Old Game Worlds
Old Game Worlds
[A light gray drop down menu is shown with three sections split up with three grays lines split up with section titles in the same gray font. Beneath each section title is 3, 4 and 6 lines of black text. An white arrow cursor hovers over the second last option, which is thus highlighted with a dark gray background and white text.] New Games Subnautica Russian Subway Dogs Kerbal Space Program Old Games Worms Armageddon Elasto Mania Katamari Damacy Mario Kart Very Old Games Link's Awakening Escape Velocity SimCity Prince of Persia Super Mario Bros MS Flight Simulator 3
[A colorful scene is shown from the Super Mario Bros. side-scrolling game, the first level World 1-1. Mario with red hat and trousers is standing on the brown blocks beneath the blue sky. Another character in the game, Goomba, is standing in front of some green bushes. Above them is narration text:] Narrator: It feels weird that you can go into old games and the whole world is still there. Goomba: Mario? Mario: It'sa me! Goomba: What are you doing here?
[Mario stands between an e-scooter, a dismounted and broken Question Mark Box lying on its side and a cellphone tower. Narration continues above:] Narrator: Part of me expects to find that everything's changed.
[Mario looks at a damaged green but rusty Warp Pipe and there is a quadcopter drone flying by over his head. Weeds are growing both from the pipe and from the blocks he is walking on. Narration continues above:] Narrator: That pipes have rusted, walls have crumbled, bad guys have moved on.
[Mario has moved on to World 1-4, the castle has been replaced with a bakery. The blocks beneath his feet are now smaller and gray and above them is black background. The character Toad with the white hat with red circles is standing in front of a bakery disc with shelves of bread and cake behind it. There is a green sign on the front of the brown disk. Toad talks to Mario with white text in the black background. Above the black part of the image is more narration in a frame-less white section:] Narrator: That even our game worlds can't escape the passage of time. Toad: Thank you, Mario! Toad: But this is a Panera now! Sign: Panera

Randall sits at his computer looking at a menu of games which have been ordered into three sections, New, Old and Very old games (see List of games below). At the bottom of this list, 2nd to last, he chooses to click on Super Mario Bros. which  then opens as shown in the next four panels.
This comic explores the difference between the real world, where artificial structures require constant upkeep and communities change with time, and the digital worlds of video games, where everything is static until the plot demands otherwise. Although online games do require server maintenance by the owners and sometimes receive major changes to their content, offline games are - and always have been - perpetual existences, unchanging so long as the data is intact. (This is later revisited in 2221: Emulation )
As the narration explores this incongruity, and theorizes about the idea of it not being so, the comic displays the alternative with the ubiquitous video game - Super Mario Bros. (1985) - as an example. Mario arrives in World 1-1 to find a Goomba expressing surprise that the plumber has deigned to return to the place where his first journey began. As he advances, he finds both signs of progress - a cellphone tower , an e-scooter , a drone - and signs of disrepair - damaged Warp Pipes , loose blocks. At World 1-4, he finds Toad ; in the game, Toad would warn him that the Princess is being held in another castle , but now, he's informing Mario that the castle has been remodeled into a Panera bakery.
This reflects common experiences of a person returning to a place they once knew well, but haven't seen in a long time. The atmosphere of the place may be changed by modern elements that hadn't existed before.  Buildings and other infrastructure may have decayed or fallen into disrepair.  And areas that have not been neglected will often be redeveloped, meaning that landmarks you remember may be repurposed or demolished to make room for something new. This tends to stir up feelings of nostalgia and loss in real life, when the settings of your memory no longer exist in the form that you remember.
The title-text abruptly switches to Mario's acceptance of the changes to World 1, and deciding to make the most of it by purchasing a cinnamon roll . "Coins" are the omnipresent currency of the Mushroom Kingdom and most other locations Mario visits in the Mario series, taking the form of large nondescript golden circles, usually with a rectangular indent in the middle.
The concept of an old, dilapidated version of the world of the original Super Mario Bros. was explored by Nintendo themselves in the Mushroomy Kingdom stage featured in multiple Super Smash Bros. games.
The first panel shows a list of games in approximately reverse chronological order of their release:
The first game in the Mario Kart series was Super Mario Kart from 1992. As can be seen that Mario Kart game would be older than Link's Awakening. So it seems likely Randall was referring to Mario Kart 64 from 1997, the first in the series to begin with Mario Kart leaving out the Super. With this in mind all the games in the two bottom sections are older than all those in the previous section. But they are not listed chronologically within the three sections.
Russian Subway Dogs is the newest game from 2018 (and at the time of this comic's release in August 2019, is the only one of the 13 games mentioned in this comic that does not currently have a Wikipedia entry).
Super Mario Bros., the game most prominently featured in the comic, is the oldest of the 13. The first version of Microsoft Flight Simulator , MS flight simulator 1.0 , was from 1982, but the list this comic specifies the third version, released in 1988.
Although the games in this comic appear to be grouped by date of their release, the time span covered by these groupings is not uniform. The first three games mentioned are from 2014-2018. The next four date from between 1997-2004, and the last six from between 1985-1996. With the earliest games grouped as 1985-1996, uniform grouping could split the later games between a group released in 1997-2008 and a group of games released in 2009 or later. If grouped by decades, 1985-1995 would potentially place the Escape Velocity game in the Old Games section instead of the Very Old Games section. Although some of these games did have releases intended to run on a 'Personal Computer' , the list in this comic seems to focus on games released for gaming consoles , with no mention of games released for first or second generation consoles which pre-dated the Nintendo Entertainment System (such as Pong published by Atari; Brain Wave, Haunted House, Interplanetary Voyage, & Wipeout for the Magnavox Odyssey ; & Adventure for the Atari 2600 ).
[A light gray drop down menu is shown with three sections split up with three grays lines split up with section titles in the same gray font. Beneath each section title is 3, 4 and 6 lines of black text. An white arrow cursor hovers over the second last option, which is thus highlighted with a dark gray background and white text.] New Games Subnautica Russian Subway Dogs Kerbal Space Program Old Games Worms Armageddon Elasto Mania Katamari Damacy Mario Kart Very Old Games Link's Awakening Escape Velocity SimCity Prince of Persia Super Mario Bros MS Flight Simulator 3
[A colorful scene is shown from the Super Mario Bros. side-scrolling game, the first level World 1-1. Mario with red hat and trousers is standing on the brown blocks beneath the blue sky. Another character in the game, Goomba, is standing in front of some green bushes. Above them is narration text:] Narrator: It feels weird that you can go into old games and the whole world is still there. Goomba: Mario? Mario: It'sa me! Goomba: What are you doing here?
[Mario stands between an e-scooter, a dismounted and broken Question Mark Box lying on its side and a cellphone tower. Narration continues above:] Narrator: Part of me expects to find that everything's changed.
[Mario looks at a damaged green but rusty Warp Pipe and there is a quadcopter drone flying by over his head. Weeds are growing both from the pipe and from the blocks he is walking on. Narration continues above:] Narrator: That pipes have rusted, walls have crumbled, bad guys have moved on.
[Mario has moved on to World 1-4, the castle has been replaced with a bakery. The blocks beneath his feet are now smaller and gray and above them is black background. The character Toad with the white hat with red circles is standing in front of a bakery disc with shelves of bread and cake behind it. There is a green sign on the front of the brown disk. Toad talks to Mario with white text in the black background. Above the black part of the image is more narration in a frame-less white section:] Narrator: That even our game worlds can't escape the passage of time. Toad: Thank you, Mario! Toad: But this is a Panera now! Sign: Panera
