Hotel Mario

Hotel Mario is one of the strangest detours in the famous Italian plumber's history, and also one of the best-known titles ever released for the Philips CD-i. It came about through a licensing deal that let Philips use characters owned by Nintendo, and the result is a logic platformer built on a single idea: closing doors. Mario and Luigi make their way through seven hotels that Bowser and his Koopalings have opened across the Mushroom Kingdom, and on every floor they must slam shut all the open doors. Once the last one closes, the floor is done and the hero moves up. It sounds simple, but as the levels progress they add elevators, moving platforms, doors that reopen on their own, and enemies that knock the player off narrow ledges. The game ends up offering more of a rhythmic puzzle than classic action, and in its two-player co-op mode it can be surprisingly fun.

Technically it's a modest title that comes nowhere near exploiting what the CD medium could offer. The graphics are simple, the controls feel clunky, and Mario responds with noticeable lag, something most contemporary reviewers complained about. What actually made the game famous were the animated cutscenes between hotels: their jerky animation, odd color choices, and overly theatrical voice acting turned them into one of the most-quoted phenomena of nineties gaming history. Plenty of people who never cared about the CD-i console can still quote lines from the opening scene.

Contemporary reception was lukewarm at best and Hotel Mario gradually became a symbol of how a licensed game turns out without the original creator's oversight. Today it can be viewed more kindly, as a curious historical item worth trying. The core mechanic starts to click after a few floors, the difficulty ramps up fairly, and it's the only Mario game that never appeared on Nintendo hardware. Collectors chase it more for the story told about it than for its gameplay, and that's exactly where its peculiar charm lies.