NES Classics Volume 1: The Super Mario Bros. Trilogy

So now that my Generation NEX is here, and I've got to tell you this beauty is leaps and bounds over the Yobo FC Game Console in both style and game compatibility, I've decided it's time to start talking about a few NES games. To get things started, instead of discussing one game, why not talk about the system's three star titles. That's right, the portly princess saving plumber and his 8-bit trilogy of Super Mario Bros. I won't review these per-se because of nostalgia goggles, and despite the fact that all I'm about to say has been said before, I'd like to talk a little about each game in the series that both Nintendo and Mario household names.


Super Mario Bros.

In the video game industry there's a lot of arguing over which games are the best examples of certain genres or which games are the most important or influential. One thing you won't hear argued is that Super Mario Bros. is simultaneously one of the greatest games and the most influential game ever created.

Super Mario Bros. was probably the first example of a modern video game that was designed to be fun instead of eating quarters or frustrating the player. The controls were finely tweaked (very few NES games managed to duplicate the sublime play control of the Super Mario games) and there was a sense of purpose to what you were doing. The gameplay was deceptively simplistic at first: jump on your enemies and get to the end of the level. Surprisingly, controlling Mario turned out to be inexplicably fun and the more you explored the deeper the game became. That simple "save the princess" plot meant a lot back in the day, because unlike most games at the time there was a goal, an ending, you could actually beat it instead of being faced with a "game over" screen.

The enemies were all recognizable instead of just random jumbles of pixels. Just about everyone knows what a Koopa or a Goomba is. How many video games have had minor enemies that have become that well known? The power ups were another new concept that gave the player something to work for. The difficulty is a near perfect balance and the game can be beaten simply with enough practice. Secrets scattered throughout the game kept people playing to try new things and get through levels in different ways. To this day I can still return to the game and have fun playing it despite the fact that I've beaten it more times than I care to remember and I've been playing it since before I was sapient.

Though they don't look like much today the graphics were also a huge leap over what we were used to seeing. It was amazing at the time to look at something in a video game and immediately know what it is. I haven't even mentioned the simple music which is still catchy and recognizable today, perfectly designed to keep looping without the player getting annoyed with it.

Super Mario Bros. inspired countless sequels and spin offs, thousands of clones, and did several things for the first time that video games are still doing today. It brought video gaming back from the dead after the crash in 1984 while completely changing the way we looked at and played video games, starting a trend that would make them a part of our every day lives. Hats off to you, Super Mario Bros. You are truly a work of genius.

Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2 is the black sheep of the trilogy, like any trilogy be it video games or movies there's always the awkward one that's love it or hate it. There's a damn good reason for this in the case of Mario 2 as just about everyone who's ever played a Mario game already knows, Mario 2 was not the "original" Super Mario Bros. 2 though its place in the Mario canon has become solidified as the official one.

The original Super Mario Bros. 2 is what America received on the SNES Super Mario All Stars compilation as The Lost Levels though it can now be obtained in its NES form for the first time ever in the Western world via the Wii Virtual Console. The Lost Levels or rather the Japanese Mario 2 uses the same basic graphics with a few tweaks to the sprites from the first game. The major difference to Mario 1 is that it amps up the difficulty to an insane degree. Rumors say that we didn't receive that game because it was either "too difficult" for Western gamers or it was "too similar" to the first game and it would've disappointed fans who were seeing the NES pulling off more and more impressive tricks. Don't get me wrong, despite it's difficulty it's a great game, and in reality the 8-bit story of Super Mario is a quadrilogy instead of a trilogy.

The Super Mario Bros. 2 that we got started as a Nintendo platformer called Doki Doki Panic. Everyone's heard the story by now so let me cut it short by just saying Nintendo swapped out the sprites and gameplay elements for Mario ones, tweaked and improved the gameplay, and slapped the Super Mario Bros. name on it. This lazy move was completely unnoticed by NES owners who welcomed the sequel to one of the greatest games ever with open arms. Rumors about the original Super Mario Bros. 2 surfaced as a playground legend until it landed on Western shores for the SNES. It's amazing when you think about it because with the Internet today you'd never be able to get away with something like this now.

The first thing you noticed about the game was it's graphics. They're a major face lift over the original and I'm certain that's one of the reasons Nintendo chose to remake Doki Doki Panic in Mario's image. The second thing you'll notice is you have a choice of four characters, the brothers of Mario and Luigi of course, Toad of the mushroom people, and even the Princess herself. They all have different jumping abilities (Mario is the same as always, Luigi flails his legs to stay in the air longer, Toad can't jump worth shit, and the Princess is the most unbalanced character in the game because she can float for a short period of time) and different levels of strength (how fast they can pick things up).

When you get into the game, jumping on the enemies doesn't kill them, it doesn't even phase them, they'll just keep right on walking. You have to pick them up and throw them at other enemies to kill them. You can also pull radishes and other weapons from the ground to chuck at your opponents. All of Mario's familiar enemies are gone in this game, replaced by Doki Doki Panic's cast of baddies and instead of power ups you find mushrooms behind doors that you create with some kind of potion (don't ask me) that add to your life bar, another first in the Mario series. When you're down to one life you shrink like in other Mario games, though unlike in other Mario games being small is just a graphical thing and has no distinct advantage.

Honestly I missed the familiar foes and gameplay elements and when I was little this game confused me a bit because it's certainly not a Mario game. Still, Nintendo told me it was, and at the time I believed them. It's certainly not a bad game, though one wonders if it would've been popular if it was released in its original form and not as a Mario game. Since we never got the original Mario 2 on the NES, or the unaltered Doki Doki Panic while Japan got our Mario 2 as Super Mario USA I feel kind of ripped off. Despite all its weirdness (which is explained in the game's ending as Mario wakes up from a dream), this game gave us something new and kept the franchise rolling to its next, biggest, and brightest achievement.

Super Mario Bros. 3

While Mario 2 kept held us over, most of us preferred the original formula, and there were a lot of mixed feelings about the game. Nintendo was busy taking that original formula and fermenting it, making it stronger, bigger, and better. The result was Super Mario Bros. 3, and despite being an 8-bit game many video game aficionados still consider this to be the greatest title in the franchise, if not one of the greatest video games ever made.

Mario fans were back to jumping on familiar bad guys, meeting a few new ones, and collecting new power ups. And my god were their a lot of power ups. After the old-school fire flower there was the leaf that for some reason gave you racoon ears and a tail and allowed you to whip enemies and fly. The immense variety of different suits and other new goodies to play with gave the series more depth than ever before. The gameplay retained it's simplicity, but there was just so much to do and so many well hidden secrets to uncover that you could waste months finding it all.

The game introduced us to the concept of a world map that we'd see in future games in the series, it added mini-games to collect lives and power ups, it even let Mario and Luigi duke it out in a the battle arena from the original Mario Bros. arcade game. The levels were once again perfectly balanced, where as both of the Mario 2's difficulties were a bit menacing and not quite as fair. Anyone could play this game and have fun and with practice they could beat it.

I still remember the gossip circulating about where to find the warp whistles that allowed you to skip levels and the ability to don the Hammer Brother's suit and wield the power of one of Mario's most fearsome enemies. Yes, the time before the Internet was certainly a magical place filled with mystery and intrigue. There's just so much in this game that surprises you like the world where everything is gigantic or the slippery ice world. Every new world is unique and full of surprises, all with the same inexplicable addictive fun that the original game had. If I had to choose one game to be stranded on a desert island with, this would be the game, since somehow Nintendo cracked the secret formula for infinite replay value when they made this game.

I don't know what else to say, it's hard to describe exactly how perfect and polished this game is. Nintendo took everything that was good about Mario up until this point and magnified it by a thousand fold. Some people believe that Super Mario World for the SNES is the definitive title in the franchise, but the fact that many more people, including myself, consider 3 to be the best, as well as one of, if not the greatest platform game ever made is testament to how incredible the game is considering it's built on vastly inferior technology. Nintendo knew the NES inside and out when they made Mario 3 and they squeezed everything they could out of it. They made music and graphics that should've been impossible to make and paired it up with that classic, perfectly balanced Mario gameplay.

Super Mario Bros. 3 ended the 8-bit era for Mario, though it paved the way for many more classics to come. It proved that lightning could strike twice and helped solidify Nintendo as a major force in the video game industry.

Conclusion

There's not much else to say. The NES trilogy of Mario games will probably fade from memory as kids grow up on more modern video game systems, but it's indisputable that the currently growing industry owes a lot to these three games. I might sound a little too glowing here, and I'm even a Sega Genesis obsessive so it's not a love for Nintendo that guides these ravings. With New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS the old Mario formula keeps on trucking without showing its age, and I can still play through the old games without getting bored. These games are truly timeless and stand for everything that video gaming is today. Other games may have come before this franchise, and more impressive games may have come after it, but none of them innovated like it.