It’s Official: Super Mario Bros is about Drugs

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros last month, Famitsu recently interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto.

Now, about the mushrooms: It’s been something of a staple of video game culture (and video game studies) to make a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the mushrooms were a veiled drug reference. After all, you eat (or jump on) the mushrooms, and all kinds of strange things happen. You get “high” from collecting one (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Q: Why mushrooms, Shigeru?

A: Since the game’s set in a magical kingdom, I made the required power-up item a mushroom because you see people in folk tales wandering into forests and eating mushrooms all the time.

There we have it. It’s not that we can make amazing subversive counter-readings of video game symbolism to suggest that the mushrooms are related to drugs. It’s just what they officially mean.

13 thoughts on “It’s Official: Super Mario Bros is about Drugs”

  1. Mushrooms are not necessarily psychedelic ones. (At least the colours do not change in Supermario) They might just as well be used for simple doping (performance enhancing) purposes.

    1. You ever play Super Mario RPG? The mushrooms in the forest are called amanita. I think that at least says something. Santa Clause, flying reindeer, Mario wears red. Idk…

  2. Well, not all mushrooms are referred to as drugs because there are still mushrooms that are put into dishes because of its incredible taste and nutrients. So don’t conclude that all mushrooms are intended for drugs cause it’s not.

    1. furthermore the psychoactive amanita muscaria is red with white dots. very distinct. and very similar to the “get bigger” mushroom
      ancient pagans were known to take and celebrate the amanita muscaria, so yes the stories he was referencing were probably referring to pyschoactive mushrooms.
      But lets be real for a second here.
      Drug culture in japan is such a -no- that he was almost 100% inspired by the mystical aspect of ancient stories, and the design choice was likely purely aesthetic. not to be a party pooper here. but in no timeline does Miyamoto take psychoactive mushrooms and becomes inspired to make super mario bros.

      1. Right, the headline was bit jokey. But it’s certainly about something psychoactive, though not about contemporary drug culture.

    2. Except thry are explicitly referred to as amanita. While some species of amanitas are edible, eating only a tiny amount of a poisonous species can be deadly. Most experienced mushroom hunters avoid amanitas for this reason. Not likely food..

  3. Toadstools (slang for psilocybin mushrooms aka magic mushrooms) and of all colors and kinds. He climbed cacti (peyote) and the flowers (the fire flower and frost flower) were just ayahuasca experiences and the rapid Temps and perceptions your body endures. The star power was Mario dropping acid. Lsd causes intense cerebral visuals. Hell the helicopter and even the bullet rocket could indicate he’s on dmt and flying to the clouds or other “worlds”. Bowser was a bad trip and peach was a fantasy. Luigi and Mario come down off the drugs at the end of world 8. Hey even the toad guys named “toad” which you can lick certain toads to get dmt high. The question marks could represent actual question marks on what drug Luigi and mario are taking. Yoshi is a high and sometimes low (when you lose him by getting hit by a Goomba or trip experience) that’s all a hallucination of the experience. Boo is a super mysterious trip. Probably indicating ego dissolution from the intense psychedelics. And I only hit hallucinogens and psychedelics. Here could be more synthetic drugs in there.

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