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
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 remember seeing Super Mario Bros. in a display store, and was amazed on how great it looked. When the game was released in 1985, the game sold 40,000 copies, making it the best selling game of all time. I knew that I couldn’t buy a copy myself since it was exclusive to the NES and I had a Commodore 64. Later on, I was able to buy a copy off someone carrying the same title, and I bragged about my finding in a grade five Show and Tell session, where one of my classmates debated me on the legitimacy of my purchase. Indeed, it was a carbon copy of The Great Giana Sisters with a Mario skin attached to it.

The story goes something like this: the Kingdom of the Mushroom People was invaded by the Koopa tribe led by Bowser who ordered that the people be turned into mere stones, bricks, and even field horse-hair plants, and soon after the Kingdom fell into ruin. Realizing that Princess Toadstool, the daughter of the Mushroom King, is the only one who can lift the curse, she is locked up inside one of Bowser’s fortresses, and it is up to Mario (or Luigi, if the game is set to two-player mode) to rescue her so that the Kingdom is restored to its former glory.

In Super Mario Bros., the object of each level is to run through all 32 levels in a limited amount of time, defeating Koopa’s henchman, while being careful not to fall down the screen. There are boxes with question marks on them, and hitting these boxes will award you with a coin. Collect 100 of these and you’ll receive an extra life. There are pipes you can go down that will lead to a bonus room, filled with coins that will help you reach that magic number. Touching a flagpole at the end of the level allows you to enter the next one.

What sets Super Mario Bros. apart is the way the central character can take three forms. You seem, you start the game as Little Mario, who is vulnerable and isn't able to do much damage apart from jumping on enemy's heads to kill them. Not every box you see has a coin hidden inside, since there is a chance that you will find a mushroom. Getting this mushroom will transform into Big Mario. As Big Mario, you are given another chance if you are hit by an enemy. Assuming you are still Big Mario, you can find a flower that will turn you into Fire Mario, where you are given the ability to launch fireballs at enemies. This sets a precedence in Super Mario Bros. 3, where Mario can take many forms.

The settings for most of the levels varies. In the early levels, for instance, you climb up mountains. Later on, you go underground, and eventually, you get to swim underwater where you get to deal with underwater-based enemies, one of them the Super Mario Bros. equivalent of an octopus. In these underwater levels, having Fire Mario swim up to the surface and bounce a fireball onto an enemy on the other side of a wall is a stroke of genius. There is even a chance that some pipes scattered around each level lead you to another level with a different setting, and these are even worth going down if you are sick of the same setting.

The “real life” physics in the game are amazing. Run right for a long time and don’t expect to stop immediately. I have lost count on the number of times where I noticed the end of a platform while I was running. I slowed myself down, but I fell off anyway. In addition to this, if you want to perform a high jump, expect to get a running start first.

There are three soundtracks in the game, one for each setting. Of these, I enjoyed the underwater music as it is more relaxing than those you hear as you explore the mountains or venture underground, and the underwater music forms the basis for the theme in the US version of Super Mario Bros. 2. Regardless of the setting, each soundtrack increases in speed as you are running out of time.

One thing that I admired was the fact that there are alternate ways you can get through the game. Don't want to risk getting killed by Bowser? Simple, just hurl a fireball at him. Don't want to go to the castle at all? Enter warp pipes that take you to a different world. Happen to be running out of lives? Just bump into those “?” blocks along the way 100 times, or, better still, find a bonus room that has coins galore. It is alright for anyone to avoid these shortcuts if they are playing the game for the first time.

Super Mario Bros. is more than just a platform game, and I say this because there are a little bit of thinking involved in working out how to complete the later levels. Case in point: the final two worlds where you need to make sure you step on the right platforms or go down specific pipes so that the level doesn’t loop. It is worth memorizing this path so that you don't have trouble if you decide to play the game later.

The Bad
I agree with other reviewers here. There is no password system, so Nintendo expects you to complete the game in one sitting

The Bottom Line
Super Mario Bros. served as a pack-in title for the NES, a smart move by Nintendo which contributed to its success. Pack-in titles are not possible today due to the high cost of putting machines together, and if companies included these pack-ins anyway, the machine would cost more than it should.

The game itself revolutionized platform gaming due to its crisp graphics, multiple paths, real-life physics, and support for two players. I agree that the game can be difficult since the player being forced to determine the correct path to take, especially in the later levels. So in conclusion, Super Mario Bros. is the game that NES owners should play, as it spawned a great series.