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1990: “Our comic readers have only heard of one video game ever, but we need to stretch this to look like an entire newspaper page.”
I think it's a nested joke, where that one game totally dominates the kid's free time, with the clueless parents thinking that's the only relevant game in existence.
Also, at the time every game was "the Nintendo" to parents, and still was for a couple decades after. Mario had an enormous impact.
I didn't understand that as a kid and I still don't understand it. Why would you take so little interest in what your kids like? I don't even have kids and I still know who Mr Beast is. I can't imagine having people I love, living in my house, who are into this stuff and not knowing all about it. The only way this kind of parental apathy can possibly make sense to me is if those parents just don't love their kids. It doesn't make sense to me.
Video games are pretty new. Most parents of those kids perfectly related tp their kids watching TV and movies. They could bond over Star Wars and have no concept of 'gaming' and remain completely ignorant beyond them Mario Twins and the Pokemans.
If experiencing the world through fresh eyes isn't one of the main points of having a kid, what are we even doing as a species? How can you not be infected by a little one's curiosity about a changing world and learn along with them? I'm childfree and I still understand that much. How can someone choose to have kids and not want to share their kid's eagerness to learn?
To be honest it is extremely wonderful and infectious.
It is also exhausting.
And relentless.
There is no amount of exhaustion that could persuade me not to learn the name of my loved one's favourite toy for years on end.
You don't have kids. The stuff they get into can be ridiculous very easily. My experience has been paw patrol. There are a bunch of shows that have the same style, and you will see these shows a lot. Over and over and over. So much that any show that has even the slightest style as paw patrol becomes A paw patrol. The kid spiderman cartoon is a paw patrol for example.
You do learn the name of thier favorites. But you also see how much some things are the same. 8 bit Mario and Mega Man are different games, but they do look very similar to anyone working a full time job, coming home and cooking cleaning making sure everything related to your schoolwork is done, etc etc etc. Parents don't just hang around and be best friends with thier kids.
For me it would also be a matter of pride. If I dismissed all these things with the thought they're identical, but I cannot even name them, how can I in good faith claim to know them well enough to make such judgements? I would think myself arrogant and shallow. I'm far too prideful to think myself arrogant, and so I'm too prideful to dismiss something from a place of ignorance. Surely if the kid actually knows the names of the things and I don't, the kid's opinion must hold more weight than mine. I would only attack my loved one's interests from a place of certain understanding. I also can't understand having so little pride as to think as you describe.
You're thinking way too deep into it. It's not like that in real life. There is no attack, no ignorance. It has nothing to do with pride. It's just natural seeing things a million times and categorizing it the best you can. You don't understand how much kids watch the same exact stuff over and over and over and over and over and over. Its the same with video games.
If you could spend time with your kids 24/7 then sure, you'd be fine easily knowing and recognizing every single character they're interested in. That's just simply not realistic though.
Plus Super Mario was one of the first games that had a named character that was worth playing repeatedly. Pac-Man maybe a bit before that, but as a kid of the 80s, we had a Nintendo, Mario 1,2,3, Tetris (which my dad loved), Excitebike, Rad Racer, Hockey, Double Dribble and Rushin’ Attack.
There’s only the Mario characters in all those games, so I only knowing their names was completely understandable at the time. Pokémon wants a think for another bunch of years at that point (my youngest brother was the right age to get into it, I missed that by a few years).
Oh yeah Zelda too, my parents knew that name as well, but we got it used, much later than the first batch I listed. Eventually we had a Genesis and Sonic games too.
The one that got me was when my mom referred to a game console as a game. I even called her on it and her response was something like "oh, it's all just games to me". I know she understands the difference between a VCR or DVD player and a movie, so I don't know why she wouldn't distinguish between a piece of media and the hardware that plays it when talking about games. I think many boomers are just so actively dismissive of games that they make of point of not learning even the most basic vocabulary.
The right page is looking for a "dragon slayer". Definitely not Mario Bros.