Hotel Mario - Television Tropes & Idioms

Let's just call it a Licensed Game and never talk about it again.

Mario: We gotta find the Princess!
Luigi: And YOU gotta help us!
Mario: If you need instructions on how to get through the hotels, check out the enclosed instruction book.

—Intro cutscene

One of four Philips CD-i games with Nintendo characters resulting from a deal between Nintendo and Philips. This deal would have led to Philips making a CD-based add-on for the Super NES, but it fell through. Philips was left with a license allowing them to release games with some of Nintendo's characters. So they made this, and three Zelda games.

In it, Bowser gets the idea to capture Princess Toadstool (big shocker) and hide her in one of a set of seven themed hotels, each of which is run by one of the Koopalings (with the exception of Bowser's Seizure Palace, run by Bowser himself, though you still fight the seventh Koopaling there). Taking the role of Mario once again, your goal is to travel through all the hotels, closing all the doors to complete each level. If you let all the doors get opened, get hit by an enemy, walk off either edge of the hotel (there's no side walls) or run out of time, Mario loses a life.

Another two Mario games were planned for the console, but Super Mario's Wacky Worlds (a sequel to Super Mario World) didn't get very far. Neither did Mario Takes America, for that matter.

This game provides examples of:

Blackout Basement: The HardBrick and Chillton Hotels are variants of this trope. HardBrick suffers power outages because the electricity is being drained by too many toasters in a hidden room, and the Chillton Hotel is deep underground and only has the level you are currently on is lit up unless you defeat the right Koopa and take his flashlight.
Bubbly Clouds: Get off it!
Canon Discontinuity
- Though Dry Bones' new weakness to fire reappeared in the Paper Mario series.
Captain Obvious: see Department of Redundancy Department below.
Chest Monster: Yes, some of those pennies do pinch back.
Deranged Animation
The Dragon: Iggy Koopa, the only Koopaling not to have a hotel of his own.
Evil Laugh: Not a bad one, either. Maybe coming from someone other than a brightly-painted Bowser. Ironically, the low-quality uploads of the cutscenes provided by Quebec Gamer make his laugh even more sinister due the echoing of audio.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: You're supposed to be looking for the Princess inside the hotels, aren't you? So why are you closing all the open doors instead of opening all the closed ones?
Gimmick Level: Many of the hotels have these. Fortunately, there's also a secret door that cancels out each gimmick. Lights flickering on and off? Get toasters to stop toasting toast. Clouds getting in your way? Blow them away with a giant fan. Doors vanishing in front of you? Get some ghost cologne. Evil coins harassing you? Break the piggy bank holding the real ones.
He Knows About Timed Hits: "If you need instructions on how to get through the hotels, check out the enclosed instruction book."
Hell Hotel
Hey You: "Get offa my cloud!"
Hurricane of Puns: Each stage is a lame pun on an existing hotel name (Chillton = Hilton; Seizures Palace = Caesar's Palace), aside from one Elvis' reference.
- This mine is mine!
- I'm your biggest fan!
Inherently Funny Words: "Toast!"
Just Eat Him: If any member of Bowser's family comes across Mario hiding in a door, he gets devoured.
Lethal Lava Land: Bowser's Seizures Palace Hotel is as close as it gets. The whole place appears to be on fire.
Little No / Big "NO!": Mario's response in the cave cutscene manages to be both at the same time:
Mario: Gee, it's kinda dark.
Luigi: Did you bring a light?
Mario: No...
The Lost Woods: Morton's WoodDoor-Hysteria Hotel. Okay, so it's just one tree, but still...
Medium Awareness: "Check out the enclosed instruction book." "You're the best player ever!!"
No Fourth Wall: Mario and Luigi break the fourth wall a few times too many. "We gotta find the Princess! And YOU gotta help us!" "It's hard to see through those clouds. I hope we can get rid of them! GET THE HINT?"
- Not to mention the entire ending sequence. "You're the best player ever!"
Off Model: Neither as blatant nor hideous as those in Faces Of Evil and Wand Of Gamelon, but you can still spot a few of these shots if you watch the cutscenes carefully. In almost every other shot of Mario, he's drawn with an inexplicable amount of flab, which has led to his nickname "Fat Mario". Luigi fares only marginally better. Just watch...
Paper-Thin Disguise: Iggy's Bowser costume is basically just him wearing a giant bobble-head of the Koopa King himself.
Projectile Toast: Occurs in the toasters scene.
Check Out The Enclosed Instruction Book
Shock and Awe: Ludwig's choice of attacks.
Shout Out: "Hey you! Get offa my cloud!" (which, according to an interview with voice actor Mark Graue, was actually ad-libbed). There's also the hotel names (see the Hurricane of Puns entry above).
- "We ain't afraida no Koopas!"
Slippy Slidey Ice World: Larry's Chillton Hotel.
Stock Footage: Several of Mario and Luigi's "animation cels" are recycled several times throughout all the cutscenes, including the close-up of Mario holding up one hand, an animation of Mario walking toward the background, and another animation of both plumbers walking towards the background.
Stupid Statement Dance Mix: Big Beat Mario. The best part? The mix gets most of its background music from the actual game.
Viewers Are Morons: "...Check out the enclosed instruction book!"
- "It's hard to see though these clouds. I hope we can get rid of 'em! Get the hint?"
You Know What They Say: All toasters toast toast!
YouTube Poop: One of the prime sources, the others being the Zelda CD-i games, the Mario cartoons, and the Sonic cartoons.