Super Mario Bros.

The Good
Nothing has changed. Everything remains intact. The stomping, jumping, fireballs, it's all here. Control is perfect, graphics are nice, and the fun factor is the same; incredible! Excellent choice for your Game Boy Advance. It's also really great on the Game Boy Player.

The Bad
The score and Mario are kinda squished, but other than that, it's perfect. Well, then again, it's not an easy game.

The Bottom Line
this game is simply one of a kind. If you've never played this before, you won't be disappointed. Overall, once you turn on the power switch, you won't want to turn it off until you play the game to death.

The Good
The art direction on the first Super Mario Bros. (SMB) game was both memorable and adorable. Mushroom men, turtle troopers, fire flowers, breakable bricks, giant plumbing pipes…it all added up to something like a slightly industrial twist on “Alice in Wonderland.” And a twisted fairy tale is at the heart of this game, so that makes perfect sense. Mario was playing the role of animated anti-hero long before anyone even dreamed of Shrek!

Just as important as the art was the fabulous music. If you were to hum the overworld and underworld themes to SMB in public, the odds are good that somebody within earshot would recognize them. The sound effects were both realistic and satisfying. Smashing bricks really sounds like smashing bricks, and the happy-cool noises that accompany mushrooms, fire flowers, invincibility stars, and other goodies you find add to the simple joy of discovering them.

Of course, I would be remiss not to praise SMB for its elegant and incredibly innovative design. SMB was truly the harbinger of a new era in arcade games. Gone forever were the days of single-screen playing fields and their compressed, suffocating feel; from then on, arcade gamers would expect to scroll through an entire world of fun and fantasy. (Of course, big props must also go to David Crane’s landmark Pitfall games for pointing the industry in this direction.) Moreover, it showed that a video game world could benefit greatly by having destructible environments. Except for Asteroids and Lode Runner, I can’t think of any early action-arcade title that let you smash things up as much as SMB did.

While mostly linear, SMB still gave the player considerable freedom within that linear structure. Most levels featured hidden areas and alternate paths to victory, and “warp zone” pipes let you bypass entire worlds and advance much faster—the downside being that you couldn’t gain the extra lives and other rewards in the bypassed areas. But those warp paths were just the tip of the iceberg as far as secrets and “easter eggs” were concerned. Just when you thought you had uncovered SMB’s secrets, you’d play the game with somebody else and they’d show you something new. Magical stuff, and I can’t recall playing anything like it that preceded it.

Younger gamers might have difficulty grasping how revolutionary all of this stuff seemed back in the day, but take my word for it: video games felt vastly different after Super Mario, and this surely played a big part in reviving the industry after the great Atari bust of the early 1980s.

The Bad
No game is flawless. Even the great SMB is no exception to this rule. For one thing, it can get repetitive. That’s not uncommon for arcade games, and SMB holds up better than almost any other game of its era, but it’s still a problem. How many times did we really need to hear that our princess is in another castle? More seriously, it would have been nice if the action didn’t always have you running in the same direction. Even Link is a lefty, so how come Mario only gets to go right?

From the perspective of any mediocre platform gamer (that’s me!), SMB was a bit hard. The early levels were rather unchallenging, but from World 5 on things get significantly harder. I’ve beaten the game without cheating, but believe me, it did not come easily. For most games I’d probably say it wasn’t worth the effort. If you are struggling with this one, then I’d say that playing with a Game Genie might be a good idea. It would be sad for any dedicated retro gamer not to explore the later levels just because his reflexes aren’t quite up to the task.

Finally, a word on multiplayer. I don’t use multiplayer in most games, but I did use it quite a bit with SMB (my lucky cousins had this game long before I did). It was ok, but the sequential nature of it seemed a bit of a waste. You spent lots of time watching the other person play—especially if they were good—which could get boring fast. After the simultaneous multiplayer of Mario Bros., the IGO-HUGO of SMB seems like a bit of a step backwards. It probably wasn’t at all practical at the time, but a cooperative play mode could have been a blast.

The Bottom Line
If Super Mario Bros. had not been made, would another game have come along to save the home video game industry? Probably. Still, SMB is the game that actually DID save the industry. It still holds up well today, and so it deserves all of the accolades it gets—and more.

The Good
How the Hell do you review Super Mario Bros.? How the Hell do you review the game that started it all? The game that single-handedly brought the gaming market out of a slump to deliver one of the single greatest gaming experiences of all time. Which without we would have never seen the glorious video games that we marvel upon today. Super Mario Bros. is a game deserving every word of praise that I give it here. This game has single-handedly changed so many things in the gaming industry that I don't even know where to begin,

This game has been reviewed so many times over, that writing a review just for the mere sake of recommendation would be pointless by adding my own review. Of course, mine will definitely not be the best, but I write this review out of sheer respect. This game holds a special place in my heart as the first video game I ever played, so I can only hope my words give you readers an idea of how this games transcends almost every other video game made.

Mario has it all. It has the addictive, smooth side-scrolling game play of the arcades and translates it directly to console. No matter how much you play, you can just never put it down. It has the simple yet utterly fun and hypnotic game play that games such as Doom and Tetris brought us. The unique challenge the game provides is so refreshing it makes the game replayable 20 years after its initial release. It's simple enough to learn, but has so much to do and play.

At it heart it is only run and jump, but comes out to be so much more than that. Running through the mushroom kingdom as the mustached plumber just feels natural and utterly satisfying. The controls are tight and refined to make it feel like you're really controlling Mario in the 2D mushroom kingdom. The possibilities of the game are endless, and with its open ended platformer gameplay, there are countless ways you can beat the game with secret passages and shortcuts. You can use items and enemies to defeat the colorful and unique and varied array of foes that stand against you, You have the quick and fast-paced game play that is enticing yet difficult to the very end. The beauty of this is that almost anybody can play the game, whether it's 7 year old boy or the 40-something year old soccer mom looking for something to pass the time.

Players had the abiltiy to traverse the 30 something levels of run and jump fun, that kept getting faster and more challenging as you go. Of course, this was utterly unheard of back then. The open yet random level design allows you to play the level any way you want to, and there are tons of secret passages everywhere, from the simple vine to the clouds above, to the secret warp pipes past the end of every underground level. Every level seems unique because it seems completely random, and this is also where the game gets some of its charm, just the feeling of having to work around the terrain that seems to have no purpose. In modern Mario games it seems like every level is designed so that every thing has a purpose, but the randomness of the level design of this game adds a charm of its own. Plus, you can't ask for more varied levels. It has everything to keep the game changing. Courses such as the underwater levels, the mushroom-top levels, the flying fish levels, and the bullet bill worlds. And of course Bowser's ever addicting castle puzzles.

The game wasn't the first to use the plot which today can be referred to as a bit hackneyed, but this game has the greatest charm with its "damsel-in-distress: scenario, not only by creating levels like castles, but it had the weird, exotic enemies like spikey turtles, flying fish, fire balls, and giant lizards. The crisp graphics were new back in the day when games could only create the thick, blocky graphics that were trademark of the era before this game. The delightful tunes of course continue to enchant us even today, even becoming icons of the video gaming genre itself.

We cannot ignore the sheer magnitude of this game. It takes the smooth, simple, and addictive game play of the arcades and translates it into a game that is essentially considered the best game of all time. Refined and polished to the very end, Super Mario Bros. is not only one of the funnest games of all time but also ceremoniously ushered in a new era of gaming.

The Bad
Hey, there's a reason the title of this review is "the best". I cannot find anything wrong with this game, its just that good. Play the game and you will understand.

The Bottom Line
Super Mario Bros. marks a turn in the history of video games. Setting a new standard for video games, Super Mario Bros. ushered in an era of games with smooth game play, fast and quick challenges, and simple controls, that combines to create an amazingly rich and detailed experience. What is essentially the greatest game of all time, Super Mario Bros. remains playable even to this very date. You are not a gamer until you have played the phenomenon that is Super Mario Bros..