During the holiday season, we’re republishing select articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2023 series. Enjoy!
In the magazine business, the back page is where you’ll find all the weird nonsense we can’t fit anywhere else. Some might call it “filler”; we prefer “an entire page for making terrible jokes tangentially related to the magazine’s content.” We don’t have pages online, but we still love terrible jokes — so welcome to our semi-regular feature, The Back Page.
Today, Jim looks at the ethics of eating mushrooms to enhance…
Here at Nintendo Life, we like to ask the big questions. Huge philosophical musings like how many eyes does Sonic really have? and which pokémon would be the tastiest? — you know, real stuff for deep thinking. And today we turn our attention to all the vegetarians in the Kingdom of Mushrooms.
There must be vegetarians, right? Yoshi lives on an almost entirely fruit-based diet, and there’s no way Waluigi can maintain that lean silhouette without cutting back on old red meat. But unlike the real world—where going veg can be as simple as turning to vegetables as your main food source—the Mushroom Kingdom faces an entirely different problem: What is classified as meat?
We’re talking specifically (if the title didn’t already give it away) about Power-Up Mushrooms. Now, before you jump into the comments to tell us, “Well of course they’re vegetarian friendly, they are mushrooms“, let’s first consider the other side of the coin. Namely, they have a face.
Let’s face it, Power-Up mushrooms are sweet. They have those bright little puppy dog eyes that seem to say, “Please give me a good home” instead of “Wouldn’t I be delicious in a brioche bun?” These are not mushrooms that we regularly eat, but living, breathing creatures (perhaps) capable of seeing and smiling and keeping us company.
For most vegetable growers out there, the humble mushroom is a staple of our diet (this writer has choked down more portobello mushroom burgers at otherwise meat-based restaurants than he cares to remember), but we’ve never had to worry about that mushroom being alive. Yes, they are all mushrooms alive in the sense that they are mushrooms, but we think alive as if they have their own dreams, feelings and families. Do they have a self-concept? Are they sensitive?
And let’s not even talk about dancing. When these little guys pop out of the object box, they don’t roll onto the floor like we’d expect from inanimate objects; they slide to the right, nodding to the rhythm of the background music and even jumping a little with happiness when they hear the legendary “bah bah”.
As a general rule (and we can’t speak for every vegetarian here), if something has an expressive face and the ability to dance, it’s not suitable for vegetarians. So what’s a vegetarian to do in the Mushroom Kingdom? Obviously you can’t squeeze into a Koopa steak or a can of Cheep Cheep in brine, but even mushrooms you have feelings, how would you do then?
Yes, it may be true that we’re overthinking things here (what a shocker!), but if we were to end up in a Mario world, Isekai style, then it’s important to know that we could maintain our morale diet.
So what do you think? Are a face and a dance enough to exclude Power-Up Mushrooms from a vegetarian diet, or are they no more sensible than the clouds in the sky (which also, occasionally, have faces in Mario, we might add)?
Do Power-Up mushrooms have souls? Would you, as a vegetarian, be more inclined to eat the Piranha plant or are they equally off the menu? Tell us your opinion by filling out the following survey and then arguing your point of view in the comments.
