3/5 ★ – MegaBlastoise's review of Super Mario Bros..

Platform Played: SNES (Mario All-Stars) Date Reviewed: Feb. 18, 2022 Rating: 6/10 When the first Super Mario Bros game was released in 1985, not only was it considered the greatest game ever made, but it also put an end to the Video Game Crash (a 3-year period where sales were at an all-time low thanks to E.T. on Atari 2600). Nowadays, while the latter statement is true, the former claim of "best video game ever" has gone to other games. While I was experiencing a mild case of writer's block, I decided to replay this classic title. Does it still hold up in today's day and age? The story is borderline nonexistent. Princess Peach (formerly referred to as Toadstool back then) has been kidnapped by Bowser (known in those days as King Koopa). It's up to our hero (an Italian plumber named Mario) to stop Bowser and save Peach. To do this, Mario has to go through 8 worlds with 4 levels each, with a castle and a boss fight at the end. Generic, I know. But, this was 1985, so I'll let it slide. It's not like the stories in Mario games get any better from here. The graphics are heavily dated by today's standards on the NES version, with the SNES remake faring much better. Enemy placement can be incredibly cheap in places, but not enough to make you want to throw your controller out the window. The cave stages are probably the best designed of the bunch, with the overworld and castle stages having varying degrees of fairness. The worst levels of the game are the water stages. There aren't that many, but all of them suck. The control is stiff, and the enemies are horribly placed. And the only way you can kill them is with the fire flower. Speaking of control, the physics are bizarre. Mario controls fine, but the physics will get you killed the most often. The game isn't generous with extra lives, and there's no password feature to get you back to where you were if you got a game over. The music is memorable, but I think remixes and fan covers do it much better justice. Even if you never played a video game before, you could hum the overworld theme. Overall, Super Mario Bros. is a perfectly harmless game, but its sequels are much better. I played it via the All-Stars port, which keeps the same physics as the NES original and has better music and graphics.