Whats weird to me, is that reading Bobs writing of this--somehow it doesnt come across as genuine fanboyism. Consooming, sure, but it somehow comes across to me as like, "Everybody else liked Pokemon, I like it too!" To me the way he writes about this read more like somebody watched a bunch of early AVGN episodes and then built and wrote a character based around hype and consoomer fervor just because its a cheap way to an ersatz personality or something.
Maybe Im not that much of a fan of anything, some edgelord nihilist disaffected from most shit so I dont get it and cant tell whats genuine or not, and because Im not a fan of DC/Marvel shit, I dont really pick up on that with his Marvel movie reviews (that is, I do feel he's more genuine in caring about that shit, superhero shit and movies), but with Mario, him trying to describe it as some cultural 9/11 mind-blowing moment comes across as so alien, I think, because he doesnt get it; he doesnt truly feel that way and is just aping people who do and going over the top tying weird shit to it in doing so--put his descriptions of Nintendo Power screenshots over like an Irate Gamer AVGN knockoff video and you wouldnt be able to tell it wasnt really meant to be there. It just feels kind of hollow.
EDIT: I guess thinking about it more--its not like he's coming across as even a hardcore Mario fan. A hardcore Mario fan would be like, 'Dude its not that big of a deal' and even if they were that hardcore about Mario 3, they would still be at least a little into the rest of the Mario series. but in this book, he comes across as almost less about how important Mario 3 is, or at least is to him, but about how great his childhood was, how great that shit was because it was part of his childhood, if anything. Other than that he seems like he's just aping other peoples' hype, but because he doesnt genuinely care, he has no frame of reference so he's swinging wide and comparing it to 9/11 and shit.