Retronomicon 02.10.10: Super Mario Bros

Posted by Lee Price on 02.10.2010

The Retronomicon slips back into some nice 2D shoes this week as it breezes all the way back to the 1980's to examine one of the biggest and most influential games of all time. Get ready to get all weepy eyed and nostalgic as this week the Retronomicon looks at Super Mario Bros.

Hello any who venture into the dark recesses of my writing. This is the Retronomicon and as ever I am your host Lee Price, ready to grab your hand and guide you through the murky water of gaming's bygone era. It has been a hectic week for me this week. I have started a new job, finally, however seeing as I'm currently working two jobs until the end of the month I have almost no time for gaming right now. Having said that I did find time to head out over the weekend, wherein the inspiration for this week's game was found thanks to a certain infectious tune being hummed to me by my buddy Josh on an overly long bus ride. So anybody who likes this week's column has him to thank. I really need to plug away at Bayonetta on the first opportunity as I am seriously lagging behind when it comes to getting a review of it done for the site, but all will be done in due course. Anyway enough about me because its time for the...





Comments

Five really does seem to be the Retronomicon's magic number recently when it comes to comments as I have another five to respond to this week. Keep 'em coming and maybe one day I'll reach six! Anyway first up we see the return of The Thunderthief;

Great column, yet again! Obviously, in my opinion, Tomb Raider has easily produced the best game-to-movie ever. These games were really cutting edge. Just the fact alone that there was a female protagonist really caught everyone's eye.

I look forward to next week!

Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you like my columns. As for the best game to movie ever, I think you may just be right. The Street Fighter and Mario Bros movie both have a certain camp value these days, but in terms of pure quality it is hard to beat first Tomb Raider film. Mortal Kombat gives it a run for its money mind.

Next up we have shaydee;

Tomb raider is a strange game for me. I bought it solely because Lara Croft was Lara Croft. I never completed any of the levels passed level 3 when I was younger. I just level skipped and did a world tour of the game to the parts and have epic boss fights (like the t-rex). and as entertaining as that was when I was younger, I realize I didn't get to enjoy the game for what it was.

About 2 years ago I picked up tomb raider 1 (and 2) and played through them properly. I must say it was quite satisfying to actually play the game.

In terms of completing a game, there a few as satisfying as the original Tomb Raider. It could be a hellishly frustrating experience at times. The irony is that this definitely shows up when you try to play the game after becoming accustomed to the superior animation and the like that is prominent throughout today's games. It makes Tomb Raider that much more difficult to play, which could cloud just how important a game it really was.

RevolverOcelot is up next;

Great Article. I didn't get into Tomb Raider until about 2 years ago, when I went on a retro binge. The first 3 are great, with #2 being my favorite. And for Lara Croft, Boom goes the Dynamite.

Certainly you see many improvements between Tomb Raiders one to three, but the problem the series ran into was that the formula never really changed much. This, I believe, is why the series became so stagnant past the third iteration. I'd say Tomb Raider 2 is likely the best of the entire series, though Tomb Raider tops it for importance.

The cheekily named Cun\' had something to say;

I never really got into any Tomb Raider games. I even got Anniversary for Christmas one year WHICH I ASKED FOR and have yet to pop it in the machine. It's the same with Resident Evil, although thanks to the fourth one I can at least say I've played one of them through to completion. But before that I would buy them all and just never play them for any length of time.

I would recommend going back and giving both series a try, especially Resident Evil as I must admit that is one of my favorite game series of all time. As for Tomb Raider, you may find that the controls are a little fiddly and difficult to get a handle on and the game can be extremely frustrating at times, but give it a crack anyway.

Finally we have Semiru who indulged in a bit of mind reading;

Great column! Tomb Raider really was a pioneer. While it's gameplay was at times unforgiving (I distinctly recall my brother getting quite frustrated with it) it did lead the way for these kind of platformers in 3D.

I'd almost say without Tomb Raider we wouldn't have games like Assassin's Creed today.

And since you mentioned Mario, will he be the subject of a Retronomicon in future? Then again, that would be a massive column...

I would agree with you on that point, games like Tomb Raider were vital in setting the initial benchmarks in these types of games, and provided a very solid base to build off. As for the subject of Mario, luckily the Retronomicon rarely gets too burdened by length thanks to my format of looking at single games rather than full series so the column wouldn't necessarily be massive. Having said that I would be remiss if I didn't point you in the direction of the very first Retronomicon to see a column on Super Mario World for the SNES. Having said that, this week's effort should also satisfy your craving for Mario.

That's enough talking, because its time for action. So strap on those rose-tinted specs as this week the Retronomicon takes a look at Super Mario Bros.



The Background

I guess when it comes to talking about Super Mario Bros, the first things that should be mentioned are the gaming crash of 1983, Donkey Kong and Shigeru Miyamoto as all three had pivotal roles to play in the little plumber's success story. So let's start with the story of Shigeru Miyamoto.

Miyamoto was employed by Nintendo in 1977 as a staff artist, and had a hand in creating the company's first coin operated game, Sheriff. It didn't take long for the man to make his presence known in the Nintendo world and their expansion into the electronics industry as his second game caused an absolute storm.

Donkey Kong was released in 1981. Initially asked to convert a little known game called Radar Scope into something more palatable to American audiences, Miyamoto eventually created one of the first really big breakthroughs in the gaming industry, rivaling the likes of Space Invaders in popularity as a coin op, and seeing an absolute boatload of home conversions and cheap knock-offs. But that's a column for another day. The relevance of Donkey Kong in the Mario story isn't all to do with being Miyamoto's breakthrough as a driving force at Nintendo, but more to do with the player character. Known simply as Jumpman in the arcade game, this would later be ret-conned into Mario due to the character's many similarities to Shigeru Miyamoto's biggest creation.

Of course before Mario could see the light of day in his present incarnation, Nintendo were presented with a problem. In 1983, the video games market in America completely crashed. Over saturation, both of consoles and games, combined with a lot of poor quality release, led to people simply abandoning games as a viable entertainment media. This left the main American games company, Atari, in serious trouble and caused problems for Nintendo as well as Atari had been earmarked to publish Nintendo's hardware and software to American audiences, specifically their newly released Nintendo Entertainment System. The crash slowed the release of the NES by a couple of years, until Nintendo finally gained the confidence to release the console themselves to the jaded US audience in 1985. To really sell the fact that they were offering something different to what had come before Nintendo made two important decisions. Firstly they implemented what became known as the "Nintendo Seal of Quality", a mark on each gaming box that ensured consumers that every game released had attained a level of quality that had personally been checked by Nintendo. The second was to release one of the greatest games ever made, Super Mario Bros.



The Game

Super Mario Bros was an absolute revolution in so many ways that it is almost impossible to count. Most importantly it ushered in a new era of gaming at a time when game's were almost on their way out, but it also popularized the side scrolling platformer and featured so many platforming standards that we all took for granted in the following years, right up until the advent of 3D gaming.

The game is the first real adventure for Mario, the character that would go on to become the face of Nintendo and one of the most recognizable computer game icons ever. Being so it set the template for pretty much every Mario game that followed. Princess Toadstool, later renamed Princess Peach, has been kidnapped by Mario's arch nemesis Bowser. Mario, being the intrepid plumber/adventurer that he is, sets out to rescue the fair maiden, with the help of his brother Luigi if a second player joins the fun.

So the plot was pointless outside of providing a structure for the game, yet at the same time Nintendo have somehow managed to recycle the same plot for nearly every main Mario game that has followed. It has become cliché that Peach will be kidnapped by Bowser in every Mario game, with the only variations being in the off shoot games like the Mario RPGs. Having said that, Super Mario Bros was the first to use this template, and as a very early story it worked adequately to provide a reason to traversing the levels if you happen to ignore the fact that it contained some of the greatest gameplay ever devised up to this point in time. It also spawned the immortal "Your Princess is in Another Castle" line that would become the punchline to Mario's entire existence of constantly chasing after Princess Peach.

Gameplay is where the game needed to be something special to win back the confidence of the American audience, and Super Mario Bros was arguably the greatest game that had ever been made back in 1983. Everything about the game was perfect. Level design, pacing, the difficulty curve, reaction to button presses. The game even made use of inertia to good effect. All of this combined to create a sublime gaming experience.

Level design was absolutely tantamount to success for Nintendo's rotund player. Side scrolling platformers weren't the most popular types of games around in this era, with most platforming efforts being single screen affairs where everything was visible to the player. Super Mario Bros changed all that however, implementing a scrolling form of level design that required enemies and platforms to be placed perfectly so that the player could react to them in time. Luckily, Nintendo pulled this off with aplomb. Losing a life on Super Mario Bros could rarely be put down to unfair level design, instead being attributable to the player nine times out of ten. This is absolutely vital for a platformer as gamers would invariably quit if they get screwed over too many times. In fact this became a phenomenon in later NES games, with many gamers being able to recall the days were a game would be called "Nintendo Hard" due to unforgiving or, at times, completely unfair difficulty levels.

Difficulty was something else that Nintendo handled perfectly. Right from the off it is apparent that Super Mario Bros isn't about gimmicks. This is as pure as platforming can get, with the only power-ups being the mushrooms that enable you to grow and take and extra hit, the coins that can be collected for points and lives, and invincibility star that would be replicated in pretty much every 2D platformer ever released under some guise and of course the extra life. That is it. This pretty much makes the game all about player skill. Perfectly timed jumps are the order of the day, both onto platforms and enemies, and the game does a brilliant job of slowly building the players skill level to go along with the progression of the game. Levels start off relatively simple, and are something that Mario veterans would later be able to dash through in no time. However all of the jumps and enemies are slowly teaching the player how to play the game so that when they get to the more difficult levels and have to fend against enemies like the Hammer Bros, on top of some very difficult platforming action, they are well equipped for the task. The Hammer Bros in particular were a test in timing, especially when you came up against more than one, as their switching between platforms while jumping up and down them was a challenge to navigate in itself.



Luckily Nintendo did a great job with the Mario sprites reactivity to button presses. There was pretty much no delay between a button being pressed and the equivalent action being taken, which meant that Nintendo could create some pretty tight platforming sections for the player to traverse, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't be leaving said player with an impossible task due to poor controls.

Of course special mention must be given to the enemies that litter the game. From the lowly Goomba, through to the Koopa and Hammer Bros and all the way up to the mighty Bowser, each enemy had a cute look that belied its lethality. One touch from any enemy is enough to spell game over to any Mario that doesn't have a mushroom inside him and each one has become important enough to be used again and again in the series, essentially making up Bowser's personal army.

Graphically the game was a revelation for its time. Nothing as powerful as the NES had previously been available, especially in the home console market, so the chunky sprites and bold and colorful levels were a joy to behold when compared to the rather drab graphics of consoles such as the Atari 2600.

The use of color especially was a theme that would carry on throughout the Mario games, with very strong colors used throughout, be it the solid blue of the sky, the whites of the clouds or the multi-shaded pipes, everything in Super Mario Bros just exploded off the screen and provided the player with a visceral experience that could simply not be compared to anything else of the period.

The Mario sprite deserves special mention as proof that even the NES wasn't powerful enough to render some things as they were originally envisioned. During the game's development it was decided that it would be too difficult to animate a mouth and hair for the Mario character. Instead the designer chose to give him a mustache and a hat, to cover up these difficult to animate areas. In doing so they created some of Mario's most recognizable features and undoubtedly contributed to the character becoming as iconic as it is as he has kept the hat and mustache throughout his entire existence.

Of course special mention must be given to the Mario theme tune. A more infectious piece of gaming music would be very hard to find and Koji Kondo succeeded in creating a them song that both conveyed the fun and carefree attitude of the Mario universe as well as being catchy enough that it became instantly recognizable to anybody who heard it and has been associated with Mario ever since.

Kondo developed six songs in all for use in the game, but only the main theme, which was utilized most prominently in the very first level, has endured to this day. Each theme was developed to match the pacing of the level it was for, however all six songs speed up when the game timer reaches 100 seconds, giving the player a warning that they are less than two minutes from losing a life, forcing them to speed up their play in an ingenious attempt at increasing tension in gamers who wanted to take their time with the levels. Not bad considering the songs were all composed on keyboard and used the very basic NES sound chip.

When push comes to shove, Super Mario Bros will stand as one of the most influential games of all time. Not only did it inspire a multitude of similar scrolling platformers, its sheer quality was the principle reason that Nintendo were able to drag gaming back from the brink of oblivion and back into the homes of millions of people across the world. That's not to mention that little fact that the game launched an icon and is still adored by any a gamer as one of the best examples of pure platforming genius ever created. The 1983 game Mario Bros may have come before it, but it was Super Mario Bros that established Nintendo, and indeed Mario, as the front runners in their respective fields.



The Aftermath

We'll start, as always, with the sales figures. Up until very recently Super Mario Bros was the highest selling computer game of all time, with over 40 million units sold worldwide. That should show you right there how the game managed to pull the video games market out of its slump. In fact it was only knocked off its throne by Wii Sports, a game that comes bundled with every single Wii that is sold. Its sheer quality led to a massive boost in the sales of the NES over in the states, leading to the cart being included, along with Duck Hunt, with every NES sold for quite a while. An interesting tidbit is that it is widely believed that the billionth gaming unit sold by Nintendo was Super Mario Bros, though this may be a little romanticized.

The game's legacy is felt right up to this day. Outside of the absolute multitude of Mario games that have been released since, the character has managed to appear in more than 200 games since 1985 so there is no chance they are being listed here and I'm sure you all know the best of the bunch anyway, Mario's influence can be felt in pretty much every single side scrolling platform game that has ever been released. Every game that requires you to collect 100 of something for an extra life tips its hat to Super Mario Bros. So many games have tried to replicate the Mario formula and some, like the Sonic series, managed to give it their own spin and compete with the little red plumber.

Not only was Super Mario Bros effect felt massively throughout the gaming landscape, the Mario character also managed to hit the mainstream. A multitude of goodies were developed with the Mario brand plastered all over them, including both a breakfast cereal and his very own cartoon, called The Super Mario Bros Super Show, that even starred the legendary wrestling manager Captain Lou Albano.

When push comes to shove Mario's quality always shines through and the Mario games are still the last word in platforming, just like they were in 1985 when Super Mario Bros was released.

The Price is Right

Super Mario Bros has been released on a few consoles in various guises. So lets get cracking. As usual higher prices for better quality.

UK
NES - £3 – 6.
SNES (As part of Super Mario Allstars) - £8 – 11.
Gameboy Color - £5 – 10.
Virtual Console - 500 Points.

US
NES - $6 – 10.
SNES (As part of Super Mario Allstars) - Approx $30.
Gameboy Color - $8 – 10.
Virtual Console - 500 Points.

The Guy Who Can do it Better Than You

Before we get to the video, be sure to check out the 411 Games Twitter

Okay this week's video is another pretty nifty speed run. Here's Super Mario Bros completed in just about five minutes.



Enjoy and catch you all next week.