"An italian plumber vs. an oversized turtle? Now, that's weird!"

What can be said about this game that hasn’t been said three hundred thousand times before? I can’t really think of anything. But, given the fact that I want to review it, I’m going to do the inevitable and repeat what has been said so many times in the past. Also, it’s hard to review a game when it’s the first game that you played in a whole generation of consoles, specially if you played it when you were still a young child. Well, this wasn’t the first game I played for 8-bit consoles, actually, but the second (the first was Ninja Gaiden). But, what difference does it make?

Anyway, Super Mario Bros. was so different and so much more complex than the previous games I had played on my old, beaten-up Atari, that falling in love with it wasn’t even a question. The game offered complex levels (at least in comparison to what I was used to), lots of kinds of enemies, environments and everything else. Apart from that, the character you controlled, that is, Mario or Luigi, could perform many kinds of actions, like jumping, swimming, throwing balls of fire, running and so on. It sounds stupid today, but it was a gift from God if you were accustomed to playing Pitfall on the Atari.

I guess everybody knows what this game is about, but I’ll say it anyway: you control Mario, an italian plumber, or his brother Luigi (if you are the second player). Your mission is to rescue Princess Toadstool from the clutches of the evil giant-turtle-dragon Bowser. To find him you must go through eight different worlds and search Bowser’s castles until you find him and defeat him. In the way, you will encounter enemies such as walking mushrooms, flying turtles, flying fish, octopus, among others. I guess much of the beauty of this game is in this crazy mixture of things: the developers created a world that has a character of its own, a charm of its own. After you played this game once, it would all strangely make sense, and you wanted to came back to it and play some more.

Apart from its unique setting, the game was perfect in the most important aspect: gameplay. The controls were simple, fast to learn and intuitive. After one play, you’d know all that was needed. As I said before, the game offered a lot of variety for the time, not only in the form of enemies that you met, but in the actions Mario could perform. Perhaps one of the most unique qualities of Mario was how you interacted with the environment, hitting and destroying blocks, entering pipes, swimming through water, etc. The game basically defined a whole sub-genre for platformers for the next years: jump on enemies to kill them, hit blocks to get items, collect a hundred coins (or other items) to gain lives, avoid all kinds of indestructible obstacles, jump over pits and so on. It also added great details to this basic formula, like jumping on the turtle’s shells to use them as a weapon, hit the block your enemy is standing on to kill them and all that. The game brought so many great ideas that it basically contained everything that would be copied over and over in this style of games. Now the fact that it was so easy to play, and so fun to play was definitely the greatest strength of this game.

At the same time, Mario offered something that now can be the most obvious thing in the world, but was quite innovating back then: a whole lot of secrets in the game. By secrets I don’t mean codes, as in infinite lives codes, level select codes and so on, but secret passages leading to hidden areas, different paths you could take inside a level, which could lead you to skip whole worlds and so on. Also in the same line of innovations, the developers came up with the maze-like castles for the last worlds, and more than one kind of maze, which also increased the complexity of the game quite a bit.

At its time, beating the game was more of a challenge than it is today. The experience that players have with this kind of game is much bigger now, so that most people won’t find much trouble in finishing it. Anyway, it still offers some challenge, specially in the well-designed castles. The fact that you die with a maximum of two hits can be quite frustrating at some times too. And the fact that the game is quite long also helps in this department, too. However, when you know what’s coming at you, and if you know how to get the pipes that skip levels, things become so much less complicated.

Technically, the game’s graphics aren’t anything special, although they are well-done. But the concept and design is really interesting. A key element in creating the magic world that the game took place on, the designs were done with such simplicity and expressiveness that the characters and enemies in this game are still some of the most recognizable ever in gaming history. Also, it’s interesting how minor changes, like the black sky instead of blue really makes each stage distinctive from each other. The key word here is simplicity, but it fits the game and its concept fully, creating one of the most tightly designs in games of all times.

Music is another element that adds a lot to the game and its feel. The themes from Super Mario Bros. are some of the most recognizable ever from gaming music history and it’s likely that if a person can remember one tune from a game only, it will be this game’s main theme. Actually, this is probably one of the first games ever that realized the importance a strong soundtrack could have, so the developers actually invested in it, with wonderful results. The fact is that every single tune is memorable and really, really catchy. Apart from that, it matches the feel of the game perfectly, both in visuals and style of gameplay, adding a lot to its identity. Each piece of music matches the situation perfectly and they also have that simple, and fitting, feel that the graphics have. It’s clear that the tunes are as important in Mario as the design: they are as striking, and as memorable, as the classic figures, like the turtles, mushrooms and so on. There isn’t really one problem with this game’s soundtrack: it’s as perfect as it gets.

Overall, Super Mario Bros. may not cause the same impact nowadays as it did back then, specially because the same gameplay was perfected in other games of the series, but it remains to this day a strong game and something that charms the player because of its strong, unique identity. Everything is tied to one purpose, one goal, that is achieved with glory. I can’t consider this game the best in the series after playing so many other Mario games, but the importance of this one must not be underestimated: it remains one of the greatest, strongest pillars in console games’ history.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/08/03, Updated 05/08/03