Super Mario Odyssey Runs the Same Marriage Plot as Homer's Odyssey, With a Turtle Instead of Suitors
Super Mario Odyssey nods to Homer in its title, but the resemblance runs deeper than a name: like the Odyssey, the game begins in medias res — in the middle of things — and sends the player off on a detour-filled journey through fantastic lands in pursuit of a beloved. That beloved is Princess Peach, where Homer has Penelope, and the malicious interlopers endangering her nuptial future are an anthropomorphic turtle and his goons, where Homer has a gaggle of leech-like suitors.
The JSTOR Daily article's point is that both narratives focus on the same questions of marriage, fidelity and pursuit — a heavy load for a game whose threadbare plot exists mainly to nudge players into experimenting with its world.
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The parallel does real work: both stories are about a relationship under threat, which is a lot of narrative weight to hang on a plot that mostly exists to keep a player moving.
Reading it as homage may be too generous. As Sharon R. Sherman argued, narratives that have to be instantly recognized and reinforced by as many people as possible have historically appropriated stereotypes from myth and folklore to fashion quasi-universal quest narratives — which would make Mario's Homeric skeleton a habit of the form rather than a wink at Homer.