The original Super Mario Bros. is a surprisingly difficult game to review, because its basic framework is laser-etched into our cultural consciousness, but almost nobody has legitimately beaten it. (Yeah, okay, maybe you saved Princess Peach as a kid, but let's be honest: you used the warp zones just like everybody else.) Obviously, everyone knows that Mario stomps on Goombas and ducks down warp pipes, but comparatively few people appreciate the emphatic joy of becoming Fire Mario on a rough stage, or just how damn difficult 8-2 and 8-3 are.
As a whole, I think we can all agree that SMB is a game of such historic magnitude that everyone should play through its first few levels at least once, but does that make it a great game? Sadly, not really. Like a lot of pioneering titles from the inchoate days of the industry, Super Mario Bros. is a victim of its own success. Today, its slippery gamefeel, RNG-heavy level design, and sludgy water levels serve as a reminder of just how far Super Mario Bros. 3 pushed the basic run-and-jump framework to a creative peak that no one could have foreseen.
Still, that doesn't mean that you have to strap on your nostalgia blinders in order to enjoy SMB in 2021, and that's more than I can say for many classics of the 8-bit age. After years of Super Meat Boy, Celeste, and even New Super Mario Bros. refining the formula, the most striking thing about playing this game today is just how random every aspect of the game is. From the Bullet Bill cannons to those damn jumping fish, and of course the mysteries of the Hammer Bros. throw pattern, I spent a lot of time hoping for a good dice rolls while trudging my way through World 8 over and over. In other words, it's tough to memorize a pattern when no pattern exists. (Conversely, I suggest looking up the solutions to the handful of labyrinth levels, because they don't really make a lot of sense even when you know what to do, and they can easily eat up all your lives.)
If you're willing to give yourself the privilege of a per-level save state (or at least the "hidden" continues trick, which most of us didn't know about as kids), the original SMB is a pretty fun way to spend a few hours, especially switching off with a friend. But if you're trying to beat it legitimately, good luck to you. You're going to need it.
As a whole, I think we can all agree that SMB is a game of such historic magnitude that everyone should play through its first few levels at least once, but does that make it a great game? Sadly, not really. Like a lot of pioneering titles from the inchoate days of the industry, Super Mario Bros. is a victim of its own success. Today, its slippery gamefeel, RNG-heavy level design, and sludgy water levels serve as a reminder of just how far Super Mario Bros. 3 pushed the basic run-and-jump framework to a creative peak that no one could have foreseen.
Still, that doesn't mean that you have to strap on your nostalgia blinders in order to enjoy SMB in 2021, and that's more than I can say for many classics of the 8-bit age. After years of Super Meat Boy, Celeste, and even New Super Mario Bros. refining the formula, the most striking thing about playing this game today is just how random every aspect of the game is. From the Bullet Bill cannons to those damn jumping fish, and of course the mysteries of the Hammer Bros. throw pattern, I spent a lot of time hoping for a good dice rolls while trudging my way through World 8 over and over. In other words, it's tough to memorize a pattern when no pattern exists. (Conversely, I suggest looking up the solutions to the handful of labyrinth levels, because they don't really make a lot of sense even when you know what to do, and they can easily eat up all your lives.)
If you're willing to give yourself the privilege of a per-level save state (or at least the "hidden" continues trick, which most of us didn't know about as kids), the original SMB is a pretty fun way to spend a few hours, especially switching off with a friend. But if you're trying to beat it legitimately, good luck to you. You're going to need it.
mellorine
2 years ago