Collection essentials #100, 101 & 102: Super Mario Bros. and its combo carts (NES)

I didn’t intend for item #100 to be one of the most famous and significant video games in history, but here we go.

You knew it was coming. It’s Super Mario Bros.! The game that lit the world on fire in late 1985 and made Mario into one of the most recognizable cultural icons in existence. As I’ve said before, the NES resurrected the home console video game market in North America from almost literal death, but don’t forget that consoles themselves are nothing without their games, and this is the main game that was responsible. 

What IS Super Mario Bros. exactly and how did it stand out? It’s a side-scrolling platformer game, and it certainly wasn’t the first platformer. I’ve already talked about Pitfall, for example, which came on the older Atari 2600. And it wasn’t even the first SCROLLING platformer (in other words, the screen moves with your character). But Super Mario Bros. so much raised the bar and set the standard for what a platformer is supposed to be that it blew everyone away. 

In Super Mario Bros., you control this little guy Mario who moves swiftly and can jump much higher than his own height. He doesn’t wield any kind of weapon to start with, though there are many enemies he can defeat by jumping on them. He can also hit the underside of blocks while jumping to either break them, collect coins (100 of which gives the player an extra life) or find power-ups. Upon powering up twice, Mario gains the ability to shoot fireballs to defeat enemies with. There’s also a bouncing star that provides a temporary super power-up that makes Mario deadly to the touch as he flashes for a short time. Gameplay primarily consists of making challenging jumps and dodging and/or defeating enemies to make it to the end of each level, of which there are over 30. There are many coins to collect to find extra lives, and hidden secrets such as invisible blocks which can grant the player additional lives or even warp to a later part of the game. There are even underwater levels where Mario swims and dodges enemies, unable to defeat them unless he has the fireball power-up. Don’t ask how Mario can breathe and shoot fire underwater!

It’s hard to overstate how mind-blowing Super Mario Bros. was when it first released, being such a step above what came before it. The biggest thing that Super Mario Bros. got right was the physics. Mario was blessed with the ability to control his movement somewhat in midair, and he can also run and build up momentum for greater jumps. The result is a game that FEELS so much fun to play in a way that no platformer had at this point in time. Games also didn’t tend to have a lot of content, so having a few dozen levels to explore that were so finely crafted and not meant to drain an arcade player’s quarters was something absolutely groundbreaking. The game only had a few songs for background music, but the tracks did include are catchy and have become some of the most recognizable in the world of video games, especially the main theme that plays right in the first level.

Super Mario Bros. had an enormous influence and is one of those games that practically every future game in its genre borrowed from after its release. Whether it be the physics, having little collectibles for extra lives, power-ups or secrets, pretty much every platformer released after 1985 seeks to carry the spirit of Mario in some way.

A little while after its initial release, Nintendo manufactured a cartridge that featured both Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (shown in the photo) and packaged it in with new NES consoles, which meant first-time buyers were getting two great games, and it turned out to be a hugely successful move. The Mario/Duck Hunt cartridge is one of the most common video games in existence and is itself iconic. Later there was another variant that came with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt AND a third game, World Class Track Meet, but that one wasn’t so prominent.

I’ve talked a lot of how impressive Super Mario Bros. was when it was released, but how about now? Well, probably not many experienced gamers would pick this as their all-time favorite Mario game, but despite that the game is still great fun to play due to having a timeless appeal. They really did more or less perfect how the physics of a Mario game should be nearly 40 years ago. Some things about the game might feel odd in modern times, such as the inability to walk backwards to previous parts of a level if you missed something, but nothing will ruin the enjoyment of the game.

Super Mario Bros. remains a mandatory game for anyone who has the slightest interest in classic video games. It’s that big of a deal, and will always be entertaining to people of all ages and generations. The pinnacle of collection essentials.