Brandon Inada's Blog

I recently stumbled upon this cool, Super Mario Bros. 2-inspired piece of retro gaming artwork by artist Winona Nelson:

(A realistic take on the ultra surreal Super Mario Bros. 2)

I love the way Luigi’s turnip hits its mark, the creepy, slouching postures and twisted claws of the masked Shy Guys, and the innocent vegetables turned blood-spattered murder weapons.

Here’s a screenshot from the original SMB2 for comparison:

(A screenshot from the original NES SMB2)

Shy Guys are usually depicted like this nowadays:

(Cute little, shy guys)

In an interview over at mariomario.over-blog here, the artist discusses her realistic approach to the cartoony, dream-like subject matter of the one-off Super Mario sequel:

I really wanted to show how weird the ideas in Super Mario 2 are (throwing turnips, short creepy guys in masks following you), and by making it realistic it makes people think about these things in terms of reality, where the strangeness and creepiness of it is really obvious.

The Shy Guys in the painting sort of remind me of this fellow – also a tad creepy, looks and behavior-wise – from Miyazaki’s Spirited Away:

(Kaonashi or No-Face on the right)

You can check out Winona Nelson’s official website here and blog here.

Stumbled across these fun Super Mario Bros. related images online and decided to share them with you:

(Click on the pics to see them full-sized.)

Very cool. 

I love the Ninji, Mario, Princess, the Goomba, Wart, and the little black and orange bird thing from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.  The way Toad’s depicted kind of reminds me of the old Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon…

It’s titled “Pipe Dreams” by Dan Schoening. 

Next up, an uncredited Super Mario Bros. 2 themed pic that I find utterly hilarious…

And finally, Keith Webb’s promotional art for the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console:

There’s tons of cool stuff here.  I love the lil’ dudes from PuyoPuyo, the ultra-cute Metroids (!), the Goomba floating around in one of the Bubble Bobble bubbles, King Hippo, Raccoon Pac-Man, Birdo and his/her giant egg, the Moogle, Dr. Wily, and the uber-cute kiwi bird from that one old school NES game… you know, the one with the kiwi birds…