#23: Super Mario Bros. 2 (Nintendo, NES, 1988/1989)

As you pass through an area, you can cause all manner of havoc among the local wildlife, hurling vegetables at them or even hurling them at each other, but if you later return to the same area, everything will have returned to the way it was before you ever set foot there, Shy Guys milling around, cheerfully oblivious to the reign of terror you visited upon them mere minutes earlier. Are you simply a ghost, destined to stalk this world alone, unable to affect it in any way? But no, that’s not it. If you throw a Snifit into a bottomless pit and wait for it to return, it never will. It’s not you that is the ghost in this world, it’s everything and everyone else. In the world of Subcon, things only exist so long as you are observing them. Which makes sense, because, of course, it is all just a dream. But who is doing the dreaming?