(Though Princess Peach resumes her role as the annoyingly useless and elusive hostage and probable rape victim of Bowser in this title, it is hard to resist taking a shot at the bane of the existance of all players of Mario Party and Mario Kart.)

Gamespot today reports that Nintendo’s newest big franchise release Super Mario Bros. Wii has sold more than 2 million copies in the United States alone, and almost a million in the first 4 days since its release in Japan. The article does not go into a reason for its resounding success (it is predicted to well surpass sales for Activision’s mega-hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2), but that is because they were waiting for Scumbag Style.

Video games as a whole are a waste of time for people over the age of 16. You can play any of the mildly entertaining “adult” games like Oblivion and Left 4 Dead, or even bigger life-sucks like World of Warcraft, but after the several hours required every time you play, you feel mentally drained, and as if you had just wasted a chunk of your day you could have spent reading a book or throwing a football around. On the other hand, I have always been a huge proponent of Nintendo’s party based, cartoon “kid” games. Titles like Mario Kart and Mario Party allow you to play with at least four human players in the very same room as you, adding a social atmosphere not usually present in an otherwise secluding, never-get-laid industry. These games allow you to interact with other human beings, and maintain a level of competitive success as long as everybody is drinking as much as you are. That’s nothing new, and those titles have enjoyed impressive successes among the adult set for that very reason. So why is Super Mario Bros. Wii overtaking those wildly successful titles, and bringing the social game to new levels of exposure?

Simple: Human beings are all scumbags, deep down. The major feature SMB enjoys over its other namesake titles is that to win in the competitive mode, you have to be a dick. In the racing game Mario Kart, one need only rely on his own skills to stay ahead. In Mario Party, a degree of luck is required, as well as either individual skill at each mini-game, or a sense of cooperation in the team mini-games. LAME! In SMB Wii, success depends as much on fucking the guy next to you over as it does on your own skill. While familiar territories (beautifully enhanced graphically, BT-dubs) and button configurations don’t hurt, people’s innate desire to screw each other over in a friendly, competitive fashion wins the day for Nintendo’s new title.

Luigi has no idea that Yellow Toad is about to send him the way of Gollum

The “coin battle” is the competitive mode of SMB that requires you collect more coins than your opponents in a given level. But stopping there would be a foolhardy move. Stopping your firends from collecting their share of the coins is just as important, and the best way to do that is to come up with fun and exciting ways of killing their character. There are myriad ways to accomplish this, and when you do, they are out of the round for several seconds, leaving the course free for you to leisurely collect coins while they curse your name and threaten to shove the “wiimote” up your ass. That’s a win-win, friends. In other games, you could beat your opponents, but it was usually the fault of their own lack of skill, and they had noone to blame but themselves. Nothing stimulates the happy-glands of Homo Sapiensmore than knowing someone hates you for rocking their socks, and SMB Wii delivers in that regard.

So, pick up a copy, and remember some very important things: Instead of risking your life to quickly get the coins, try seeing if you can pick your friend up and throw him in the lava first. If someone seems to be waiting for something, you usually nudge him off an edge without much trouble. Ground pounding on peoples’ heads is a great way to send them flying into chomping Piranha Flowers. Never has being a scumbag been more rewarding, or more fun. After an hour of playing this game with friends, and a little beer perhaps, you can swim in the schadenfreude like a swimming pool filled with champagne, and isn’t that what life is really about?

(Milestone! This is Scumbag Style’s 100th post. Thanks for all of your support, loyal readers. You will be treated well in the new regime… I mean, ice cream party…)