Super Mario Bros.

The Good
The only game console our household ever had was a SEGA Master System. So I never got to play this gem at home. Luckily however some friends and acquaintances owned a NES and of course Super Mario Bros.!

I started playing Super Mario Bros. in the early nineties and it hadn't yet aged a single bit. And in fact if I play it now it still stands the test of time quite perfectly. Everything about the game is charming, the characters, the world, the sounds. And it all plays rather fluently. You can control Mario while in the air and he has to break when he has a lot of momentum. This makes Mario much more like a real character than some older games, where it felt much more as if you were just moving a sprite left and right. Mario has a great variety of moves which all have their uses in various puzzles and enemy encounters.

The graphics are quite amazing and very clear. Enemies have distinctive looks which allow you to quickly see what harm they might do and how to get rid of them. The sound is just as great with a tune worth remembering and the pleasant ping when you collect coins.

The Bad
The game can get rather frustrating. Especially when it comes to tricky jumps with low ceilings. It can be quite frustrating to die near the end of a level and have to do it all over again. Luckily there are quite some lives to be gathered so that you won't easily go game over.

Most of these bonus lives, however, are in secret areas or boxes however and finding those is kind of random. After a couple playthroughs you know how to find a lot of the secrets, but then you actually don't need it so much anymore. It was a great conversation topic in the 10 years after its release, though!

The Bottom Line
I doubt there are many gamers who've never player Super Mario Bros. or one of its sequels, so there is not much left to say.

By the time I first touched a console Super Mario Bros. 3 had already been released and that game always had my preference over the first. But that doesn't mean that it isn't one of the best games ever created. There is very little about this game that isn't absolutely amazing. This is one of those games that everybody, both young and old should have played at least once in his life, because it'll never get old.

The Good
What can you say about this game that has not been already said. But i will review this game anyway because i love this game anyway.

The story is very very simple: You play as a plumber named Mario who is in a kingdom called the mushroom kingdom. In this kingdom he has to rescue princess Peach from the evil koopa king Bowser. That is it for the story. Everyone how it goes and every other mario game has the same story anyway so we can talk about the gameplay.

The gameplay is just perfect. the a button is for jumping. the d-pad is for the direction mario is walking. the b button is only there for running if you hold down or if you have the fireflower, you can shoot fireballs at enemies. The controls are simple and easy to understand. Jumping in this game is the most important thing. If you don't jump, you won't come very far. If you run, holding down the b button, you can jump higher and wider which is also very important if you want to jump over huge gaps. During your play, you are going to come across three power-ups . There is the power mushroom which turns mario in super mario. He can take one more hit than usual. Usually if he gets hit as normal mario, he dies. So it is a good thing this mushroom exists. There is also the fire flower. With this you can shoot fireballs at enemies which makes your progress much easier. Occasionally you come across a star in one of the question blocks. This star makes invincible for a short time. The enemies very simple to beat most of the time. The enemies you encounter are for example goombas, koopa troopas, hammer bros. and a few more. Some enemies are easy to beat but some can be annoying especially the hammer bros., which come in pairs sometimes and throwing hammers at you.

The graphics have aged surely but they hold up pretty well even over 30 years later. I really like the simple design and the level design is pretty good as well. My favourite level is still the very first level because is the perfect introduction for a game to get used to the controls.

The soundtrack is legendary. Koji Kondo, the composer for most of the mario games, composed a soundtrack which i will always remember and does not know the music that plays during this game. The overworld theme is probably the most well known video game theme of all time and the rest of these tracks memorable as well although this tracks are very short but the music does not annoy me in this.

The Bad
There are only small problems i have. The jumping is not responsive as it should be. If you are running and you want to jump, the jumping does not always respond and you can fall to death which is annoying but it is only occasionally. The other thing is that those bowser fights are always the same. in the first worlds spits fire at you and later he is throwing hammers at you. I really wished there would be a little more variety in those fights. But other than that i do not have any problems.

The Bottom Line
This game is a classic, i can stress this enough. If you know anything about video games than you have to play this game. It was released in 1985 on the NES and it was released on many other platforms so if you have time in your life, than play this game. You will probably can beat this game in one or two hours. Ho and play it now.

The Good
I just recently came into owning a Nintendo system. Of course, I wasn't a stranger to the likes of Mario and his endeavours in the Mushroom Kingdom, especially not his first. But playing the game now is definitely different from when I played it back at the age of 5. Maybe I just got worse at video games, because it all seemed much easier back then. Or at least, I had less difficulty with things like the Hammer Brother when I was a toddler. I was fully able to just stop, and carefully research their movement pattern, something I had to really torture myself to do now. Now I'm more prone to just run through the level, catching a couple of coins on the way and ending it in a splendid 5000 point flag jump. Unless, of course, I happened to graze my thigh on a Koopa Trooper, who happened to be in the way of my speed run. However, at a younger age I had much more difficulty with all the jumping. I kept falling into the bottomless pits and I almost never got the high flag at the end. So, in the games favour, it has definitely not lost any of its charm in the difficulty department.
And, with higher difficulty, comes the inevitable addiction. I set myself a goal when I got my Nintendo. I was going to finish Super Mario Bros., at least once, without using any of the Warp Pipes. And finish it, I did. But not before pulling out every last strand of hair on my head. I can't even count the number of times I had to start it all over again. And when I finally got to the last castle, and then lost all my lives, I decided it was time to start warping. I justified it with the fact that I'd seen every level the game had to offer. And that's probably more than some people can boast themselves about. The enemies, although simple, are all wonderfully designed. They're entirely witless, presenting you with easy targets most of the time, but each and everyone of them is bound to charm you, at least once. Take, for example, Bullet Bill's endless devotion to staying on track, for what seems like nothing, as he can actually follow you throughout the whole level. If you run slow enough. The music, unlike some of the Nintendo Entertainment System's music, never gets on your nerves. It doesn't have a lot of variety, but it doesn't hurt it either. You grow to love these wonderful tunes for their simplicity. Some of the level design is also pretty great, though not its strongest property. The last four levels, namely the eighth world, were nothing short of awesome.

The Bad
The fact that they reuse a lot of the first levels when you get to the sixth and seventh world really bothers me. There's really a lot of potential in a simple game like this, to make something new in each world. So, huge disappointment there, when I finally get to the seventh world, and I'm presented with an old level with slightly smaller moving platforms. And the level design also falters when they introduce the trick castles, where you have to manoeuvre through what seems to be a very simple level, but you have to take exactly the right route to actually advance in the level. It's neat in concept, but it gets really frustrating when the paths start getting more complex. Maybe someone liked this, but I don't really like trial-and-error that much. Maybe giving you a small hint, as to where you were supposed to go, would've helped. Lack of variety in bosses at the end of each castle was something that annoyed me somewhat, especially in the beginning. But they finally picked up on that in the sixth world, where Bowser, or one of his decoys, whatever, finally receives a hammer.

The Bottom Line
Definitely the same stallion it was years ago, and it's very clear why it spawned this seemingly unstoppable franchise. However, it must be said that it doesn't really offer a lot of variety through its eight worlds, in its levels. It delivers on the enemy front, with a new enemy in almost every world. But the levels start to really grain on you after a while. It's a great romp down memory lane, and a great reminded that complex gameplay isn't really that necessary.