Super Mario Bros.

"Yeah. It's still pretty good."

The NES would be worth it for Super Mario Brothers(SMB) alone. I don't know if that opinion is justified, but it's a bit more realistic than thinking a couple thousand dollars of my parents' money was worth it for the cheesy Pac-Man clones I got on the Apple. SMB, along with the implication that later NES games had to be even better, eventually got me all disenchanted with my Apple and my Atari. It did things I was sure were impossible--things that made me idealize the game designers and programmers. Being a big fan of simple games, I've seen ones easier to adapt to. But these generally refine concepts already widely known to the gaming community; for instance, Tetris knockoffs involve more skill than Tetris. SMB blew everyone away but doing cool weird new stuff, and now that I've finally played through all the levels, I know it deserved to.

SMB had eight levels, divided into four scenes that took under five minutes each. You needed to move Mario right, and while the concept of a screen scrolling wasn't new, such a long and definite map--that changed with each scene--certainly was. At the end of the first three scenes in a level, you could jump onto a pole with a flag at the top. Usually you'd have to hold the 'run' button as you moved right to jump as high as you could, but everyone got something. The fourth scene was underground with a daunting trill accompanying Mario's jumps over lava pits and swirling fire sticks. A Bowser, a big walking dragon, waited on a bridge at the end. An axe was beyond him, and if you got it, you could cut the bridge from under him and rescue the princess in that castle.

This was more than just a timed survival run, though. It featured hidden treasure--often you'd have platforms you could jump onto, or you could bash them from under. Many blocks that made the platform had a question-mark stamp, and these all had at least a gold coin(get 100 for an extra life) but could sometimes power Mario up. Red mushrooms would double his size and allow him to pick up a flower at the next special block. This gave him the ability to throw fireballs, although you had to run while firing due to the NES's limited controls. A star would bounce out occasionally as well, but with a small Mario I remember misjudging it and watching it fall by. You could even get green mushrooms if you were very lucky, although these required guile to find and recover. You could even destroy a platform of regular blocks bashing them as big Mario, and I often did, just to see if there were any undercover blocks that would turn up gold coins as you hit them continually for a few seconds. I hadn't a clue where to find the invisible blocks to hit, the ones that appeared in thin air, but I always jumped Mario around to try to find them.

This of course created a time squeeze for me, so I would then frantically check the pipes Mario had to jump over. He could descend some, which would lead you to a treasure room that exited up another pipe further along in the level. In fact experienced players had a dilemma from the start: there was a hidden green-mushroom block past the first pipe you could go down, which led near the end of the level. You couldn't retrack, so what could you do?

As a young NES junkie wannabe, I had an additional problem with that. Searching for the right square to jump on made things messy, and I often couldn't react quickly enough to run after the green mushroom. I'd fall into the pit to the right as it slid away and I chased it. To further confuse me, SMB factored momentum into how you controlled Mario, and you could even switch directions in mid-air. How high you jumped depended on your speed. All this seems standard now and hard to mess up, but in the days where running a chomping circle through a maze still wowed everyone, sensory overload seemed imminent.

And for tyros like myself, the game's big draw was how everybody came to know the gradual non-secret warp zones. You probably know them too. If you go walking on the roof of one scene, or if you climb a beanstalk from the underground to a cloud world, you can warp to the start of any of the last seven worlds. Even I could get there with a couple of lives left. Everybody knew how to warp, but it still felt like a secret. Except for when I bashed the wrong invisible block to create the beanstalk and stairway, I could get a glimpse of the start of every different world. My one friend yelled that #6 and #7 was tougher than #8. He was factually right, although I think he missed the point. And anyway he probably enjoyed getting to play sooner.

Throughout SMB I found myself expecting new worlds and new enemies--it reveals different jumping obstacles gradually, and in such a way that if you don't play through it all, there's much more than you expect there is. The platforms will get narrower--you'll have to jump among flat trees or use a springboard to get across a gap. Several other platforms will be narrowly separated, or you'll need to make a big jump across what seems to be a blank screen.

You'll also think you've mastered one type of monster--for instance, turtles, which you jump on to stop and then kick over. They go skidding across the floor you're on. But they also turn around when they hit an obstacle--including one off screen. On later levels you routinely face a turtle trapped between two pipes, and then there are the winged turtles you have to jump on to turn them to normal ones. Later there are enemies you can't damage by jumping on and ones you can't destroy with fire. The later levels introduce you to the Hammer Brothers, turtles that constantly throw maces in the air. They're tough to beat. And the Bowser in the underground fourth scene of a level keeps walling off easy ways to beat him until you really hope you can face him as big Mario, take a hit, turn to invincible small Mario, and win that way. That's if you manage to get through the mini-maze, which is very rude, as a game so steeped in fantasy and fancy jumps suddenly jolts you back to (yawn) process of elimination, as most paths you take kick you back to an earlier part of the level.

But I think the side excursions and one-offs are the most effective. They left me thinking there must be much more of that sort of thing. A cloud follows you and chucks monsters, but he's not as persistent as the jellyfish in the underwater levels, where what you push affects how you move in a few seconds, and with a minimal gravity there's the risk of being sucked off the bottom of the screen. Another level only implies water--fish come up from the bottom of the screen, and Mario's on a bridge halfway up and needs to judge when to jump. There are also some areas you can't get to without Big Mario, who's got a bit more vertical, and others that look important, but you just want to get through. Then, after all this variety, SMB switches back to a black-and-white graphic that impressed me even after I knew what the phrase 'palette swap' meant. SMB doesn't reuse much, either--usually just the treasure rooms under the pipes, which are such a nice surprise you don't mind.

The monsters and platforms are all blocky and slightly rounded--as is Mario himself. They look as if they've been squashed, vaguely like some stuffed animals, but with an edge. You know they're not messing around even if they weren't as big as Mario or as impressive as the end of scene castles--turrets and wall slits and all--growing bigger as you got farther in the game. Then there are the stairs as high as Mario, which created a Jack and the Beanstalk feel well before any actual beanstalks, or the jumps he can't quite seem to make. There's also some physical humor when you have a big Mario who can't fully duck and reach some hidden areas with gold. And I suppose you'll know the tunes--I remembered them in college, long after I forgot where they were from, or that I had even once wanted an NES. The event noises fit in well with them, too.

Part of SMB's mystique was, for me, that I flat out didn't have an NES. But other games weren't nearly as alluring--Duck Hunt just got stupid, and when one of my friends tried to show off new games, I didn't care. SMB eventually repeated some themes, and when I came back to it after playing modern games I was shocked to have completed three worlds without losing a life, but that it was able to pack that much detail and imagination into so little(for today) memory is proof that, among the manual challenges necessary to a game, it has the sort of stuff poetry is made of. Looking back through SMB was like a nature walk only without the pompous old fool telling you stuff he wants you to be interested in--or stuff he wants to impress and bore you with. Perhaps I was the pompous old fool--if so, I kept my mouth shut except for the occasional 'Wow!' or 'Neat!' And even though I tried to see it all, I suspect there's a beanstalk or two I've missed, and maybe I should go look for secret blocks some more. Yet at the same time, playing through a game like SMB reminds me that there are so many other old NES games I still need to acquaint myself with, and finding a couple with as many hidden treats will be thrilling. I'm almost intimidated by anything written in the '90s after playing such an oldschool gem, as I fear the sensory overload that would result from a game on a more powerful system that is as 'done right.'

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/04