Super Mario RPG’s Geno and the Mystery of the Fifth Card Suit

I told myself to take a few weeks off from all things Super Mario, and now it’s been more than a month since Mario 101 went up. By my own rules, this post is allowed, I’m telling myself. But while I’m starting this one out with Super Mario RPG, this is going to be a bigger story than any one game or franchise. In fact, it’s about playing cards. As I explain in this Mario 101 item, the spade icons on the Super Mario Bros. 3 map screen are a specific callback to Nintendo’s logo long before the company made video games. When it made playing cards, Nintendo’s logo was a stylized spade icon with an “N” in the center. This is easy to miss in Super Mario Bros. 3, because many of the spade icons lead to various card games where you can win items or extra lives. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that there’s any more to them than that, but the spade does show up again in Super Mario RPG, which assigns the various playing card suits to the playable characters in that game. When any of them do a…