My 100 Video Game Challenge (2024) #14: Super Mario Bros.

Played on: Nintendo Switch Online [NES]

I feel like writing about the original Super Mario Bros. is somewhat an exercise in redundancy. After all, alongside maybe Pac-Man, this is one of the most recognized and widely understood video games in human history, even across people who have virtually no familiarity with the medium. After all, we now live in a time where Mario is more widely recognized than Mickey Mouse across the world, and that's for good reason; Because ever since the portly plumber's big break in 1985, his mainline video games have more or less represented the pinnacle of what this medium can achieve when it comes to fun and satisfaction.

The original Super Mario Bros. from 1985 is a game that's older than I am, and yet I, and many other video game enthusiasts across the globe, can always revisit it, and find that no matter how much time passes, the game has lost none of its accessible, yet addictive and challenging magic. Who doesn't know the premise behind this old favourite? Princess Peach (back when she was known as 'Princess Toadstool') is kidnapped by Bowser (back when he was known as 'King Koopa'), and Mario, potentially alongside his brother, Luigi, has to journey across the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue her.

Before Super Mario Bros., games were still struggling to grow out of their arcade-era origins. Pretty much everything beforehand was simply about executing a simple task and surviving as long as possible, thus striving for high scores over actual game completion. Hell, if you did reach the end of games like the aforementioned Pac-Man, which tops out at level 255, you would be met with a screen full of glitchy gobbledygook as the game itself struggled to adequately accommodate your astonishing endurance. With Super Mario Bros. however, that all changed. Now, games had an end goal, and even something resembling a real story, albeit an extremely basic one.

The gameplay of Super Mario Bros. is nonetheless simple as can be; You run, you jump on enemies (at least the ones without sharp teeth or spines to ruin your day), and you try to reach an ending flagpole to complete a stage across eight worlds. Each of the eight worlds would also culminate in a fourth 'castle' stage, at which point you'd take on 'King Koopa', and apparently his many doppelgangers, before discovering that the first seven castles merely contain a Toad, an attendant of 'Princess Toadstool', who tells you the famous line, "Thank you, Mario, but our princess is in another castle." Hey, what do you expect, the world didn't have mobile GPS in 1985, and the Mario Bros.' sense of direction was evidently exploitable and horrendous.

I've played through the original Super Mario Bros. probably dozens of times since childhood, and yet, I never actually owned a proper NES cartridge of it for most of my life. Sure, pretty much all of my gaming friends owned one when I was a kid, but it wasn't until I was in my late 20's that I finally procured an actual Super Mario Bros. cartridge for NES, specifically the type that also included light gun-operated favourite, Duck Hunt. Much like my original Legend of Zelda cartridge for NES that I also obtained far too late in life, I've never actually put my Super Mario Bros. cartridge into an NES console and played it. Someday, I hope to do that.

Fortunately, I do still own a cartridge of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, a remaster of the original Super Mario Bros. for Game Boy Color, the Super Mario All-Stars game for Super NES that features an upgraded 16-bit rendition of Super Mario Bros., and since those childhood spoils, Super Mario Bros. has thankfully become extremely easy to access and play on modern Nintendo devices for merely a few dollars. I now have the game loaded and playable on my Game Boy Advance, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and now, my Nintendo Switch, where I played the game once again this year, including its 'second quest', which is more or less just an unlockable hard mode.

It's amazing how, almost forty years later, Super Mario Bros. truly hasn't aged a day. Its difficulty curve is pitch-perfect, its simple mechanics were nonetheless impressive and revolutionary for their day, and all the while, you can see so much early DNA for the video game industry that so many of us enjoy today. Mario himself hasn't slowed down in the slightest by 2024 to boot, complete with more recent Nintendo Switch-era games like Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, both of which remain some of the overall best video games of the modern age, and no doubt beyond.

My Mario career might have properly started with Super Mario Bros. 2 (the American Super Mario Bros. 2, obviously. More on that later this year, I'm sure.), but I still remember being a toddler and trying the original Super Mario Bros. out at my cousins' house. I didn't get far at the time, but even then, something inside me knew that this is a hobby I wanted to embrace for the rest of my life. I feel disappointed in myself for thinking I needed to abandon that several years ago, and that's why it feels appropriate to make the original Super Mario Bros. part of my 100 video games challenge this year. It was a quick, breezy playthrough on my Switch, second quest and all, and Super Mario Bros. hasn't lost one bit of appeal in the years since I last ran through it on my Wii U, probably a decade ago.

Surprising no one, I'm sure, Super Mario Bros. thus remains one of the best video games of all time in its 39th year. Chances are though, you already knew that.

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 10/10