Geno - Square Enix's Mario OC
♥♪!? - often called "Geno" by cowards - is a resident of Star Road, the place that grants all wishes. After Smithy's gang stole the 7 stars, ♥♪!? strived to return them home. But they needed a mighty vessel to succeed. ♥♪!? thought that the most cherished toy of a certain kid in Rose Town was the best option. After a bit of hesitation, they possessed Geno and wandered off into the woods. ♥♪!? quickly located Bowyer and met the duo of Mario and Mallow, who helped them defeat him. Their motives seemed to align, so ♥♪!? accepted their help in exchange for helping them rescue Princess Toadstool and the rest was history. Fine, I'll stop calling him ♥♪!?. Looks like I'm the only one who speaks Minecraft enchanting table these days...
,,Let's get this show on the road!''
I started playing SMRPG on an emulator days before the remake got announced, and finished it around the same time the remake came out. This magnificent experience has to be one of my favorite games, if not my favorite video game of all time. This game truly solidified my love for RPGs. Beware of Forest Mushrooms, the miniboss theme, the Factory theme and both of Smithy's themes will always get stuck in my head. My fondness for evil factory locations in games that I've had since beating Kirby 64 also got much stronger. After watching an unhealthy amount of Mario trivia videos on YouTube as a kid, I was always curious about Geno and wanted to play SMRPG to get to know the character better so I could be a TRUE fangirl of them. I'm so glad I did. I will always look back fondly on this first playthrough of mine. It was a little spaced out in time because of procrastination and very savestate-dependent, but everyone starts somewhere I guess. I'd absolutely love to play it on original hardware someday.