The great cross-console draft: Master Chief on PS3, Mario on Xbox 360, Solid Snake on Wii

In wars, it’s the heroes that really count. It’s not always about spears, shields, and catapults, most armies had to rely on their Achilles’, Beowulfs, Leonidas’ and Harry Potters. That’s why PlayStation 3 has Solid Snake, Xbox 360 has Master Chief, and Wii has Mario. What happens then when Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo decide to swap heroes and place them in one of their consoles’ biggest games?

Read more about this cross-console draft, after the jump!

 

Whenever the subject of “best current gen console” is brought up, we all hear talks about PS3’s Blu-ray, Wii’s motion-sensitive Wiimote, Xbox 360’s Xbox Live, graphics, games, innovation… The list just goes on and on and not surprisingly, almost all debate end in a stalemate. Ever wonder why?

I believed it’s the way the topic is being approached. Too often the focus of these discussions is on hardware, when in real/fictional wars it’s the heroes that really count. It’s not always about spears, shields, and catapults, most armies had to rely on their Achilles’, Beowulfs, Leonidas’ and Harry Potters.

So in this article, we’ll focus on Nintendo’s Super Mario, Sony‘s Solid Snake, and Microsoft‘s Master Chief. No, we won’t talk about how they do their stuff and how they defeat their own video game’s baddies. We’ll make a mock draft and play around with the idea of each hero crossing not only to other gaming platforms, but to an entirely different gaming field.

Before we begin, we have to set rules. First, the drafted hero will be placed inside an existing video game. Second, a hero can only use weapons or skills originally made for him. And finally, the game must still have the same feel and carry the identity it was known for. With that, let’s go and check the results.

 

Metal Gear Master Chief 5: Guns of the Spartan

It can fit well with the story, given Bungie’s open-ended treatment to the Halo epic. Microsoft can play with the premise of Master Chief waking up in a futuristic Earth where Solid Snake completely failed his mission to stop the metal gear arms race, giving birth to a world dominated by mechs and (Metal Gear Solid 4) Raiden-like cyborgs. Master Chief, being the badass hero that he is, sought to clean this mess by going head on against the metal gears and the organization behind it, the Illuminati-esque Patriots.

A seven-foot Spartan going up against metal gears is a win-win situation. On one hand, you’ve got a machine equipped with the most recent innovations in military technology. On the other, you’ve got an armored Spartan powered by the super soldier Master Chief. I can totally picture good ol’ Chief tearing metal gears apart, or metal gears busting the Spartan’s ass.

What could be really challenging though, is how the seven-foot tall, thousand pound heavy, metal plated Spartan will complete the stealth missions the Metal Gear series is popular for. Of course Master Chief can just throw all this stealth stuff out the window and beat the hell out of Patriot’s soldiers and cyborgs. But then again, it won’t be a Metal Gear game without stealth, also remember rule no. 3?

Another interesting part would be the way Master Chief handles the rawness of the Metal Gear series. Solid Snake was made popular by the original Snake’s snake-eating jungle exploits. It would be intriguing to see how fair-skinned Master Chief (from not getting out in the Sun too much), accustomed to intergalactic quests, will adjust to this.

The kicker though is that Master Chief will be handled by one of the most brilliant minds in the gaming industry today – Hideo Kojima. I may have noted some possible problems above, but I have no doubt in my mind that Kojima will come up with something that’ll make a crawling Spartan hiding inside a box look cool. Who knows, he might even give Master Chief a dose of Eva.

Halo 3½: Super Mario Universe

Of all the three, this scenario may be the most plausible. Mario has been in all worlds imaginable with his latest Princess Peach rescuing actually bringing him past galaxies. The next move would obviously be stepping it up another notch, and what could be bigger than galaxies other than the whole universe?

Mario’s never-ending struggle to save Princess Peach ties in surprisingly well with the Halo saga too. Microsoft can set up Bowser as a long-lost subspecies of the Brutes making him an ally of the Covenant. This connection then gives Bowser enough ships and Brute armies to create an interplanetary world much like in Super Mario Galaxy. All you need then is another Princess Peach abduction and you’re set with another Super Mario experience.

The problem though, would be making Mario’s mission an important part of the Halo universe. Here’s the how Bungie and Microsoft can make it work. In Super Mario Galaxy, Mario is capable of moving from planet to planet by manipulating gravity while jumping. While this is a good move in a mere galaxy, it won’t help Mario in fighting Covenant hordes across the entire universe.

This is where Cortana enters. She’ll provide Mario with all the Halo-related information he needs to complete his mission. I can see her showing Nintendo’s plumber how to  modify his jumping skills in order to navigate blackholes and wormholes and use them as intergalactic teleporters.

No Super Mario game is ever complete without power-ups, and this is where this game will really kick ass. With Cortana as his aide, Mario will learn how to fight donning a Spartan II armor, maneuver ships, and morph into parasitic aliens. To fight random Covenant Brutes, Mario’s equipped with his traditional jumping and spinning melee attacks, flip-ground-pound moves, and Star Bits ammo.

After all the usual enemy stomping and final boss match, where Spartan II super soldier Mario battles alien weaponry toting Bowser, Mario rescues Princess Peach. Here’s where the Halo flavor kicks in. Cortana then reveals that the whole game is a simulation designed to give Mario the coordinates of the ship that carries Master Chief’s cryo-frozen body, paving the way for the continuation of the Halo saga [hint: read Master Chief’s next adventure above].

Solid Snake Mushroom Kingdom

Nintendo now drafts Solid Snake from the Sony stable. With Nintendo’s vision of going back to the basics as typified by their handling of the Wii, they decided to make full use of Solid Snake’s raw-hero character and give him an adventure that’ll take him to the very roots of the most popular game in videogaming industry.

Nintendo can present the game as a virtual reality training for Solid Snake. In order to enhance his urban fighting skills, Otacon convinced Solid Snake to undergo a newly designed VR training that he got from one of his sources. Solid Snake  was reluctant at first until Otacon told him that the email came from an “Ankle Squiid”, an apparent anagram of “Liquid Snake”. Curious and thinking that the test is harmless, Solid Snake underwent the VR training.

Snake is then vacuumed to a 3D-fied world resembling the original Super Mario Bros. from NES and his adventure to pre-Mario Mushroom Kingdom adventure starts. His close quarter combat skills are put to good use in putting goombas and koopa troopas out of commission. Solid Snake, however, is at his best when he stealthily attacks enemies from behind using knives and tranquilizer guns.

Back to the story, I can see Nintendo making sure that Solid Snake forever leaves his prints in their Super Mario franchise, this is the only way I can picture them achieving this. Solid Snake, thinking he’s still deep into VR training, blows every single castle up. Eventually he wound up fighting a Bowser-like mech guarding a dungeon caging what seems to be a damsel in distress. Using his cigs he short-circuited the monster mech and freed the girl who turns out to be the Mushroom Kingdom Queen.

Solid Snake stays in the game for a month to tend to the Queen before going back to the real world. Otacon, upon Snake’s return, revealed that the VR training he just took was in fact a ploy by the Patriots to gather enough data on the legendary soldier of Shadow Moses incident. This data is set to be incorporated to the latest anti-Snake Metal Gear weapon in development. Enraged, Solid Snake sets on a mission to sabotage the project.

As the end credits roll, we see Otacon gazing to the completed VR training’s own final cutscenes. We see Otacon’s POV showing the Mushroom Kingdom Queen giving birth to Princess Peach with no King in sight, and the Bowser-mech rubble shifting to reveal baby Bowser…

And the winner is…

Another stalemate? Nope, the true winner of this contest is us, patronizing gamers, as we get to enjoy handling characters exclusive to one of the three consoles. Hey, this is what healthy competition does anyway right? Bring the best out of each competitor.

If Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are serious on proving who’s the most creative and innovative, this would the most plausible move. How about you guys, what do you think? Do you have other video gaming heroes that you think would look cool in another system and video game?