something I have not really experienced in platformers I have played aside from that being inherent to their characters movements, necessary to reach across to certain platforms even if you have very little space to run on. The game is simple, with short levels of obstacles, the game thankfully never kicking you to the beginning but repeating a level until you beat it or turn the game off. The enemies are only a few, all reflecting the politics including "ICE" bullets, or the red capped giant child-men coming out of garbage cans instead of Mario's fire breathing piranha plants.
Having to memorise and work around increasingly difficult obstacles, I realised too that, getting into this once by bouncing on three villains one-after-another in one steadfast movement without touching the floor, the best players with this platforming style will create a rhythm. Between running and jumping, really good players with this type of platform game will eventually be able to be on the move without pause bearing to get the momentum right. Alongside the developers, Kitsune Games, beginning development afterwards on a platformer of their own premise afterwards, Kitsune Tails, than their desire even in political parody to work on this type of old school 2D platformer is something of interest for me. Especially as, for a political work rather than a game, they have, if this is close to the original NES era of Mario, unintentionally with Super Bernie World also helped me improve as a gamer alongside having fun.
Your politics will factor in, which is inevitable with a work like this. This work as an artefact was the reason I wanted to play this in the first place, an alternative in how light hearted it is, even as a propagandist work regardless of political side. When unfortunately the politics of the same time have had such a violent intensity to them, I find it not trivalising at all, finding a free game with such a quirky satirical gag in its centre, to appreciate this regardless of my own opinions. Donald Trump supporters will not appreciate how, as the final boss, you do not even get Bernie Sanders fighting him, but Trump falling to his knees crying and the image of him being humiliated in pixel form. At the same time, another bias of mine, knowing how after the four years of his presidency his exit was, for the most part, a sudden wet fart in terms of all that happened, Kitsume Games may have unintentionally predicted in an openly liberal and mean way the exit, even if it was Democratic president Joe Biden to have been the one who metaphorically dropped him in a cage.
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1) Qanon is too big a subject, as someone who only started to read up on it in 2021 and still needs to research it more, and not appropriate to go in a tangent on in a video game review. Suffice to say, it is a conspiracy with many tendrils, and when of its conspiracies include a reinterpretation of the anti-Semitic idea of Jews killing children to drink their blood, called the "blood libel", from centuries past, and the chemical substance Adrenochrome, which just evokes Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and is exaggerated in what it actually does, I find myself with something too weird and morally severe to unpack when I just wanted to admit I liked a platformer parody that just has a liberal politician from the United States as the lead.
2) That the game's legacy involved a reboot with some beloved games is a fascinating subject for another day.
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