We recognize theme with all our senses: the sights, the sounds, the heavy rumble in our hands, the font used to display text. Forgotten in this equation are the game’s mechanics. What the buttons you press do determines how the game talks to you.
In the four and a half years since I first played Super Mario Galaxy, I’ve never replayed it except for reference. I’ve never replayed any of the modern Marios. In this time, I’ve replayed many of the older titles upwards of a half dozen times. Apologists might say this is because the modern games are longer, that I have less emotional connection to them. I offer an alternate thesis: these games have no mechanical theme. Modern Mario has gotten too precise, gone from a happy machine gun to a sonorous sniper rifle.
