Fire Mario is iconic! This is the very first offensive power-up to appear in the mainline Mario series, and it appears to this very day! It's simple, yet effective. Mario can throw fireballs in front of him, giving him a frontal attack he would not otherwise have. More and more characters continue to get their own Fire forms, with their own spins on the snazzy red-and-white outfit!
...and I'm gonna say it. It's not a very good design!
It LOOKS good, I can't deny that! But what about this screams "fire"? There's red, but Mario already had red. The big new addition is the white. Red and white... you want me to associate that with fire? This is Candy Cane Mario. Bowling Pin Mario. Popcorn Bucket Mario. When the B button is pressed, he will attempt to sell me one of those three things. The two buttons on his overalls represent the two popcorn kernels in the bucket. It may seem like a paltry amount, but you're only paying for the bucket! It's a nice little bonus, because he likes you.
And where are the fireballs coming from? His hand? As if. I don't buy it. There's nowhere on those for fire to come out! No holes or nozzles or even match heads! I think we've all been too afraid to admit that Fire Mario's design ruins our immersion. It's time for a redesign.
This new design finally makes some sense! He's got a catapult mechanism for flinging the fireballs, rather than awkwardly manifesting and throwing them out of his hands. As for the leaves, it needed a good deal of botanical flair! Fire Flower turning Mario into just Fire Mario? What happened to the Flower part? I think this design gives justice to such an iconic power-up! Let me know if you'd love to play as this in a Mario game! And if you do like it, please send physical letters to Nintendo telling them so! They've sent me some strongly-worded legal requests to get me to stop, but they can't sue all of us!
