Retro game review: Mario Bros. (Nintendo Entertainment System)

retro-room (63)in #gaming • 6 years ago

After Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., but before the revolutionary Super Mario Bros. we were introduced to Mario’s brother Luigi in their first teamup outing in plain ol' Mario Bros. Hitting arcades in 1983, Mario Bros. was another success in Nintendo’s early days before the NES made them a household name.

In 1986, Mario Bros. was ported to the NES, as most of their other arcade hits had been. Let’s see how it turned out.

Gameplay

In Mario Bros., you control Mario or Luigi (in 2 player mode) as you clear wave after wave of critters who have infested the sewers below the city. Being an earlier arcade game, this is a single-screen experience with no scrolling involved. If you run beyond the left or right side of the screen you reappear on the opposite side.

Mario and Luigi are tasked with clearing waves of turtles, crabs, bugs and other creatures who are pouring out of the pipes at the top of the screen. You can’t attack them directly, but instead you need to hit the ground below them to knock them off their feet. Turtles take a single hit, crabs take two hits (and become faster after being hit the first time) and bugs bounce instead of walk, requiring you to anticipate where they will land so you can line up your jump below them.

Upended creatures will remain upside down for a short amount of time so you can run over and kick them off the stage. If you take too long, they are able to right themselves and turn blue, which makes them move much faster. Therefore removing them once they’ve been popped is really important. Every creature you kick off the board causes a coin to pop out of the pipes, which adds to your score.

After few levels, you’ll encounter a bonus stage which involves collecting a set number of coins before the timer runs out. These are great for boosting your score and a nice change of pace from the levels full of stuff that wants to kill you.

In addition to the critters pouring out of the pipes, there are environmental hazards slowly introduced to make your life a bit harder. Fireballs appear on the edge of the screen and shoot from right to left or vice versa. Ice cicles, will show up and freeze platforms and make them a slippery hazard. While there are no power-ups in Mario Bros, you are given a POW block with three uses that will hit every critter on the stage, as long as their feet are in contact with the ground.

Controls for the game are overall pretty good. Mario and Luigi move quickly and responsively. They do, however, suffer from the “Ice Climber” effect, where short jumps move your character very slightly to the right or left, which can sometimes make climbing levels more difficult than it should be.

Presentation

The characters and sprites are rendered in good detail, with the turtles, bugs and crabs having enough detail to see nuances in their designs and even the facial expressions of the crabs when they’re angry. Other elements are nicely defined as well. Animation is adequate, though far from impressive. Colors of the sprites are bright and colorful, using a smart selection of the NES palette, though backgrounds are all a boring and static field of black.

There’s really not a lot of music in the game. The title screen has a nice theme and there’s a short musical piece that plays a the start of each level, but that’s about all there is in the music department. Sound effects are nice, from the sharp ‘ping’ noise of picking up coins to the rumbling threat of an incoming fireball.

Verdict

I have a soft spot for this game, as it was one of the three games I got with my NES as a kid. Its an arcade game through and through, so the gameplay is fairly shallow. You’re not going to be exploring huge worlds or going on an epic adventure. Its about clearing screen after screen of increasingly difficult enemies. However its a genuinely fun game even 30+ years after its release. It looks and sounds nice, plays well and is a great game to play with a friend. Definitely recommended.