Hello!

Thought I‘d start this review series of mine where I Intend to review everything I own.
Where else to start but with the very first game I ever owned Super Mario Bros.

First the object of the game as pictured by my crappy phone camera.

So just your typical save princess from dragon scenario, only people are bricks and flowers scattered throughout….wait.

..Moving on.

At this point there isn‘t really anything that hasn‘t been said a million times before about this game. So doing a review for it is pointless besides I could sum it up in two words.

Kick ass!

I‘m rather going to talk about my experience with the game back when I first played it.

Summer 1988 my parents decided to buy a NES for me. They didn‘t have any special reason for doing so, they just decided to be nice to me (<3 my parents). I had already taken my steps into the gaming world before then. I don‘t think I was more then 3 years old when I first played a game on my mom‘s Sinclair Spectrum. At the local electronics store at the time they always had a NES running the demo for Super Mario Bros and every time I went by the store I ended up watching the demo loop over and over again and be very fascinated with all the pretty colors.

So you can just imagine how excited I was when my dad brought home the NES.

It‘s a 1987 model and it still works (though I‘ve had to make some repairs to the contacts) It came shipped with the NES, one controller, the zapper and of course a Super Mario Bros/Duck hunt cartridge.
I can‘t say I remember my first ever time playing Super Mario bros but I‘m sure it went something like this.

This game frustrated me so much back then that I went all Angry Videogame Nerd because of it, and I‘m sure I‘m not the only one who‘s done that. I have evidence of me snapping on my NES as can be seen on the picture below.

While I could breeze through this game these days with little effort when you were 4 years old, playing games was hard and so I must have seen that game over screen hundreds of times before I eventually managed to beat the game, though mostly with help from my mom, she might actually have played it more than me and I‘d just watch her struggle just as much with it.

When I finally managed to reach the first castle and beat it, and like so many gamers I was pissed that after all that hard work and frustration that that stupid Mushroom had to tell me that the princess was in another castle.

This is what I would have liked had happened. *evil laughter*

Rinse and repeat 7 more times and finally defeat Bowser was really frustrating and took forever but it was still satisfying to finally well lets face it, get the p*ssy.

So yeah while a lot of my memories about this game are just frustration and dying a lot it was still the first step that cemented my love of games and gaming until this day much like Super Mario Bros cemented that video games were here to stay.

I can say one thing about Super Mario Bros. It has aged surprisingly well, it doesn‘t just have nostalgia going for it, it‘s still a solid platformer in its own right being of course vastly outperformed by Super Mario Bros 3 which is understandable and normal. If I ever have kids I‘d much rather let them play these older NES games first then anything else. Because after all, what do graphics matter to kids? 8-bit games are a positive influence as far as I‘m concerned, they are simple yet unforgiving and since they require patience to beat they teach children to overcome difficulties instead of just doing things the easy way and most of all they are just a lot of fun.

If there is one thing I miss about growing up are the jumps gaming took each generation and being blown away which just doesn‘t happen anymore. Graphics aren‘t going to improve much more at this point and I don‘t think I‘d like them too either and there are some innovations in works like the motion controllers, I grew up with a controller in my hand and so I‘ll prefer that any day over jumping all around in front a camera.

Enough rambling lets get down to ratings.

Nostalgia factor – 10

Everyone owned and loved this game. It‘s nostalgia factor is beyond the scale but 10 is as high as I can give it.

Game play – 8

The basis for virtually every 2D platform game made after the crash, as such it‘s just a tad simplistic to get a 10.

Sound - 9

Even non gamers can hum the level 1-1 theme from start to finish from memory, the music is classic and the sound effects are 8-bit sweetness.

Vitality - 7

It‘s not a very long game even if you take into account the harder second quest after you finish the game the first time(without resetting the console)

Final Verdict – 8.5

This has been a GameAddictionBlog.com production. I recommend not going there, it‘s infested with zombie pirate monkeys.

Pretty neat, kinda reminded me of someone playing using the U-force although this is probably harder.

- X

I was digging through some of my old stuff and I happened to come across the original manual for my Super Mario Bros/Duckhunt which I thought had been lost through the passage of time. Surprisingly it’s still in very good shape for it’s age.

I started reading through it and it’s actually a pretty good guide to how to play the game. I really wished I had given it a read back then but I was only like 4 years old and it was it the first game I ever got(had played some before that)

Then something caught my eyes, the storyline to Super Mario Bros.

Let me just type it up so you can see.

One day the kingdom of the peaceful mushroom people was invaded by the Koopa, a tribe of turtles famous for their black magic. The quiet, peace-loving Mushroom People were turned into mere stones, bricks and even field horse-hair plants, and the Mushroom Kingdom fell into ruin.

The only one who can undo the magic spell on the Mushroom People and return them to their normal selves is the Princess Toadstool, the daughter of the Mushroom King. Unfortunately, she is presently in the hands of the great Koopa turtle king.
Mario, the hero of the story (maybe) hears about the Mushroom People’s plight and sets out on a quest to free the Mushroom Princess from the evil Koopa and restore the fallen kingdom of the Mushroom People.
You are Mario! It’s up to you to save the Mushroom People from the black magic of the Koopa!

It mentions that the Mushroom People were into stone and bricks, but WAIT since they have been turned into bricks would that mean that while you are playing through the game and breaking bricks for powerups,coins or points you are actually murdering the good people of Mushroom kingdom?

After you rescue the princess I think this is what would happen.

Why is there no mention of Luigi in the story? I know he’s not a important character and never has been for the Mario series, but shouldn’t he be at least acknowledged.

I never even bothered to find out what exactly the game was about back in the day and I doubt anyone really did. You just played the levels without putting real thought into why you were running into castle after castle and who or what all these things you were killing were and why other then to just beat the game and get a high score.

Super Mario Bros may have been written by a guy on a acid trip. But if it hadn’t been for this guys love for Mushrooms Videogames might have died after the crash in 1983, so kudos to Shigeru Miyamoto,Hiroshi Yamauchi and Takashi Tezuka.

- X

Genius.

- X