Super Mario Bros.

—earthbound kid

2005/10/20

Beat it just as the train pulled into the station. Hot.

—earthbound kid

I’m still stuck at level 8–4. The last Hammer Brother before Bowser is really good. If he had been placed in level 1–1, there are a lot of Goombas and Koopas that would be alive right now.

What I really like about Super Mario Bros. is how all the little details really work. When you jump on a Goomba, there’s a sprite of a half-squished Goomba. When you shoot one with a fireball, it flies up and drops off the screen head first. When you shoot a Piranha Plant, it disappears in a burst of light. When Mario dies, he flies up on the screen before dropping off it, giving your stomach plenty of time to ache.

I’m still stuck at level 8–4. The last hammer brother before Bowser is really good. If he had been placed in level 1–1, there are a lot of goombas and koopas that would be alive right now.

Anyhow, I need to get back to figuring out how to jump over this last crumb bum.

—earthbound kid

“Hmm, I’m not sure if the level is hard enough, so let’s shoot Bullet Bills at random intervals. That’ll fix it.”

2005/10/15

I’m still stuck at level 8–4. The last hammer brother before Bowser is really good. If he had been placed in level 1–1, there are a lot of Goombas and Koopas that would be alive right now.

What I really like about Super Mario Bros. is how all the little details really work. When you jump on a goomba, there’s a sprite of a half-squished goomba. When you shoot one with a fireball, it flies up and drops off the screen head first. When you shoot a Piranha Plant, it disappears in a burst of light. When Mario dies, he flies up on the screen before dropping off it, giving your stomach plenty of time to ache.

Super Mario Bros. is definitely a different game from its successors. The momentum of Mario is a lot different. You can’t just change direction in mid-air like you can in the later games. For a lot of the jumps, you have to build up momentum on the first half of the jump then coast for the second half. The timing method for jumping is so ingenious I wasn’t even consciously aware of how it worked until I read a description of it: tap A to jump a short distance; hold A longer to jump higher. Certainly, I’ve been doing this since I was a child, but it’s a mark of the beauty of the game that I didn’t know exactly how I was doing it.

Another key difference between Super Mario Bros. and say Super Mario Bros. 3 is that the original game’s plot actually makes a degree of sense. OK, the floating bricks and power-ups are weird, but the world layouts are straight forward. The first level is a plain. The second level is underground or in the sea. The third level is a jumping challenge. The fourth level is the castle, hopefully containing the princess. (The instruction booklet is pleasingly vague about the number of worlds, which means that to those who don’t know that eight is the perfect number of worlds for a Mario game, the princess really could be in this castle, not just another one.)

One thing I like about all the Mario games is that once you get used to thinking like the designers, you have a pretty good idea about which bricks will secretly contain power-ups and which pipes will secretly contain tunnels. The shame about Super Mario Bros. is that since the screen can’t scroll in any direction except for to the right, things can’t be hidden in a hard to get place. Well, except for in the ceiling. Or in a cloud world on the other side of the beanstalk. But for the most part, you know what’s up.

Super Mario Bros. 3 is probably the best game ever. And yet its plot makes no sense at all. The power-up suits are haphazard and inexplicable. The connection between plumbing and Tanooki is what now? Somehow, the game isn’t hurt by this. It’s possible that the game is even enhanced, since the plot is so supramundane. Super Mario Bros. has a bit more pedestrian of a plot, with few things that can’t be understood within the context of the game. In that sense, the strangeness of Mario was something that our world had to evolve into.

Anyhow, I need to get back to figuring out how to jump over this last crumb bum.

“The Mario in the game is you. The only one who can finish this ‘adventure quest’ is you.”

I like the instruction sheet that comes with the game. I wonder if it’s faithful to the original. The level of detail they go into explaining things like “move to the right” makes it seem like yes. The best part is:

(:quote:) 「ゲームの中のマリオはあなたです。このアドベンチャークエスト（冒険）を完結できるのは、あなただけです。」 “The Mario in the game is you. The only one who can finish this ‘adventure’ quest’ is you.” (:endquote:)

2005/9/13

“Hmm, I’m not sure if the level is hard enough, so let’s shoot fireballs at random intervals. That’ll fix it.”

—earthbound kid

I got the 20th Anniversary version of Super Mario Bros. today. I like the way the Mario designers thought:

(:title Super Mario Bros.:)

I got the 20th Anneversary version of Super Mario Bros. today. I like the way the Mario designers thought:

“Hmm, I’m not sure if the level is hard enough, so let’s shoot fireballs at random intervals. That’ll fix it.”