Things are going better since last week. I had a borderline anxiety attack last week and doubted everything and just wanted to stay in bed, but that seems to have passed for this week and hopefully for a while. The only things I did for the school were my final essay for English, a piece about the perception of the United States in other countries which details some of the origins of hostilities and partnerships such as the many coups the United States has sponsored in the past which caused hostilities with other countries most notably in Iran (the United States and the United Kingdom overthrew the Prime Minister and installed a monarchy which was incredibly corrupt and led to the Iranian Revolution which held the United States as a major source for the problems Iran faced). The other thing I did for school was the final project for my education class, which was about speech and language impairments and how they affect the classroom. In personal news, I completed the first three Super Mario Bros. games plus The Lost Levels and am currently playing through Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda. My opinion is that Super Mario Bros. is a great game that deserved success. Also, it arguably saved the video game industry from not existing at all since the video game crash of 1983 (the crash was so bad that a landfill of unsold games was found in New Mexico). Super Mario Bros. 2 is a completely different game that is owed to the fact that it was originally not a Mario game at all but was, in fact, a reskin of the game Doki Doki Panic, which series creator Shigeru Miyamoto worked on. The original Super Mario Bros. 2 was what the USA refers to as Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels, which was considered too difficult for most audiences and as such Super Mario Bros 2. was created (in fact, the port of Super Mario Bros. 2 is referred to as Super Mario Bros. USA). Even though Super Mario Bros. 2 is a much different game than the first, I think it is just as good as it. The gameplay, while different, is still good, and the game as a whole had a massive impact on the Mario series as a whole with the introductions of characters/enemies such as Shy Guys, Birdos, Pokeys, and Bob-ombs as well as character designs. Super Mario Bros. 3, in my opinion, begins strongly, but by the end of the game, it just felt like a slog. The core gameplay was great, but by world 7, I stopped having as much fun with it. It’s not that the game became difficult, it’s mostly that some of the level design just didn’t feel all that great. It doesn’t help that all the boss fights are pathetically easy; you just have to jump on them three times. It is effortless to chain together jumps at the right time to beat them in a matter of seconds. While the final boss fight against Bowser is supposed to be difficult (you are meant to make him shatter the floor and make him plummet to his defeat) if you have the Hammer Bros. Suit it just takes about five hammers to defeat him. I think most of the issues I have with these games are that I am more used to the more recent games, and many of the established rules had yet to be established. Super Mario Bros.: The Last Levels was the worst of the games I completed, it was difficult for the sake of it, and it brings down the fun aspects of the gameplay, which is just the original Super Mario Bros. The idea behind the game was that it was meant to be challenging for those who mastered the first game, the issue is the level design at points feels like it was meant to just be difficult and not fun which defeats the point of most games (even games like Dark Souls which is notoriously difficult are fun as the way the game is designed is meant to make it feel like the player is learning as they feel and mastering the game, the plot of the game is even tied into this design with the lore only being brought together with details that come from the repeated failure). Despite the difficulty, I beat the game, and it was not worth it. In regards to plot, all non-RPG Mario games are light on the plot, so it doesn’t matter (I normally enjoy games with strong narratives such as the Red Dead series or The Wolf Among Us, but Mario games have never been about the plot, and the gameplay is usually good enough to make up for it. As a side-note Super Paper Mario had the best plot of any Mario game and is surprisingly dark for a kids game which can be seen when the character is sent to stand-ins for Heaven or Hell [the in-game Hell is more akin to the Hades of Greek myth, but the Heaven stand-in is based on the Judeo-Christian interpretation of Heaven] and we witness entire worlds be erased from existence unceremoniously, some of the characters being ones that the player may have liked, and none of which appear in the afterlife which is itself about to be erased). Super Mario World is shaping to be my favorite of the games I recently completed and of the few Legend of Zelda games I have played the first one is not my favorite but the other games I have to compare it to are Ocarina of Time, Breath of the Wild, and The Wind Waker which are the some of the most acclaimed of the series and some of my favorite games of all time. Another game I am playing is Red Dead Redemption II; I am currently doing my second playthrough of the game. The original game is my favorite game of all time, and in my opinion, it’s prequel is better in some ways but worse in others. Red Dead Redemption has better gameplay, but Red Dead Redemption II has a better plot and better overworld, which includes the majority of the original game’s map in greater detail.
Matthew Garza is a student at Jimmy Carter Early College High School as well as a member of the National Honor Society at the school. Matthew was born on June 27th, 2003 in McAllen, Texas and was raised and currently lives in La Joya, Texas. Matthew was originally enrolled at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic School. Matthew took an interest in history and in the fourth grade was admitted in the National Elementary Honor Society and later the National Junior Honor Society in the sixth grade. After the school closed down due to lack of funding, Matthew was then enrolled at Lorenzo de Zavala Middle School for eighth grade. After this Matthew was then enrolled at Jimmy Carter and joined the National Honor Society.
Matthew’s achievements include the aforementioned memberships in the National Honor Society, being certified in Microsoft Word, Word Expert, and Microsoft Excel. Matthew is also consistently in the A/B Honor Roll, with a few exceptions. Matthew’s goals are to have a career as a History Professor as well as have a doctorate in the field.
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