ABSTRACT
It took me some time to realize recently that my eight year old son’s casual references to playing a game he called Super Mario Five were not reflections of second grade afternoons squandered in dim basements, where “play” consists of endlessly repeated electronic scenarios enacted through the frantic tapping of controller buttons. There is, in fact, no such thing as Super Mario Five, at least not in the form of the programmed cartridges that are the object of weekly pilgrimages to the Nintendo section of the local video store. Rather, Super Mario Five is the name of a playground game devised by a regular play group of eight or nine second graders. They play it during daily recess at their public school.
