The original Super Mario sidescroller lacks the nonstop innovation of the original Legend of Zelda entry, but it still holds up as a humble and fluid afternoon of fun.
The limited live count you start with really feels necessary to ensure you improve your platforming skills rather than skirting by on good luck and frequent dead stops to assess every onscreen change (cowardice!). At least half of the 1-up mushrooms are placed in ideal locations (whereas the original Zelda can be quite obscure with basic progress hints), plus you can quite easily obtain one hundred coins if you're unlucky.
The only levels that feel less accommodating to skill are perhaps 2-3 and 7-3, the athletic stages where you sprint past flying cheep cheeps, but over time I grew interest, because these levels force the player to keep a somewhat irregular pace in order to avoid injury. You won't get far just running at top speed.
To still rate this game this high on a scale as harsh as mine, some would say is my attempt to pose as respectful of the "art" of video games, but I'm not really invested in this game having supposedly saved the market. It's interesting as trivia, but trivia that doesn't manifest into actual gameplay (meaning something that I see hear or experience while playing the game) belongs in retrospectives, not reviews.
What you have here is an early example of a game designer really understanding how to lead the curiosity of a player, how to stay ahead and be that way consistently. And most of the time that clever strategization doesn't feel too obvious, so the immersive value remains.
The limited live count you start with really feels necessary to ensure you improve your platforming skills rather than skirting by on good luck and frequent dead stops to assess every onscreen change (cowardice!). At least half of the 1-up mushrooms are placed in ideal locations (whereas the original Zelda can be quite obscure with basic progress hints), plus you can quite easily obtain one hundred coins if you're unlucky.
The only levels that feel less accommodating to skill are perhaps 2-3 and 7-3, the athletic stages where you sprint past flying cheep cheeps, but over time I grew interest, because these levels force the player to keep a somewhat irregular pace in order to avoid injury. You won't get far just running at top speed.
To still rate this game this high on a scale as harsh as mine, some would say is my attempt to pose as respectful of the "art" of video games, but I'm not really invested in this game having supposedly saved the market. It's interesting as trivia, but trivia that doesn't manifest into actual gameplay (meaning something that I see hear or experience while playing the game) belongs in retrospectives, not reviews.
What you have here is an early example of a game designer really understanding how to lead the curiosity of a player, how to stay ahead and be that way consistently. And most of the time that clever strategization doesn't feel too obvious, so the immersive value remains.