Here in the U.S. we get to try to stack up a tower of boring brown wooden blocks and hope that it doesn’t tumble over. As further evidence of “everything is better in Japan”, their board games include little transparent Mario characters that players balance on a color-matching floor of a wobbly tower. If they place a piece wrong and tower tumbles, then Jenga! (or however they say it Japan).

There is actually two ways to play the game. The first involves the steady hand of a 5-year-old Oreo stacking champion. The second game is for those of us who are always tempted to pull the most-likely-to-tumble block from any stacking game to just to watch it’s horrendous crash with destructive glee. This version involves a little cannon, in the shape of a green warp tube from the video games nonetheless. You load your Mario cast member into the cannon and then launch it at opposing players pieces. Last man standing wins!

Now if only the canon (or “Mario launching apparatus” for the PC challenged) would make the warping sound effect from the video games, it would make for a pretty fun little office toy, game or no game included.

Find the Mario GuraGura game at Play-Asia.com [$24.90 at time of post].

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