Approaching 40 years since its initial release, Super Mario Bros.’ impact on the franchise, video games and pop culture as a whole remain indelible.
It’s easy to feel like video games have been around as long as any other media form nowadays as multiple generations of people have now grown up with them, but not all that long ago, that wasn’t the case.
Rising to popularity in arcades in the 1970’s, video games entered the home in the same decade, though with more underwhelming results. While the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari 2600 were among the consoles that entered homes, it remained unclear if video games were a fad with a niche audience or a blossoming cultural medium.
It appeared that the former was the case once 1983 came around, when big bets on a console port of Pac-Man and an E.T. video game for the 2600 failed miserably, spiraling the video game industry into a crash that appeared could halt the industry entirely.
Two years later, the industry began its steady and still ongoing ascent – but it wasn’t a comeback for the Atari 2600 that led the way. It was the Nintendo Entertainment System, armed with a launch title that would soon sweep across the globe in Super Mario Bros.
Released in North America for the first time 40 years ago next month, Super Mario Bros. almost undoubtedly remains the world’s most famous video game. Beyond introducing a set of characters that would comprise the most famous franchise in gaming, Super Mario Bros. also did plenty of heavy lifting in helping pave a path for games moving forward.
The game’s first level, World 1-1, serves as a tutorial for platform gaming, introducing some of the series’ most recognizable enemies and obstacles in a fairly simple exploration of game mechanics. The level has remained perhaps the most ubiquitous in gaming history, so much so that it’s literally on my wedding ring.
Super Mario Bros. goes on to pit the title character as the hero in a classic damsel in distress tale, needing to traverse through eight worlds of four levels each to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser, the first appearance from both characters in the series.
Especially by modern standards, there are seemingly countless aspects of the game that appear primitive – Mario is unable to move backwards in a stage, as the screen is only able to move forward. Mario has just three power-ups – the Super Mushroom, Super Star and Fire Flower, though a player will immediately turn small if hit while Fire Mario.
Perhaps the most notable aspect indicating the game’s age, and difficulty for many, is the absence of any save or continue feature. A player starts the game with three lives, and must traverse through the game’s 32 levels without getting a Game Over, which sends the player back to the start of the game.
This acts as both a blessing and a curse for the game in modern times – while the Super Mario series has long held a reputation for showcasing some of the most difficult platforming levels one can find, it’s quite clear to fans of the series that the hardest Super Mario levels are not found in the inaugural game.
With that said, the extreme lack of forgiveness the NES game has offers a challenge to new and old players alike, as the game’s basic characteristics greatly enhance its difficulty.
The game’s level design can also be seen as rather primitive, especially comparing it to the boundaries Nintendo would push on the same console a few years later with Super Mario Bros. 3. Levels rotate between the basic outdoor theme seen in the game’s first level, an underground and underwater theme seen two times apiece, and a castle theme that is present in the fourth level of all eight worlds.
From there, the aesthetic differences between worlds and levels are rather elementary – Worlds 3 and 6 take place at night, while World 5 offers a barely noticeable winter appearance that is greatly enhanced and exaggerated on the Super Mario All-Stars remaster that was released for the SNES in 1993.
Though the levels are undoubtedly simple, there is still an added layer of complexity and secrets beneath them. Many levels in the game feature hidden areas that can be reached if Mario travels down a tunnel, while others feature “coin heavens” that are accessed by secret beanstalks found by hitting hidden blocks.
Perhaps the game’s most famous secret that would be repeated in Mario games for decades is the warping feature, first introduced to players in World 1-2 before making another appearance in World 4-2.
Warping twice allows the player to complete the game with just eight levels, a mere quarter of the game’s total. This route helped birth one of the most prominent speedrunning communities across the gaming sphere, with a dizzying amount of time spent researching the game’s mechanics and features to help optimize a near technically perfect run.
For those that are warping without trying to speedrun, the noticeable jump in difficulty presents a unique challenge to the player as all four levels in the final world offer unique features not seen in previous worlds meant to trip up a player cruising along on a playthrough.
Whether warpless or any%, it’s very easy to imagine how riveting and novel of an experience playing through this game with friends must have been after its release in the mid-1980’s. Passing around a controller for hours to see who could make it the furthest, all while not even knowing how long the game would continue for is the kind of atmosphere that helped entrench gaming as a pastime within the home.
While it’s fair to say the game’s speedrunning community has helped maintain its relevance, the precedent Super Mario Bros. would set for the rest of the series and for gaming in general alone would have kept its legacy alive and prevalent.
As gaming as continued to evolve over the past 40 years, Super Mario Bros. was merely the first of a multitude of Mario titles to shift the perception of what was possible in gaming, serving as an integral opening entry to a series of video games considered by many, myself included, to be the greatest in gaming history.
I think it’s clear that Super Mario Bros. is not the best Super Mario game, nor is it even too close to the top when considering how incredible the series has been over the past four decades – but for every shortcoming the game has, it also has surprising depth, with an incredible amount of material to build off of and refine in the coming years.
And that’s perhaps the crowning feature of Super Mario Bros.’ legacy – it truly served as the ideal building block and starting point for a franchise to chart its own path in leading the way for the video game industry, something the Super Mario series undoubtedly did for its first 10+ years.
As renowned and celebrated as succeeding Super Mario games are, the legacy of the original is inescapable within the Nintendo gaming pantheon. Beyond the well-regarded remaster for Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario Bros. appeared in official remasters on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance while also being a staple digitally on Virtual Console/NES Classic since the release of the Nintendo Wii.
The legacy has expanded well beyond gaming as well – theme parks, a TV show, a movie, another movie and a lasting cultural image that is almost universally recognizable, even to those who are strangers to video games.
There’s always going to be other Super Mario games worth playing that have much more to do and dive into, but for the quintessential classic gaming experience, it’s harder to find a better place to start.
SUPER MARIO BROS./NINTENDO/2D PLATFORMER/1985
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