Musclebound Mario

Marcus is a socially awkward, steroid-ridden bodybuilder who happens to be the biggest fan of the first Super Mario Bros.game...ever. His toilet seat lifts to reveal a Mario head. A picture of Shigeru Miyamoto, the inventor of the game, sits atop his TV. Now, clad in a Mario-printed outer and underwear, he ventures to a three-day social gathering of rabid Mario fanatics.

He dreams of finding long-lost brothers and sisters, of being able to talk to people who understand him. But forging life-long connections isn't easy at a gathering lorded over by a living yet pixelated King Mario who keeps a silent and submissive Princess at his feet. Marcus is banished, and it seems all hope is lost until, via a combination of miracle and conscious choice, he becomes Musclebound Mario and enters the Mushroom Kingdom.

8-bit enemies are powerless against Musclebound Mario's supernaturally swollen muscles and clenched fists larger than human heads. But it seems his arrival has unraveled the very fabric of the Kingdom itself. Worlds are squished together. Villains are hybrid patchworks, all in a trance. And no longer is the goal to save a Princess, but a Prince.

So he travels through strange worlds far removed from the characters and levels of the One True Game. Not easy for a man uncomfortable with things greater than 8-bits. But if order is to be restored to the kingdom and to the one thing he's never known-himself-then a hero he must play.

From master of bizarro fiction, Kevin L Donihe, comes a surreal satire for video game fans and weird fiction junkies.