The Man in Red: Super Mario Bros. Review (NES) | Hazy Bit #4

Welcome to the fourth edition of Hazy Bit!

Hazy Bit dusts off the ol’ video game collection with retrospectives, reviews, and other nostalgic content sent directly to your inbox on the 1st and 15th of every month. If you enjoy what you’re reading, subscribe and follow me on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky!

This week’s retro releases:

• Goemon’s Great Adventure (N64, September 15, 1999, NA)

• Animal Crossing (GameCube, September 16, 2002, NA)

• Taz: Wanted (PS2/Xbox, September 17, 2002, NA

• X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 (PlayStation, September 18, 2001, NA)

• Legend of the River King (Game Boy, September 19, 1997, JP)

• Kirby Super Star (SNES, September 20, 1996, NA)

• Katamari Damacy (PS2, September 21, 2004, NA)

Check out this list on GameFAQs to see other titles released this week.

Look, I know what you’re thinking - why is this dude reviewing Super Mario Bros., one of the most well-known and documented games in the history of the video game industry? There are already hundreds of reviews out there, hundreds of articles about the development of the game, and interviews with its creators. He can’t possibly have anything new or groundbreaking to say about this game.

You’re absolutely right! There’s not much to say about Super Mario Bros. that hasn’t already been said by thousands of other critics, journalists, and random folks on YouTube making goofy faces for thumbnails. You could say that about any of the other games I’m reviewing, too, though few of them have had the same cultural impact as Super Mario Bros.

This article is more about paying tribute to the game that saved an industry, helped to build a hugely successful company and console, and changed the course of my life and the lives of countless others for good. Those facts alone make it worth the trouble of periodically coming back to Super Mario Bros. and saying, “Damn, that little 8-bit plumber really packed a punch.”

An industry on the brink

It’s tough to imagine now, but there was a time when the video game industry was about to drive right off a financial cliff. The year was 1983 and the video game market had reached a tipping point, known in business as “market saturation.” How did the industry, only recently making waves in pop culture thanks to Atari, reach the point of companies going bankrupt and an entire medium going belly-up?

There were many reasons for the crash, chief among them being a glut of less-than-stellar consoles and games. After the success of the Atari VCS, other console manufacturers decided to jump in. Magnavox released the Odyssey 2, Mattel came out with the Intellivision, Coleco had its ColecoVision, and General Consumer Electronics introduced the Vectrex. Hell, even Atari released another console in 1982, the Atari 5200, partly prompting the rename of the VCS to the 2600.

On the games side, the number of third-party developers surged thanks to the success of Activision - the first third-party developer - and venture capitalists looking to cash in on the success of video games. This led to many developers making games that were just licensed cash-ins or clones of more successful games. The most infamous of these is probably E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a shitty game that was turned into actual garbage.

E.T. and other similar low-quality titles shattered consumer confidence in Atari and the larger video game industry. Too many games with too few customers, plus increased competition from home computers, put video games in a precarious situation.

Nintendo steps in

It took a Japanese company to save the North American video game industry - nay, video games themselves. In 1986, Nintendo fully released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the US after test runs in New York and Los Angeles. This rebranded and redesigned Family Computer, or Famicom, was made to look less like a cheap toy and more like a natural part of any home TV stand set-up with a tame black and grey color palette and a front-loading cartridge insert.

Nintendo took a few steps to ensure that its product wasn’t seen as cheap and to gain back consumer confidence after the 1983 crash. First, they adapted their nomenclature to refer less to tainted “video game” terms as much as possible: the Nintendo “Entertainment System,” “Game Paks” instead of cartridges or cards, and a “Control Deck” instead of a console. They also made sure game packaging had accurate images of gameplay and included an “Official Nintendo Seal of Quality” to show that Nintendo’s products weren’t like the video games of just a couple of years prior.

That brings us to this week’s topic. The biggest game of the NES’s launch, and the one that is often credited with the resurgence of the video game industry alongside the NES, is Super Mario Bros.

Simple, but challenging gameplay

Despite being nearly 40 years old, Super Mario Bros.’s gameplay has aged like a fine, 8-bit pixelated wine. There are 8 worlds with 4 levels each. The final level of each world is always a castle where you have to defeat a fake Bowser, or the real one in the case of World 8-4, by touching the ax on the right of the screen to destroy the bridge and drop him into the lava below. You can power Mario up by making him bigger (giving him the ability to take a hit) by grabbing a mushroom, allowing him to shoot fireballs by getting a Fire Flower, or by becoming invincible with a star.

Mario still controls well today, striking a balance between being floaty and tight. Both movement and jumping just feel right and it’s easy to build up muscle memory to remember things like just how far a running jump will take you. Mario has a little bit of weight to him, but not too much to feel clunky.

The best part of Super Mario Bros., and this goes for pretty much every entry in the franchise, is the plethora of secrets included for gamers willing to experiment to find them. Jumping anywhere and everywhere reveals coin blocks, 1-up mushrooms, and other goodies. Whole levels and whole worlds can be bypassed if you find the right secret. I remember the first time a cousin showed me the hidden warp pipes in World 1-2. That revelation changed my 4-year-old, tiny-brained perception of how a level could be designed. It enticed me to explore more instead of running through a level as fast as possible.

That extra exploration factor lends itself well to what gives Super Mario Bros. its staying power: replayability. You can spend hours with SMB even after beating it because the gameplay is just that good and hey, there might be another secret you haven’t found. Even after you’ve explored every nook and cranny of every level, you’ll find yourself coming back for more now and then.

A colorful fantasy world brought to life

The gameplay isn’t the only reason SMB remains a classic to this day. Its graphics may seem quaint now, and it’s certainly not the best-looking game on the NES, but it’s hard to overstate just how good SMB looked when it came out in comparison to the games that came before it. That sky blue background, the white clouds, red bricks, and blinking question mark blocks of World 1-1 set the scene for the adventure to come. There are a surprising amount of settings, as Mario has to swim through water levels, jump on treetops and floating platforms, and run across bridges while dodging jumping fish known as Cheep-cheeps.

There’s a nice bit of enemy variety too, even for an 8-bit game. Goombas, Koopa Troopas of the ground and flying variety, Buzzy Beetles, Spinies, and Piranha Plants will all cross your path as you make your way to the flag pole at the end of each level. You’ll get familiar with all of the characters and how they function pretty quickly, but the roster is enough for an NES game.

The soundtrack of Super Mario Bros. is just as good, if not better, than the game’s visuals. Koji Kondo’s main theme is a fun, bubbly, and bouncy tune that is instantly recognizable to gamers everywhere. The underwater waltz charms as a playful lilt. The underground track perfectly fits with the dark, blue-tinged subterranean levels. My favorite, the Castle Theme, strikes a perfect balance between spooky and mysterious, building the tension before the appearance of fake (or real) Bowser at the end of the level.

The only complaint I can possibly think of is a minor one. Some assets are reused like clouds being colored green to be bushes or the sound effect for Mario being hit the same as Mario entering a pipe. But even this issue is a product of the times - storage space is limited on NES cartridges, so some trade-offs have to be made.

A timeless classic

If you haven’t already gathered, I love Super Mario Bros. A lot of that is simply due to the fact it was the first video game I ever played, but it’s still a solid, fun game. Sure, later entries in the Super Mario Bros. franchise, in particular Super Mario Bros. 3, did a lot more stuff a whole lot better, but the first was a groundbreaking experience in its own right and remains an enjoyable title to this day.

Playing Super Mario Bros. in 2023 is a breeze and there are roughly 1 million ways to do it. Some are easier than others - you can just play it on Switch rather than tracking down a copy of Animal Crossing to play the version of SMB included as an item - but if you’re a fan of collecting, finding an original NES version of the game, or the copy that includes Duck Hunt, isn’t hard or expensive at all. A used NES with controllers can sometimes be found for under $100, while a copy of Super Mario Bros. can go for less than $15 and a Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridge can go for less than $7.

That’s all for this week’s Hazy Bit! I hope you enjoyed my review of Super Mario Bros. If you did, don’t forget to like the post, drop a comment, and subscribe if you feel so inclined. If you didn’t, drop a comment telling me how wrong I am! I love talking games with readers.

Next week, I play the game with the speedy blue critter that was like a shot across the bow of the mighty ship Nintendo: Sonic the Hedgehog.