ORIGIN

Hotel Mario was released for the Philips CDi in 1994. Upon starting the game, players were greeted with one of the cheeziest cutscenes of all time. In the scene, Mario and Luigi were on their way to meet Princess Toadstool at a picnic when they discover that she has been kidnapped by Bowser… again! This time she has been taken to one of seven Koopa Hotels; it would be up to Mario and Luigi to search the hotels and find her. The result was one of the worst videogames ever made…

But within the cutscene, one overzealous and oddly placed phrase stood out:
"I HOPE SHE MADE LOTSA SPAGHETTI!"
This would go on to become the most memorable line in the entire game, and also the most parodied…

That's saying alot, considering that Hotel Mario as a whole is an example of a videogame that's just plain wrong. Like Weegee's origin in Mario is Missing, Hotel Mario was made during a high point in the Super Mario franchise. This bizzare puzzle game involved running through seven hotels, closing the hotel room doors and using elevators to move between floors. Once all of the doors were closed, the player could proceed. The player eventually reached Bowser's personal floor and defeated the Koopa King to rescue the princess.

But the game's cutscenes, not the gameplay, are what is comically important. These cutscenes used poorly drawn visuals on par with those featured in the three Zelda CDi games. No wonder that content from both is often featured in YTPs. The scenes also feature awkward voice acting and animation that almost beg to be parodied. Other phrases such as "eh, Luigi?" (interpreted as Gay Luigi), "toast!", "nooo…", and "she's not coming down" are also used as material for YTPs. One important thing to remember is that Lotsa Spaghetti is not a "typical" meme. The phrase commonly appears in YTPs as reference rather than subject matter.

YTP

While the YTP fad was at large, a video called

What is Spaghetti?

was posted on April 29, 2007

which made the line famous. It brought attention to Hotel Mario and the comedic value of its cutscenes. The line would not become popular (as shown in the graph above) until late 08/early 09. So far there have been 1,210 YTPs based on the line…

Lotsa Spaghetti was also a common phrase found in many of Walrusguy's YTPs

Some of the best YTPs that involve Lotsa Spaghetti also include material from other popular sources on the internet like the Zelda CDi games, 300 (This Is Sparta!), and even Final Fantasy.

SPARTA REMIXES

Some of the best Lotsa Spaghetti videos are Sparta Remixes. The first remix show here became wildly popular on Nintendo's free Flipnote Studios service.