Today I played Super Mario Bros. a 1985 NES (formerly Arcade) Platformer created by Shigeru Miyamoto.
Feels like I've come full circle. This was the first game I ever played. This was the first game a lot of people ever played. With the Crash of 1983 a LOT of people had just written Video Games off as a kind of fad, something that'll wear off in a few years time. So many game devs lost everything in the crash. Mattel, Coleco abandoned ship altogether, and those who stayed, such as Atari, were merely shells of their former glory, producing maybe one gem a year. Nintendo was one of the few lucky developers who had an IP so popular they could just barely skip by, and in 1985 they released the Nintendo Home Entertainment System, a system that single handedly brought video games back from the dead, learning from the lessons Atari made with a STRICT control over everything they produced. Developers were locked into binding contracts that restricted them to only a few games a year, Nintendo had sole rights to distribute those games, they HAD to make their games on Nintendo's own cartridges and, locked out any games that weren't licensed by Nintendo with their controversial "Lockout Chip". Honestly, Nintendo were kinda Nazis about video games, but considering what happened to Atari when they gave too much freedom, Nintendo just did what they thought would keep video games from dying. And they succeeded until the PS2 it was the highest selling home game console of all time.
It's hard to appreciate just what the NES was like back in its day, but you have to remember that until this came out, your home video games either looked like this if you had an old Atari:
Or if you were lucky you had a Commodore 64, and your games looked like this:
So to see a game system that can not only approximate good arcade graphics, but actually had a KILLER app in Super Mario Bros, then you have the recipe for a legend. Video Games are back!
But I'm getting away from myself. How is this game? Simply put? Amazing! yeah, there's a reason this game was so popular, this was unlike anything you've ever seen in a platformer before. There's powerups, the jumping isn't just one note. There's actual physics to the game. In order to make longer jumps you have to get a running start, you can correct your jumping midair, you can carefully plan your jumps and that makes the game a thousand times more playable and even gives the devs more freedom to do things taht weren't able to do in previous platformers.
I do have to fault it somewhat though. Because thought it was arguably the best game of all time for its period, it's a little rough today. The jumping, though improved, still feels stiff and the difficulty curve is far too high. Honestly though these are nitpicks to an otherwise absolutely amazing game. It feels good to be playing a console again. Can't wait to play more NES games.
Next up: The Bard's Tale
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