CORBIE'S GAME BLOG

With the upcoming release of New Super Mario Bros. for the DS system on May 16th, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the previous Super Mario Bros. games. So every other day, I'll be adding a short write-up on one of the Super Mario Bros. games. We'll start from the beginning with the game that many say kickstarted the entire video game industry back in motion after the horrific crash of 1984. After having success in Japan with their Famicom system, Nintendo decided it was time to tackle the American gaming public and in 1985 released their Famicom system in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Gaming historians have come up with many reasons why the NES was so successful, but the one reason you here come up more than any other is the fact that Nintendo bundled their arcade hit Super Mario Bros. with the system. Super Mario Bros. basically introduced the gaming world to the side-scroller, a genre that still thrives today, and began a string of Super Mario Bros. games that have become the best-selling video game series in the history of video games. Not bad for a game about an Italian plumber who gets to spend most of his time rescuing a princess from a giant turle.

How would you like to be the guy that has to spend his days busting brick ledges with his head, swimming through squid-filled waters, and climbing down stale sewer pipes, all to rescue a princess that everytime you turn around gets captured again. That's what our tireless hero, Mario, does in the game and you, the player, get to go along for the ride. In the first Super Mario Bros. game you'll spend most of your time running, jumping, and busting bricks through level after level, only to reach one of the many castles in the game to find out that the princess is in another castle altogether. What makes all of this redundancy so much fun is how Nintendo has creatively crafted each level to hold many hidden surprises that you must find by careful searching and busting every brick in sight. While this sounds simple enough, you'll have to do all of this while dealing with enemies intent on keeping you from reaching each castle. Mario can defeat most enemies by stomping on them, or he can find a hidden flower and turn into fiery Mario and shoot fireballs at them. Either way is fun. Couple all of this insane gameplay with an extremely responsive control system and you have what is considered by many to be one of, if not the greatest video games ever created. Luckily if you want to play this game it's readily available in many forms including: Super Mario Bros. for the NES, Super Mario All-Stars for the Super NES, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color, and Super Mario Bros. - NES Classic available for the Game Boy Advance system. Whichever you choose, you'll no doubt enjoy what a fantastic game the original was really was. A classic in every sense of the word.