I'm currently in a hotel room in Mexico City watching Mexico Tiene Talento (Mexico's Got Talent) and crushing on Ximena Sarinana even though I have no idea what she's saying. I flew down this morning; I'd stocked up on some 3DS games for the trip before I left. I ended up strolling down memory lane with a pick-up of Super Mario Land (originally for the Game Boy), a game which I played pretty extensively during family trips to Disney World when I was a young buck of ten years or so.

The game is, to my 30 year old ass, pretty bad. It's really simplistic and way shorter than I remembered it being. There are only about a dozen levels; I ended up beating the game pretty early in my trip down to Mexico. Platforming has come way too far in the last 20 years for Super Mario Land to really stand a chance at holding up. I just remember playing it a lot as a youngster. Either I was young and bad or young and willing to play the same game repeatedly. Whichever it was, I had some nostalgia going on when I made the purchase this time around.

Super Mario Land had one level (3-1) with statues in the background that looked an awful lot like the Maoi on Easter Island. Back around when I was originally playing the game, I read up a little more about Easter Island and got hooked on the notion of visiting. Of course, being so young I assumed that I'd only be able to achieve such a trip much later in life (i.e. as an old buck) if at all, on account of the island being so remote and expensive to get to. I also thought that if I ever won the lottery, I'd just spend my winnings traveling from remote island to remote island. That's always sounded like the life for me.

A couple of years ago, I was in Chile for work at a time when LAN was running a promotion for pretty cheap airfare to Easter Island. I jumped on the opportunity and spent three days in the place which as a child represented a lifetime of achievement or a luck of the draw. It was amazing - a trip that meant and still means a lot to me. It was just funny that - and I don't know if maybe this a result of my own impatience or man's folly or whatever - after a few days of checking out the Maoi, I'd sort of...had enough. I got it.

The trip of a lifetime, the validation of a young dreamer, came up a little short in the awe department. Don't get it twisted - I loved my time there and still view it as one of the trips I'm most proud of. It's just that I was kinda all set with it after the three days. I don't know why my interest in looking at Maoi statues eventually petered out, but I blame growing older. It was the same feeling I got when I went to Disney World again as an adult. I appreciated the spectacle and the effort - and the way it was able to make me feel transported when I was younger - but I wasn't taken away all over again. Playing Super Mario Land again was a similar experience. World 3-1, for all its influence on my travel ambitions, didn't do anything for me this time around. By today's standards, by my standards, it's just a shitty level in a shitty game.