Marioマリオ noの Bouken冒険: Guraguraぐらぐら Gameゲーム

Roughly translated as Mario's Big Adventure: Shaky Game, this was published by Kawadaカワダ circa November 1993 ^[src], and very much just iterating on their initial 1980s Guragura Game release, now with the simple pleasures of seeing your favourite characters in hollow unpainted plastic!

Right off the bat, the box makes a striking impression. Clad in the same rich yellow that slathered Super Mario World's promotional artwork, and featuring not one but two dynamic action shots of Mario watching pensively as an army of Yoshis eat shit on Bowser's crumbling tower. The artwork is largely lifted from existing renders, making edits to expressions or appendages, with a couple of charmingly off-model Yoshis to be found, but even seeing old art made to blend into a new composition is always something to be cherished in my eyes.

Although the package includes 22 figurines in total, there's only five unique ones: a single Mario and Bowser in full-colour glory, and 4 each of Yoshi and Baby Yoshi, and 12 Super Mushrooms in unpainted plastic.

Mario and Bowser recreate their poses from the promotional art, and it's perhaps among the earliest depictions of Bowser in sculpted miniature that's halfway recognisable (the various keshigomu figurines from this era were somewhat hit or miss, though bless them for trying). Bowser comes out the nicer of the two, his earthy colour scheme really making him pop, and I do enjoy how blomby he is, looking like a painted easter egg with his tummy and big stompy legs. Mario's pale skin and thinning moustache just make him look unwell.

Of course, Yoshi was hot stuff after his debut, and to have nearly a dozen figures of the little guy to carry around in your pocket must've been a boon to obsessed youths of the era. They do a solid job capturing the vibes of classic 2D Yoshi, back when he was still a cuddly dinosaur and not a mutant balloon animal like Yoshi's Story turned him into. Still bitter, by the way.

Baby Yoshi is a funny one, having debuted in Super Mario World, making a few cursory appearances in puzzle game off-shoots like Tetris Attack and Mario & Yoshi, before being completely erased from existence... until New Super Mario Bros. U decided, y'know what, these carry-able gimmick blocks would be better served if they were fat animals instead. And they were right! I suddenly give a shit about the Propeller Block when it's a living being instead of an inanimate object, and also it inflates big and huge.
I'm always thrilled to see the classic Baby Yoshi design get some representation, though as much as I love the little gremlin, you can see why he's typically only seen from the side and rarely depicted in 3D. From the front, its bug eyes and crooked smirk look like they belong on roadkill.

Where Kawada's original Guragura Game was purely a test of survival and elimination (at least, based on the lack of instructions on its packaging, instead recapping the history of Pisa in the span of two paragraphs), this Super Mario World-inspired edition adds a score mechanic into the mix.

Each player gets three Super Mushrooms, a Yoshi and Baby Yoshi, while the tower is adorned with Bowser at the top and Mario at the bottom. You presumably argue amongst yourselves over who goes first, there's no rule for that.

A player rolls the die on their turn, and places a figurine on the corresponding coloured platform, ascending in scale from Super Mushroom, to Baby Yoshi, to Yoshi. If a figurine falls on their turn, they have to claim them and add them to their hand.

Once a player has emptied their hand of figurines, they can move Mario up to the next platform, earning 10 points. They can then declare "jump!" on the same turn to move Mario up to the next floor, doubling those points, and even declaring a second "jump!" to ascend to the top floor, quadrupling to make 40 points!

However, if any figurine falls during Mario's jump, you lose and are out of the game; so long as Bowser doesn't fall, play continues. If a subsequent player declares "jump!" and Bowser falls, they lose and their negative points are doubled.

The game ends once Bowser falls, deducting 24 points from whoever was responsible, and everyone calculates their scores. If Bowser falls before Mario moves, the player with the fewest figurines remaining wins.

The winning player starts with their Mario bonus (10, 20, or 40 points), then adds the total of every figure still "in hand" among the other players (that is, figurines not on the tower) to their score; Super Mushrooms are 3 points, Baby Yoshi 5 points, and big Yoshi 10 points.

Losing players subtract the point value of their "in hand" figurines from their score. You're then expected to reset and play "a predetermined number of rounds" before the total victor is decided by the accumulative score.

Sound complicated? In theory it shouldn't be, but the actual entertainment value gleaned from such busywork is negligible at best, if not detrimental. As you might expect, playing a children's game as an adult is not going to be the most challenging experience, and indeed, Guragura Game is at its best when you're still working out your motor functions. The wobbly and imprecise hand of a child is no match for my dextrous digits, forged in the fires of model kits and hardware repairs. I can delicately pick up and place things with ease! Bring me a greater feat to conquer!!

(src: TV commercial) The tower is pretty stable all things considered, which is the antithesis of fun. Half the decision-making is done for you by rolling the six-sided die, which has two spaces each for blue and red, so the game automatically leans towards stacking a top-heavy tower, yet even with every figure on the board it hardly feels dangerous. Having to move Mario is when the tower is at its most precarious -- although he and Bowser are hollow soft plastic, there must be enough heft in them to hold the tower in place until they're shifted!

The fact the whole game is build-up to getting the chance to move Mario does feel like a tease, as that's the only time it feels like your actions make a meaningful impression on the tower. It's the only instance of repositioning a figurine once it's been placed, which is the sort of tension a balance game needs.

I might just be Jenga-pilled, but taking risky moves and fretting over the tower's fluctuating centre of gravity is a big part of the thrill. Any hope of rigging figures that are doomed to fall on the next player's turn is foiled by how dang steady the thing is! The best the game can do to increase the tension is suggest you play the figurines upside down, or even hang Yoshi off the edge by his feet, to make them more liable to tipping, but it feels like an apology more than anything.

In fairness, both of these sets in my possession are incomplete, and are meant to come with a marble or ball bearing that's inserted into the tower's top. This would presumably roll in whatever direction it is even slightly tilting, exacerbating its precarious swaying, and add a smidge more weight to the top than hollow plastic can provide. The game's not unplayable without it, as we'll see in the next edition, but this version of Guragura Game either mandates it or is doomed by design flaw from minute one.

This game has the curious luxury of being released in Europe (in Germany or the Netherlands at the very least) by Jumbo in 1994, among the rare scatterings of Mario merchandise available in the west at the time, alongside that unsettling battery-operated Yoshi with the red light-up eyes. Rechristened Super Mario Tower, this version isn't a straight import of the original, but instead reworks the game rules a little.

Mario is no longer moved only after placing all your figurines, but instead when you roll the Mario face on the die (taking the place of one of the blue spots), and the penalty for characters falling on your turn is having to place two of them per turn; one from your hand, and one from the fallen pile. The score system is omitted entirely, and the game simply ends once Bowser falls, the player responsible is the loser.

While any video game merchandise crossing the pond in the early '90s was a rare and captivating sight, I'd be hard-pressed to say this would be a satisfying pick-up. Unless it fixes the excruciating stability of the tower, it eliminates not just the only meaningful quirk to its gameplay, but its packaging even omits the instructions (opting for a fold-out sheet inside, because why risk people knowing how the game is played before they buy it?) and one of the original pieces of art, instead printing the same picture across three sides. "Fun & Action" indeed!

To go on a tangent, the Japanese packaging includes a warning urging young children not to swallow the Super Mushroom pieces. If I may be cynical, I have to wonder if this is why Tipsy Tower fell out of fashion in the west, and Jenga became the more welcomed replacement.

The figurines in Guragura Game are small and lightweight, and are destined to scatter once the tower tips; that's not so bad if you're playing on a kotatsu at floor height, but sitting at a table, the extra height and velocity means those things are gonna span the entire breadth of the room. There's already fear of children eating the damn things, never mind losing them and all the clean-up involved!

Jenga, meanwhile, is nothing but big hefty blocks that aren't going to bounce nearly as far, and if you happen to swallow one, you deserve a round of applause more than anything. Though every country is no stranger to toy safety regulations, one gets the impression Japan is more lax on projectiles and small pieces, trusting children to not injure themselves at the nearest opportunity, if we're to believe an old Toyfare magazine on the matter.

Although a multi-player game, this rendition of Guragura Game really is just a shared board for individual score attacks; you reap the benefits from other people's screw-ups, but there's not the spark or sizzle of a truly competitive game. There's not the same thrill in taking risky positions like there is in Jenga, and if there were twice as many figurines then gumming up the works and fighting to find a space that won't tip the tower could make for a more intense game.
As is... well, it's a children's game! One with cute little Yoshi figurines you can cherish or throw at people, but as a game I can't imagine it having much lasting appeal beyond the novelty of recognising the bloke on the box.

New Superスーパー Marioマリオ Bros.ブラザーズ: Guraguraぐらぐら Gameゲーム

Which is why the 2007 version, jointly released by Kawada and Epoch and based on New Super Mario Bros., is immediately much more engaging. Its tower is extra wobbly! This thing teeters like nobody's business, marble or no marble! You barely need four figures on the board before it feels like you're fighting for your life. Right out the gate, this feels like a game you can mine entertainment out of, rather than something that never quite lives up to its promises.

This one completely ditches the score system and goes back to basics akin to the original non-Mario Guragura Game. Turn order is decided by rock-paper-scissors, going clockwise from the winner. Before the game begins, everyone takes turns choosing 2 figures from the pile, until all 24 figurines are handed out.

Rather than the linear increase in scale, it's back to only allowing figurines of the same colour on their respective platforms; if the player has no matches, their turn is skipped. Rolling brown on the die means you can place any figurine on the top platform. Otherwise play functions like the vanilla Guragura Game, where fallen figures are added to the player's hand, and whoever's the first to safely place all their figurines is the winner.

The original Guragura Game intentionally skewed the number of figurines in certain colours (red and blue had 8 each, while green and white had only 4), which meant emptying your hand wasn't a linear process, but relied heavily on the dice rolls. Red and blue have two spots on the dice, so it's easy to clear those out, but you might go turn after turn missing your opportunity to offload that pesky green...!

This version, by letting you choose what figurines you want, adds a thin layer of meta and strategy to the start of the game, especially when there's still an ascending scale of bulkiness like with the last game's Yoshis. Do I try and nab all the lightweight characters first, or will the big boys do better at staying on-board? Do I stick to only one colour and trust I get lucky rolls? Will anyone notice if I eat the green Goomba?

There are six unique figures this time, each cast in different hues of translucent plastic. They've all got a slightly chibi quality to them, with big noggins and somewhat compacted torsos or limbs, and given how none of them are painted, it helps capture their essence in such small stature when you haven't got their standard colour schemes to rely upon.

I'm not sure how I feel about Mario's distressingly stumpy legs, but his face is captured perfectly, his wide-eyed enthusiasm radiating from the fine sculpted detail.
Peach... is adequate. Characters with delicate features have a rough go of it in the conversion to plastic figurine, and the only feature that stands out is her unfortunately wall-eyed expression. They clearly used a better specimen on the packaging photo, because the more you look at the real deal, the more you don't want to.

You have to work hard to mess up a Koopa Troopa from what I've seen, and this fellow is just a delight. Everything about him is a treasure! His round shell, his teeny little arms, his chubby cheeks, his big honkin' feet...!
Likewise, the Goomba does alright, if only undermined because I still have a Goomba figurine on my desk from the Mario Party 4 gachapon line that's hard to beat. You cannot beat a Goomba that's giving a tilt of the head and a cock of the eyebrow. This Goomba is one that hasn't been told he can smile on school photo day.

Bowser Jr. is just so silly looking. He looks like he swallowed a bee, he's 70% snout by volume...! His body's so smushed it's practically non-existent, to the point where calling it off-model feels like a moot argument, but it only heightens his cheeky chappy energy. He's been rounded off to the point of looking like a jelly bean, but it still retains crisp sculpting his shell plates and the knot of his bandana.

And lastly, we've got Bowser, looking a little like his Super Mario RPG sprite with his oversized head and puffy claws. His pose is very upright and boring, unfortunately, but the sculpting shines here, capturing the nuances of his gnarly snout, as well as every single spike adorning his back. This bastard takes up a lot of room on the playfield, as he should.

The figurines have a much more satisfying heft to them, thanks to being fully-injected plastic moulds instead of hollow shells, and the variety of shapes and sizes means you need to make more considerations for where you place them.
The underlings are fairly rounded and low-impact, but Mario and especially Bowser require some thought, particularly Bowser's spikes and outstretched claws that eat up so much real estate. The gaps in the tower's centre columns come in handy for slotting figures into tight spaces... if you want to be a coward about it 🔥

While it might not be the case for every copy of the game, the figurines in my set have gotten a bit sticky or tacky with age, an unfortunate reality for certain types of translucent plastic, if they weren't always this way to begin with. It's not a deal-breaker, it's just a drag having to bust out the hot soapy water if nobody's in the mood to play with rubber gloves or tissue paper.

But on the plus side, there's more than one game to play! The box offers instructions for the "pipe cannon game", wherein you disassemble the tower and reassemble it into five platforms: one for all the Peach figures, and four for the colour-coded baddies. A separate pipe playing piece is included in the box, with a spring-loaded platform you're expected to launch Marios out of like projectiles, trying to knock the enemies into pits and trying not to wallop any of the princesses.

This game mode... well, it exists. The idea is cute, I'll give it that much. After a tense game of strategic placement, here's an outlet to blow off steam by bashing figurines into each other at high velocity. Being able to disassemble and repurpose the tower's component pieces, and having this otherwise superfluous springboard as a playing piece, are great ideas!

It might not be much to work with, but it's something that encourages creativity, to use these components to cook up whatever daft notions come to mind. Japanese toys are no stranger to proposing alternate play patterns; the likes of B-Daman or Beast Shooter would say outright on their box, here's the primary way to play, but have you considered this random bullshit instead?

While the lack of Yoshi representation might be considered a negative, this is arguably the superior of the two versions; not just having more variety in its figure types and play patterns, but simply delivering better on its premise as well. In a game about a shaky tower, you want that tower to shake, and gosh darn is this tower's shakiness up to code!

Though if I had to be petty, the box is kind of swagless. I mean, you can't go wrong with the bold yellow base! It's colourful and is a great dynamic showcase of how the game plays; you can't say you're being sold a heightened experience that doesn't match reality. But this is also the age of conformity to license -- packaging will be slathered in the same licensor-approved promotional renders you have seen a million times already, and you will be happy with it.

This is admittedly partly why I picked up these toys to begin with: funny little figurines were perhaps the last bastion of seeing different takes on established character designs, especially ones with funky proportions or off-model sensibilities. Increasing graphical fidelity means 3D models across all platforms are being held to the same standards (as addressed in my Bowser article), and I'm denied the fun and adventure in seeing limitation serve as a creative hurdle.
Bowser Junior is going to look like Bowser Junior on every platform, even the puny little Nintendo DS... but how does he fare when he needs to be represented as a 4.5 centimetre plastic token as part of a balancing game? Desperate times call for desperate measures, and nobody said this was a sensible pursuit in the first place. It's almost like we've come full circle or something.

That said, seeking something kooky-looking typically comes about when our only options are so aggressively on-model. If you'll permit the old man to shout from his porch for a moment... it kind of sucked being nuts about video games and wanting physical representations of your favourite characters in the early '90s!

Sure, you occasionally lucked out on a multimedia blitz. We had Sonic the Hedgehog on our consoles, on our televisions, in our comic books, even on our ketchup bottles... but for the better part of a decade, if you wanted a physical representation of that wee bastard to roleplay with or simply have on your person as a protective totem, your closest approximation was a Happy Meal toy from 1994. One where he was completely immobile and contorted into a shape more akin to exploded train wreckage than his own dang self. Okay, there were soft toys as well, but I'm trying to make a point here.

If I wanted Mario and Luigi to partake in action figure adventures, I had to make do with plastic renditions of Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo from the live-action movie, because what were my other options for toys of fat little Italian men? It's why when Nintendo-themed Pez dispensers hit shelves circa 1998, I was all over that nonsense. Yes, there is little to distinguish a Koopa Troopa without the rest of his testudine torso, but in a world with no other Koopa Troopa merchandise to my knowledge, what else am I going to latch onto?

Toy Biz's Mario Kart 64 action figure line wasn't without its own eccentricities, but good golly, it was a godsend by comparison. What do you mean you can make toys of video game characters that actually look like video game characters? Is that allowed?!

My point is, even if it is somewhat wonky and skew-whiff, to have a physical representation of a character that you can recognise on sight is not something to take for granted. You can walk into a toy store nowadays (if those still exist by the time this publishes) and typically find a toy of your favourite big-name video game mascot with relative ease.

Gone are the days of having to pretend random toybox filler is serving the role of my favourite niche character... or, hell, having to go without toys at all. Every dang kids-focused product includes pack-in figurines to sweet the deal, whether it's a comic, an activity book, or a board game.

Guragura Game:
The Next Generation

Which I guess brings us to Epoch's modern output! Since 2017, the license for Mario-branded tabletop games has been held by Epoch Toys, who you might know best for the long-running Sylvanian Families series of anthropomorphic figurines, or the Super Cassette Vision game console from over forty years ago, depending on what type of nerd you are. Kawada might still be producing Guragura Game and its licensed off-shoots, but that doesn't mean Epoch can't muscle in on the balancing game genre, and actually releasing this stuff outside of Japan for a change!

The Super Mario "Blow Up! Shaky Tower" appears to be a modernised and streamlined take on Guragura Game, requiring a smidge more assembly but resulting in more interactivity and moving pieces. Instead of ringed tiers, there are ten platforms to place figures on; players roll the dice to determine what colour of platform they must place a figurine on.

(This is yet another instance where the international version tweaks the rules, downscaling the tower to only 8 platforms, and removing the colour-coded aspect from gameplay; players instead simply roll the dice to determine how many figurines they place on that turn, from 0 to 2)

Whoever tips the tower is the loser, but does get the satisfaction of going out with a bang -- a Bowser ball sits precariously at the top (placed on an officially designated "ball holder", a factoid i expect everyone to absorb completely stone-faced), and will take out all the platforms as well on its way down.

This also serves as a physical difficulty selection, as the ball holder has a different indentation on each side: an "easy" mode that cups the ball more securely, and a "difficult" star-shaped face that's more susceptible to jostling. To see a game with difficulty select and replay value is always appreciated!

One can make the cynical argument about entertainment getting more fast-paced and laser-focused in recent years, whittling away the fat to make it more digestible in our increasingly time-constrained lives, and clearly board games aren't safe from that, either! But I'd dare say it works in Shaky Tower's favour.
Guragura Game had a lot of pieces but with superfluous impact on the board, and being beholden to dice rolls or colour-coordinating figures and platforms takes the personal decision-making out of the equation. It's surprisingly wishy-washy for a game about wanting to see people die in an earthquake.

Shaky Tower, meanwhile, is quick 'n' nasty. All you need is two players, and you can crank out a game in just sixty seconds if you're feeling feisty. I see reports online of workmates playing this on their lunch break, which sounds absolutely charming. It's perhaps not as rich and in-depth a gameplay experience as, I don't know, Warhammer 40,000: 3rd Edition, but it also requires little to no setup or explanation. A carefully trained dog could play the game. That, and look at those darling little figures!

The big draw to Epoch's product has got to be the smorgasbord of pack-in figurines, and Shaky Tower positively spoils you with seven of the darn things (though the original Japanese release has ten of them, in addition to a larger and more nuanced tower). When the price of action figures and amiibos have only soared with each passing year, to pick up a bunch of well-sculpted little tokens and an interact game must read like good value to any parent!

Indeed, a big part of Epoch's sales pitch for their Mario products is the "Link System", which is just a fancy way of saying they've all got toys that can be used in each game. You can take your favourite character and play them in every game! Boo can be the star of Super Mario Rally Tennis or Fire Mario Stadium! Nothing's stopping you!

Shaky Tower might have seven characters in the box, but two of them are freakin' Toad. If you want Princess Peach to take part in the action, you'll have to pick up the Super Mario Balancing Game Castle Stage game! (and if you want to play with Kamek for whatever reason... get fucked, apparently! he's yet to be sold internationally yet, despite being bundled with the Japanese edition of Shaky Tower!)

The Balancing Game sets are perhaps a wee bit cynical, selling the exact same plastic base across three different sets, packaged with different figurines but are otherwise identical besides the backdrop or what colour plastic it's been cast in. It's seemingly the crappest game of the bunch, even the poor children in its promotional video straining to make this arbitrary dice-rolling and moving of figurines look compelling... but where else are you going to get a toy of Monty Mole for under $40? It's value for money!!

While balancing games might seem an odd trend to hitch your wagon to, I imagine it qualifies as a separate product license from action figures -- it avoids stepping on the toes of Jakks Pacific's toyline, while also granting Epoch a monopoly in the tabletop and board games aisle. Whether it's video games, board games, action figures, building blocks, or anything car-related, there's no escaping the plumber once you're in those toy stores!

Epoch have clearly gotten pretty cozy with the license, trotting out a whole gamut of games and interactive activities either with unique figurines or simply recognisable brand art attached.

Some of them seem to serve as fun playsets unto themselves, like the Piranha Plant Escape game, though a good chunk of them are also just completely generic marble or matching games with no added toy factor. They've even applied their stacking schtick to Kirby, perhaps one of the few pieces of Kirby merchandise to be officially released outside of Japan...?

In any case, it's interesting to see efforts to make Guragura Game appealing to international audiences, after Tipsy Tower effectively got buried by its competition. It's clearly still a recognisable part of gaming culture in Japan, the occasional subject of live-action video content, and seemingly an inspiration for a lot of physics-based video games.
Perhaps the most visible example to Nintendo nerds is in Game & Wario's Islands mini-game, where the Tippy Tower stage boasts similar ring-shaped and extremely precarious platforms. Whether Guragura Game will catch on without the Mario license or filling the niche of a quick-fire Jenga stand-in remains to be seen, but it's nice of them to try.

It's particularly nifty seeing changes made to the game design throughout its various iterations; some simply an attempt to shake things up, akin to thematic rules changes in Hasbro's various licensed editions of Monopoly or Cluedo, while others appear to be responses that elements that simply didn't pan out. The Super Donkey Kong Guragura Game (which I'm disappointed I only discovered only when putting this article through its final draft!) released in 1994 and looks like an attempt to rectify the Super Mario World version's misfires.

The jumping Mario is ditched, but Bowser's place is taken by Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, who end the game once they fall. The animal buddies Rambi, Enguarde, Winky, and Expresso come in much more unorthodox poses than the Yoshis, taking up more space on the platforms, but are also expressly shaped to better facilitate ambitious positioning like hanging them off the edge.

That doesn't mean the game is exempt from stupid and extraneous gimmickry, though, as a battery-powered sensor can be placed inside the base to bleep loudly when the tower tips too much, as if to give parents more reason to not buy this game.

Footage shows how extra wobbly that tower gets with the "unbalancer" marble in place. With figure shapes that are more conducive to creative placement on the platforms, and still allowing freedom of placement by not requiring the colour of figurines match with their platforms, it's a step in the right direction! Why not build on this?

Maybe it was too extreme for its audience of youngsters? Struggling to find room on the platforms amidst fat-assed animals while the tower sways and screams at you might not have been the tone Kawada were looking for. It could even be as simple as plastic stress tolerances; kooky shapes like that are more liable to breakage with all the falling they're meant to be doing.
Whatever the case, it remains one of the more interesting iterations of Guragura Game, but it's possible there's only so much one can do within the confines of the formula. Tic-Tac-Toe is a solved game, after all. For all this discussion and nitpicking, maybe you really do need to move on to Jenga at this point.

At the end of all this you might ask, are any of these games worth picking up? What do you think this is, a review?! Get out of here. I've used up all my words!

what is GuraGuraグラグラ Gameゲーム?

Marioマリオ noの Bouken冒険: Guraguraぐらぐら Gameゲーム

New Superスーパー Marioマリオ Bros.ブラザーズ: Guraguraぐらぐら Gameゲーム

Guragura Game:The Next Generation

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Guragura Game:
The Next Generation