Mario Bros.

"Mario & Luigi's most embarrassing mistake"

When looking at the long lineage of games starring Mario and Luigi, this one goes all the way back to be called one of the originals. This game, Mario Bros., was the first port of the original arcade version of Mario Bros., which was the first game Mario and Luigi starred in. Since then this game has been ported many times to multiple systems as a standalone game and as a mini-game like in Super Mario Advance. Though the ports of this game can offer a ton of enjoyment, this one for the Atari 2600 is one of the sadder ones.

The object of this game is exactly similar to the other ports and the original. Mario and Luigi must free people's clogged pipes (don't forget they are plumbers!) of various animals including flies, crabs, turtles, and…fireballs. To do this, Mario must punch the ground that his enemies are standing on rendering them harmless and then knocking them off the screen. Touching these enemies when they are not immobilized will result in Mario dieing. In the middle of the screen towards the bottom, there is a wonderful magical button that Mario can hit if he feels that his enemies are becoming too numerous, which will render them all immobilized and victim to Mario's horrific kicking attack. This game is divided into levels, and Mario will advance to a new level once all of the enemies are destroyed in the level he is on. You will only get three lives until you fail your mission and end the game.

Graphics
Sadly, the best part of this game graphically is the cartridge and box art, which basically only shows Mario and Luigi punching and kicking their way through some enemies. The graphics in the game are very disappointing. There are very few details when compared to other Atari 2600 games. The only good part of the graphics in the game is the fact that Mario was drawn pretty well and was about the same quality of the NES release of Super Mario Bros. Other than that, generally speaking, the graphics are quite boring.

Audio
Unfortunately for this game, the well known Mario tunes that everyone knows how to play on a guitar or knows how to hum were not yet composed when this game was released. And also unfortunately, the makers of this game didn't really even put much effort in to making their own music. The only music that every plays during this game is a short tune after you complete a level, and this tune is not memorable in the least bit. Sound effects were definitely the high end of the audio department in this game. The sound effects were pretty standard and nothing really new to the Atari 2600, but they were well placed and didn't get annoying.

Controls
The controls also have their flaws in this game. The controls are pretty straightforward and similar to those of Super Mario Bros. The only part of the controls that I didn't like is the fact that for Mario to jump and move from side to side at the same time, he has to already have momentum. This is a major flaw in controlling Mario and really gets annoying when playing.

Game Play/Replay Value
This version of Mario Bros. is definitely not nearly as perfected game play wise as some of the other versions. The game starts off extremely easy and even slightly boring, but like all Atari 2600 games, the game play will repeat itself getting harder and harder each time. While the game play looks good on paper, when executed, the game play suffered. Because of the funky controls, playing this game isn't as fun as most of its brothers. Because there are so many versions of this game for many different systems, I wouldn't say that this game has much replay value at all. Playing almost any other port of this game would be a better choice than this one.

Final Words
I suppose that since this was the first port of the arcade game Mario Bros. some of the mistakes are excusable, but this game does not live up at all to most other games starring Mario and Luigi. I'm not really sure whether I would recommend buying this game. It's not a whole lot of fun to play, but it's always fun to see how a gaming duo as prestigious as Mario and Luigi started their careers.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/06