Mario (and The Go Game) Goes For The Gold!

Chris and I are big nerds. We're not afraid to admit it. While trying to add a little character and personality to our flat/office/two floors of awesomeness, we stumbled upon something that made us both jump up and down with excitement in a store called Supernice just a block away from us:

THE OLD SCHOOL O.G. NINTENDO SUPER MARIO BROTHERS BLIK WALL GRAPHICS. ZOMG!!!

Both of us have serious lifelong attachments to this particular game. One of my happiest childhood memories is from Thanksgiving, age five, when my brother and I received our first Nintendo from our aunt and uncle.
Last Christmas I sat down at a friend's house and played her old school Nintendo for so long that another friend actually bought me my own for Christmas. Chris played Nintendo so much when he was little that once he actually sleepwalked into his parents' room and told his mother that Mario couldn't fly. Suffice it to say that the two of us strongly connect on this topic and have been known to occupy quite an unnecessary amount of time playing old school Nintendo on Chris's emulator. And by 'playing old school Nintendo' I mean 'working really really hard,' right Go Gamers?

Upon discovering this bit of joy-in-a-box, Chris and I took one look at each other, threw down some pounds, and immediately rushed home to deck out our geeky game paradise. We spent a delightfully entertaining hour (or two) determining the layout of our scene and how it would serve as a visual metaphor for our company's UK launch. We also debated the proper formations of coins, the appropriate spacing between the bricks on the 'ground,' and the maximum height of question marks in relation to Mario's jumping ability. Did I mention that we're big nerds? Anyway, take a look at the finished scene:



Pretty sweet, huh? To explain what I mean by the visual metaphor, note how Mario is placed in the scene mid-jump. He is leaping across a yawning chasm to move forward in his adventure, similarly to how Chris and I have jumped across the Atlantic Ocean to launch our UK office. He could have stayed behind and grabbed a mushroom overhead and gotten bigger, as we could have remained in the U.S. and helped our SF office expand towards total domination. However, Mario is surging ahead in the hopes of grabbing more coins (PROFIT!) and experiencing new lands and higher levels of play. He is also desperately trying to avoid being ensnared by the piranha flower in the green tube, which represents the British bureaucracy that we must jump over to reach the next level. Note: Everyone here is EXTREMELY nice, but wading through the red tape of proving our identities, providing utility bills, passing British credit checks, and completing other difficult tasks which all require proof of each other, feels a little bit like frantically jumping over a voraciously hungry oversized plant with T-Rex teeth trying to swallow us whole.

However, since Chris and I are Nintendo and Go Game superstars, we will survive the flowers, the koopa troopas, the goombas, and anything else they want to throw at us. We'll successfully complete the jumps and grab some serious money along the way! Our perch at times may be precarious, and there may be blocks that we have to bash our heads against before they release showers of coins, but we will reach that castle at the end of the level and we will most certainly enjoy ourselves along the way.

Here's a larger view of the wall along with a peek at the main office/living room (aka where the magic happens).



You'll notice there is also an invincibility star bouncing ahead of us, which represents imminent British superstardom. Soon the paparazzi will be chasing after us to put our photos in the tabloids along with Kate Moss and Posh Spice and their kind. Finally, all the way on the right, a biq question mark block. What's to come for Mario and the UK office? No one knows, but Chris and I have controllers in hand and a lot of video game practice under our belts. Send out the big boss, we're ready for anything...