Geno

About

Geno is a fictional character from the 1996 Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. The character is iconically associated with the "Forest Maze" music from the game's soundtrack, which was notably remixed and given lyrics in 2004 as the "Rawest Forest" song, and has been a popular character in Super Smash Brothers Character Predictions.

Origin

Geno first appeared in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, developed by Final Fantasy creators SquareSoft, now known as Square Enix. The character is a spirit, equivalent to an angel, who takes possession of an otherwise-inanimate wooden doll to aid Mario and friends in their quest. His "real" name is given as an unpronounceable series of symbols, and the spirit adopts the name "Geno" after that of its puppet vessel.^[1]

Spread

Geno also makes a cameo appearance in the 2003 Game Boy Advance game Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, but is notably absent from its 2017 remake for legal reasons due to officially being a Square Enix character and not a Nintendo character.

Geno has long been a popularly-suggested character for playable inclusion in the Super Smash Bros. series. and has come to be arguably as well-known as a hypothetical Smash fighter as he is for his original, official appearance. Highly visible memetic content campaigning for the character's inclusion dates back to the development cycle of the third iteration of the crossover fighting game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in 2007 and 2008. In late 2007, Geno was featured in the flash animation "Smash Kingdom" by Newgrounds user Araskin500, which later received sequels also making use of the character. These videos mark a very early acknowledgement in a substantial piece of content of the character's popularity as a Smash candidate (shown below).

It was later rumored online following the release of Brawl that the delays thereof had to do with Geno, and that Nintendo, having intended to include him, was forced to remove him from the game for legal reasons with Square. Geno himself is owned by Square Enix, not Nintendo, which is widely considered to be the main obstacle to his inclusion in Super Smash Bros.. When Final Fantasy character Cloud was introduced to Super Smash Bros. as a playable character in downloadable content for the series' fourth game, thus establishing Square's participation with the series, a costume based on Geno usable by customizable Mii fighters was included in the same update as a nod to the character's fans. The same costume later returned in Ultimate with the release of fellow Final Fantasy character Sephiroth. Playable fan-made Smash mods implementing the character started surfacing around 2016 (example shown below).

Ahead of the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Geno ranked very highly in certain fan-polls.^[2] In September of 2018, he was ranked #2 in WatchMojo's video considering the top ten most fan-wanted characters for Ultimate.

He was also one of the characters included in the infamous "Grinch" banner hoax.

Search interest

External References