2189: Old Game Worlds

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Old Game Worlds
Ok, how many coins for a cinnamon roll?
Title text: Ok, how many coins for a cinnamon roll?


Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a VERY OLD GAME CHARACTER. What the hell is a Panera? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic explores the difference between the real world, where artificial structures require constant upkeep and communities change with time, and the digital worlds of video games, where everything is static until the plot demands otherwise. Although online games do require server maintenance by the owners, offline games are - and always have been - perpetual existences, unchanging so long as the data is intact.

As the narration explores this incongruity, and theorizes about the idea of it not being so, the comic displays the alternative with the ubiquitous video game - Super Mario Bros. - as an example. Mario arrives in World 1-1 to find a Goomba expressing surprise that the plumber has deigned to return to the place where his first journey began. As he advances, he finds both signs of progress - a telephone pole, an e-scooter - and signs of disrepair - damaged Warp Pipes, dismounted ? Blocks. At World 1-Castle, he finds Toad - usually warning him that the princess is being held elsewhere - informing him that the castle has been remodeled into a Parena.

The title-text abruptly switches to Mario's acceptance of the changes to World 1-1, and deciding to make the most of it by purchasing a meal. "Coins" are the ubiquitous currency of the Mushroom Kingdom and most other locations Mario visits in the Mario series, taking the form of large nondescript golden circles, usually with a rectangular indent on the sides.