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Super Mario Bros.
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This article is about 1985 video game. You may be looking for the 1983 arcade game. |
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"Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!"
— Toad | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 action platformer video game released as a North American Nintendo Entertainment System launch title, created by Nintendo R&D4. A remake was released in 1999 for the Game Boy Color, titled Super Mario Bros. Deluxe.
Plot
Bowser, the King of the Koopa, has kidnapped Princess Toadstool of the Mushroom Kingdom. It's up to two Italian brothers named Mario and Luigi to rescue her and restore peace to the Kingdom. Unfortunately, Bowser has used his magic on seven of his minions to disguise them as decoys and place them in castles to stall Mario and Luigi, as well as turning anyone who opposes him into bricks, pipes, and blocks.
Why It's Super
- The concept of a plumber of all things saving the princess as opposed to a knight is a very unique idea.
- Very fluid and smooth controls and proper momentum.
- While not outstanding, the graphics are still very impressive for 1985 standards and are still charming even to this day.
- The layouts of the game make speed runs very fun. The Sonic the Hedgehog series was created after Yuji Naka couldn't stop trying to get a faster run of the game, and the first level was the inspiration for the character's speed. It also helps to get over the early levels quickly.
- Most sound effects from this game have become iconic and beloved by gamers. The most iconic of all are the jump, coin collection, and power-up sound effects, which often show up in tributes to both this game and games in general.
- It further popularized the side-scrolling genre and many of the games of the same genre were inspired by this game.
- It spawned the three most recognizable power-ups in the whole series: the Super Mushroom: which makes Mario bigger, gives him an extra hit point, and him to smash bricks by jumping into them from below, the Fire Flower: that gives Mario the ability to shoot fireballs ahead of him while retaining the benefits of the Super Mushroom, and last but not least, the Super Star, a very rare power-up that makes Mario invincible for a small time.
- Different stage types allow for variety. The overworld is bright and cheerful and comprises most stages. The underground is dark and features many bricks that can be destroyed. The underwater stages change up Mario's environment, encouraging the player to swim around and avoid enemies. Lastly, the castles have many bottomless pits, firebars, and fireballs from Bowser himself.
- Due to hardware limitations, the game plays a demo when you start the game. The purpose of this demo was to serve as a tutorial.
- The game is generous with the secrets hidden in the levels, giving you access to hidden parts of a level. Like pipes that lead to hidden rewards, or the warp pipes that you could access if you were good at the game. This was designed as an alternative for a saving feature.
- The soundtrack, composed by Koji Kondo, is now one of the most iconic soundtracks in all gaming history.
- The overworld theme is even familiar to regular people, being inspired by Sister Marian by T-Square.
- Many copies were bundled with Duck Hunt; a light gun game, meaning that customers could get two games in one.
- Unlike his spiny rival's debut (which only has 6 worlds and 18 levels), this game has 8 worlds and 32 levels.
- This game paved the road for most subsequent Mario titles with some elements such as the plot (the evil Bowser kidnapped the princess, so the plumbers have to rescue her and stop Bowser's minions), major characters (the protagonists are often Mario and his brother Luigi, Princess Toadstool is the damsel in distress, Toads are species of friendly fungi people; the antagonists are the big bad Bowser and his minions such as Goombas and Koopas, whose goal is stopping Mario's adventure) and power-ups, which were mentioned prior.
- Toad's famous "Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!" line.
- Great different level designs and gameplay, with 1-1 being the most iconic and popular level in the franchise.
- There is a New Game Plus in the form of the game's second quest, which you unlock by beating the game once and restarting at the title screen. Goombas are replaced with Buzzy Beetles, enemies move faster, and all of the levels with harder counterparts later in the game (e.g. 7-2 is the harder version of 2-2) are replaced with said harder counterparts.
- This game was the breakthrough for Nintendo as a console game developer and helped revive the stagnant North American video game industry after the North American Video Game Crash of 1983.
Qualities That Aren’t Super
- You cannot run backward; backtracking is impossible.
- By today's standards, this game feels somewhat archaic: Mario's jump is stiff, and running momentum is very high. Because of this, it can be a nuisance to leap on or from single-block platforms.
- Enemy placement could sometimes be considered unfair. For example, there's a Hammer Bro at the final stage right before the battle against Bowser.
- Speaking of Hammer Bros., they are hard to defeat with a jump, since you cannot predict the moment they will jump or/and throw their hammer, let alone escape from them.
- If you get hit as Fire Mario, you will go back to Small Mario, and if you are Small Mario and get a Fire Flower, it works as the Super Mushroom. This is rectified in the North American version of Super Mario Bros. 3.
- The final Bowser is barely changed from the ones before. He tosses hammers and breathes fire, unlike the fake Bowsers in Worlds 6 and 7 which only toss hammers, but that's it. The real challenge is just getting to him, much less with a power-up on hand (in World 8, not likely). And getting to Bowser with an extra hit turns him into a complete joke no matter when you fight him. Just take a hit and then run to the other side and grab the axe before the invincibility wears off.
- The game has no continuation, meaning that if you lose all your lives, you have to start all over from the beginning. Fortunately, there's a cheat that lets you get back to where you were quickly. Hit A + Start at the title screen and you'll start at the world you got a Game Over in.
- Thankfully, when you lose your lives in both the Deluxe and All-Stars versions, you're allowed to start from the beginning of the world where you died. The Virtual Console/Nintendo Switch Online versions have save slots.
Reception
Super Mario Bros is one of the most recognized games of all time. It is also considered one of the best games ever made and is hugely responsible for reviving the North American game industry. Though it is not the first Mario game nor is it the first platformer, it is responsible for the Super Mario franchise and made Mario an icon of Nintendo and gaming in general. To this day it is still considered a great game despite its now-primitive design. James Rolfe as The Angry Video Game Nerd in his review of Kid Kool and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs, called Super Mario Bros. the "time-tested approved way to make a side-scrolling platform game."
Videos
Trivia
- This game has 256 hidden worlds. By performing a difficult cartridge swap, the player can load worlds beyond World 8. Some of these worlds will crash the game, and some worlds leave only a black screen. This glitch is not recommended at all because swapping cartridges too many times will damage the pins and connectors of the cartridge and console respectively.
- This is also where the Minus World glitch comes from. Mario (as either Super Mario or Fire Mario) must crouch jump through the wall of the Warp Pipe at the end of World 1-2 and enter the warp zone without scrolling the screen too much. While the center pipe warps you to World 5, the left pipe warps the player to World -1 (36-1) which loads an endless version of World 2-2/7-2 in the NA/EU versions, while in the JP versions, it loads an underwater version of World 1-3 with gray Bowser and Toadstool enemies, while the next level loads 2-3/7-3, and level after that loads an underground version of 4-4 with Bloopers floating that can be stomped for 1000 points each, an unused feature that would return in the Japanese Super Mario Bros 2.
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