"creepy" mario 64 and the importance of aesthetics on game narrative

On the heels of an otherwise inactive Mario ROMhack month at selectbutton, someone posted this:



A hack of Mario 64 in which the graphics are filtered to grayscale and the sound effects/bgm are slowed down to an imperceptible drawl. It ultimately has the effect of re contextualizing the game's cheery, chirrupy feeling into a bleak, surreal nightmare. Mario 64's charming low-poly look becomes frighteningly abstract, accompanied by haunting slow drones and mysterious low frequency noises. What once was an airy, amusing adventure becomes an existential struggle couched in abstract, cryptically symbolic terms. The sights and sounds of Mario 64 are comfortably familiar enough to be subverted by an otherwise crass substitution.

If you could play this version of Mario 64, would you describe the experience as "fun"? I'm not sure that I would, even though the game mechanics are exactly the same. The feedback is different. What was a colorful and inviting world full of light hearted distractions is now a grim wasteland full of ebony obelisks and grave architecture. Once familiar challenges now seem like sullen ordeals with heavy consequences. It's fitting that Mario hops into a cannon and fires himself off a cliff.

Of course, though I wouldn't call it "fun", it's still something I'd love to play.

"Challenge" in context of videogames is something unique to the medium, but game designers rarely acknowledge let alone exploit its similarities to the concept of "challenge" in real life. Everyone faces challenges in their day to day lives; the circumstances in which we overcome or are defeated by those challenges give our lives meaning. The same principle applies to videogames. Of course good game design is necessary as a prerequisite, but I think presentation is just as important, if not moreso, because it creates meaning. How much of our sense of "fun" comes from the meaning created by presentation as opposed to actual game mechanics/level design/puzzles/etc.? Can familiar, well-trod game mechanics be recontextualized by clever presentation? Psychonauts comes to mind...