Super Mario Bros. (NES) - Negatives - Rerez

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The Nintendo Entertainment System was the very first video game console that I had ever owned. And the first game that I played on the console was quite possibly one of the greatest video games ever made — Super Mario Brothers for the NES. Now let's find the negatives.

Super Mario Brothers is a side-scrolling action game and it's not really the first if it's kind but it did do a number of things that made it one of the most important games that came out on the NES. For one it was bundled with most of the systems that were sold and that kind of helped it along the way. For many people around my age the NES was the first console that they owned and Super Mario Brothers was probably the first video game that they ever played. Now Super Mario Brothers does a lot of cool things. It's got hidden areas, it's got a bunch of enemies, bosses and it's kind of got a goal — to save a princess. Many other games from this time period used the score as the incentive to try and play the game farther and farther but Super Mario Brothers’ incentive wasn't really the score. It was trying to save the Princess. This is a fantastic game. It's got great gameplay, great controls and it's just one of the most solid experiences you can have on the NES. But that's not what we're talking about today. We're going to try and find four bad things about it. So let's begin.

There are plenty of games that offer two-player game play on the exact same screen like Combat for the Atari. But with Super Mario Brothers they were really selling a single-player experience. A problem with that is that if you've ever played the two-player option on Super Mario Brothers it’s no good. It's really like you're just taking turns playing the game. One person dies and the other person plays. You might as well just be switching the controller back and forth every time somebody dies. It doesn't make the game really fun. So the first negative about Super Mario Brothers is it's got a bad two-player mode. Many arcade games from this era used a time limit to push people off of a game and get the next customer in line to play. These time limits were designed to add extra difficulty to arcade games and when they appear in home console games they feel like a hangover from that period. They don't really feel at home on consoles at least when it comes to Super Mario Brothers. It doesn't feel like the time limit adds anything to the gameplay. I personally feel that the time limit is not really needed as this isn't a game about trying to get to the end of the stage as fast as you can. It's more or less a game where you're trying to explore the world and trying to save the Princess. That time limit doesn't really mean anything. Because of that the second negative is the time limit.

The music in Super Mario Brothers is iconic. Just go out on the streets and ask somebody to whistle or hum a video game theme off the top of their head and you're probably going to hear the Super Mario Brothers theme. There's really not that much wrong with it but that's not the only song in the game. There's actually a couple of tracks and my problem isn't with those tracks my problem is that they're repetitive. In the game a handful of tracks repeat themselves over and over and over again. If you play the game from the beginning to the end not using the warp zones you'll hear these songs over and over and they tend to get a little repetitive. The third negative is that the music is repetitive.

What is the story to Super Mario Brothers? Think about it. How and why is Super Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom? Why is Mario saving the Princess? There is no answer to these questions because on the back of the box and in the manual they never explain the story. I know a lot of you guys are thinking well he's an Italian plumber and he gets sucked through some pipes in New York and he shows up in the Mushroom Kingdom. Yeah that's from the movie or the cartoon series that's not actually from the game. Did you ever really think that this story was never explained to you in any way? The only story that you're given in the game manual is that the Mushroom Kingdom has been invaded by a tribe of turtles called the Koopa. The Koopa Turtle King have used some kind of black magic to turn everybody into weird objects like stones and bricks and for whatever reason Princess Toadstool is the only one that can turn everybody back. But that really doesn't tell you why Mario is there and why he even cares about any of this stuff happening. So the fourth negative is Super Mario Brothers has a bad story.

Super Mario Brothers is a great game. There's very little wrong with it. Even though it's got these four negatives I bet you didn't even think about them until I just brought them up. Super Mario Brothers for the NES — four negatives but a whole hell of a lot of positives.