YouTuber Alex Ravioli (dug up by One Angry Gamer) has done the impossible. He created an (almost) unproblematic game for those fragile game journalists and Tumblrinas.
In this new and improved level of Super Mario Bros, you can’t lose. Thank god, because winning and losing only promote toxic masculinity. And because you don’t have to look where you’re going, there’s no need for the sexist male gaze.
No problematic princesses to save or poor creatures to abuse either. And the fire flower no longer gives you the ability to shoot fire balls, but instead starts a PC dance party. Like, did the original creators of Mario even know how many people died of napalm in Nam? Super, suuuper problematic.
The only issue that I and some brave commenters found is that Mario is still a f—king white male. It’s 2016 and Mushroom (oppressive phallic symbol) Kingdom is still just as much of a patriarchy as it was in the ’80s!
But at least this level will appeal to certain types. Namely, the sensitive souls at Polygon who struggled through the first 30 minutes of Doom, a game which pales in comparative difficulty to old arcade platformers. Finally a safe space in the violent, harassment-prone, sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and imperialistic world of gaming.