YMMV / (Mario) The Music Box

• Awesome Art: This game is packed with surprisingly good art, especially the full-screen pictures.
• Complete Monster: Len Alwenia Foska, the Witch of Fate, is a sadistic Mad Scientist responsible for most of the events of the game. Having given the witch-hunting clergyman Marchionne Evangelisti a brooch that would grant him a wish should he be on the brink of death, knowing he will soon face execution, Len in return made Marchionne a test subject in her study of human nature. Responsible for the curse of the Aduraice Estate and Evangeline Town, and thus having a hand in all the deaths that followed, Len took to luring Marchionne's reincarnation, Mario, to the mansion to commence her experiments. Manipulating various timelines so that Mario dies countless times, even owning a pit filled with the plumber's many corpses, Len is even willing to intervene in her own experiments for sadistic glee. Creating a Wonderland dimension against Marchionne's wishes, Len orchestrates a series of tragedies that plague the land, while preventing Mario from breaking the cycle to further indulge in her experiments for as long as she likes.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The shot of a possessed Mario wearing a white gown brings to mind the Bridal Dress costume from Super Mario Odyssey, a game which came out two years after this one and also features copious amounts of possessing other creatures and people (though this time Mario is the possesser instead of the possessee).
  • Then there is the "Omitted Memory" ending, where Mario is forgotten as he never existed. To "celebrate" the 35th anniversary games of Super Mario being out of circulation, the youtube channel SiIvaGunner made a event where Mario vanishes, including Grand Dad and the sliders rips. Even the viewers behave like how they should.
• Funny Moments: In a desperate moment to get away from an Alice-possessed Mario, Riba has multiple methods of hiding himself... including, in an act of sheer lethal stupidity, taking a lampshade off of a lamp to wear and hide his face then stand in the light's place. What follows is Alice's uncharacteristically sarcastic and snarky remarks upon seeing Riba's "hiding spot", topped off by the look on her (rather, Mario's) face as she grabs the lamp cord.
  Alice: You can't hide from— (Sees Riba)
  (Long, awkward silence.)
  Alice: Oh where, oh where could he be? I can't see him anywhere~.
  (Walks up to Riba holding the light switch.)
  Alice: Hmmm... Let me turn on the light to see better.
  Riba: Uhh...
  (More awkward silence.)
  Riba: ...Click.
  Alice: Nice try, Riba.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • All but a few spirits (i.e. the spirits that don't try to kill you) qualify. Yes, they all try to kill you in very horrible ways, but they were good people in life screwed over by Alice and cursed to try to kill you.
  • Anna. She's at best a morally ambiguous character who killed her own sister — but she was abused and neglected by her mother, became a virtual shadow of said sister (who received all the love and attention), and only killed her so she could be loved for once — but instead she was brutally murdered by her mother.
  • Marchionne. He may be a fundamentalist Knight Templar who started multiple crusades against witches, but he was lonely for most of his life due to his parents forcing him to study everyday and not allowing him to get close with Luciano, thus he didn't have any friend. He found happiness when he had Luciano and Aurora on his life, but all of that was ruined thanks to Riba and Alice's machinations, leading him to betray his twin brother (an act that he clearly regrets). When he was being ready to be executed by the guillotine, he can only mourn about his life before being beheaded.
• Moe: The Spirits. Some of them keep the good looks they had after passing, such as Rosa, Aria (who looks almost exactly the same as she did in life), and Serina. The scissors girl retained some of her moe in life.
• Moral Event Horizon: Alice's massacre of the mansion residents, starting with Alfred, cemented her into the irredeemably evil person she is in-game. Also in the ARC Expansion, when she murders Riba's wife out of jealousy and tried to kill baby Anna as well.
• Narm: The fact that Mario characters are arbitrarily involved in story makes it somewhat laughable. Many people even question why Mario characters are involved in this game in the first place, commenting that nothing would change if they were original characters instead.
  • Furthermore, the inclusion of the Mario characters at all places this game, and its twists, in the same universe as Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Super Paper Mario, and Luigi's Mansion, which all touch on elements that are related to core concepts present in this game. It's hard to take a character who made a Faustian bargain seriously when A. a Satan analogue is known to exist in the setting by the name of Bonechill, B. you've seen Luigi obliterate that guy in all of two seconds, and C. going to Hell and back wasn't even their most harrowing problem THAT DAY.
• Narm Charm: By the same token, it grants the game a unique identity that makes it stand out from contemporary RPG horror games, for better and for worse.
• Nintendo Hard: Before the Smashing Survival was put in place, players used to have to press specific keys in a long string of them before time ran out. This method of survival is still available for players who want the challenge, though it was noted to be notoriously difficult.
• Paranoia Fuel: Sometimes you won't know whether something will result in a game over or not until it's already happened. There's also a few spirits that come to kill you out of nowhere (especially when it's really hard to see them when they're on the move, when they're right next to you when they start attacking, or when there was no prior indicator that they're even there).
• So Okay, It's Average: Although receiving a bit of recognition, most people see this fan game as a mediocre horror game. The ARC Expansion was more praised, with better mechanics, story and more character depth for Alice and Riba.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • For a Super Mario Bros. fan game, the game is quite sparse of any of the source material's cast outside of Mario and Luigi, with the vast majority of characters such as Toad and Yoshi being outright absent. Needless to say, fans who didn't take kindly to the game's borderline In Name Only treatment of Super Mario Bros. believe that incorporating more characters from the franchise would've improved it.
  • A particular example are the Boos, particularly King Boo. The entire plot revolves around the Mario Bros. exploring a ghost-infested mansion, exactly the sort of scenario you'd expect to find Boos, and the game's Darker and Edgier take was noted by a few to be a perfect fit for a Knight of Cerebus such as King Boo. Much to said fans' dismay, the Boos are sidelined in favor of all of the other spirits, and King Boo is an outright no-show.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Has been known to happen. If you're aiming for the "Missing" ending, which triggers the ARC Expansion, the story eventually becomes so relentless and depressing that it can turn people off. Since it's based in the Bad Ending of the original Music Box game, Mario is fated to suffer in all endings. Even the closest thing to a happy ending, the "No Save Ending" (where Mario manages to break the "Groundhog Day" Loop Len had trapped him in and lives happily with Luigi and Peach) feels bleak.

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