- Super Mario World (video game) (allthetropes.org)
Super Mario World is a 1991 video game produced by Nintendo as a launch title for their sixteen-bit console, the Super Nintendo. It features their iconic mascot Mario taking a vacation alongside his brother Luigi and Princess Peach (then still referred to in America as Princess Toadstool) to the faraway Dinosaur Land. There, as is prone to happen, Princess Peach is captured by Bowser and kept in his castle, this time located in the deep underground. Of course, Mario must journey through the entire continent to get to her, beating down Bowser’s loyal lackies/children, the seven Koopalings, along the way.
- Gödel, Escher, Bach (Wikipedia)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of “meaningless” elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of “meaning” itself.
