NES Challenge - Super Mario Bros in 1:14:12 [200/714]
1I wanted to do something a bit special for game 200 so why not the original Super Mario Bros. Look, there are thousands of videos about this game and the history behind it. One of my favorite memories was biking over our community connecting bridge - this thing was slightly scary at the time because if you fell off your bike, you could slide under the rail and take about a 60 foot fall into the river which was only about 12 feet deep or so. Anyway, after the bridge was a short bike path and a stop at Shopko. They had the demo unit there set for 5 minutes and I'd spend a good chunk of my summer playing those black box games and meeting new people. As kids, we could get to level 8 but I think the farthest we ever got was 8-2.
Now I've never been great at this game, heck I needed continues in this playthrough, but considering the rust and the troll hit, I think it was a reasonable run. I've also beaten it as small Mario in the past, but that was just good timing and a bit of nonsense luck that happens occasionally.
Anyway, It's a great game and truly was the revival of video games. Where and how to rank it is a tough question. Many hours were spent playing this as a kid, it is an incredible game, but now with access to the whole library, where do you place it? There are plenty of better games, which naturally occur over the lifespan of a system, but its importance needs to count for something. You could easily rank this in the top 5 games on the system, but also you could drop it to 50 or so as there are plenty of other games to enjoy over this. Regardless this is a must have title for the system. If you have 10 games for the system, SMB should be one of them; I can't imagine a collection without it.