Nintendo Arcade Mario Bros.

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Published on November 13, 2012 10:45:32 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx8gcvWl0rg

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Mario Bros. (1983)

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Mario Bros. (マリオブラザーズ, Mario Burazāzu?) is an arcade game published and developed by Nintendo in 1983. It was developed by Shigeru Miyamoto. It has been commonly featured as a minigame in the Super Mario Advance series and other games. Mario Bros. has been re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console service in Japan, North America, Europe and Australia.
In this game, Mario is portrayed as an Italian-American plumber who, along with his brother Luigi, has to defeat creatures that have been coming from the sewers below New York. The gameplay focuses on Mario's extermination of pests in the sewers by flipping them on their backs and kicking them away. The original versions of Mario Bros., the arcade version and the Nintendo Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version, were received positively.
Gameplay
Information on gameplay referenced from the Nintendo Entertainment System Mario Bros. manual.[3]

Mario Bros. features two plumbers,[4] Mario and Luigi, having to investigate the sewers of New York after strange creatures have been appearing down there.[5] The objective of the game is to defeat all of the enemies in each phase. The mechanics of Mario Bros. involve only running and jumping. Unlike future Mario games, players cannot jump on enemies and squash them, unless they were already turned on their back. Each phase is a series of platforms with four pipes at each corner of the screen (in the old version along with an object called a "POW" block in the center). Both sides of every phase feature a mechanism that allows the player to go off-screen to the left and appear on the right and vice versa.
The player gains points by defeating multiple enemies consecutively and can participate in a bonus round to gain more points. Enemies are defeated by kicking them over once they have been flipped on their back. This is accomplished by hitting the platform the enemy is on directly beneath them. If the player allows too much time to pass after doing this, the enemy will flip itself back over, changing in color and increasing speed. Each phase has a certain number of enemies, with the final enemy immediately changing color and increasing its speed to maximum. There are three enemies in all: the Shellcreeper, which simply walks around; the Sidestepper, which requires two hits to flip over; and the Fighter Fly, which moves by jumping and can only be flipped when it is touching a platform. Players may also make use of the above-mentioned "POW" block, which flips any enemy touching a platform or the floor when a player hits it from below. This item can be used three times before it disappears. Coins appear whenever enemies are defeated and may be collected for bonus points.
As the game progresses, elements are added to increase the difficulty. Fireballs either bounce around the screen or travel directly from one side to the other, and Slipices can freeze platforms, causing Mario and Luigi to skid. In addition, icicles start to form under the platforms and fall loose. Bonus rounds give the players a chance to score extra points by collecting coins without having to deal with enemies; the "POW" block regenerates itself on each of these screens.
Development

Shigeru Miyamoto (above) and Gunpei Yokoi collaborated on the design of Mario Bros.
Mario Bros. was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi, two of the lead developers for the video game Donkey Kong. In Donkey Kong, Mario dies if he falls too far. Yokoi suggested to Miyamoto that he should be able to fall from any height, which Miyamoto was not sure of, thinking that it would make it "not much of a game." He eventually agreed, thinking it would be okay for him to have some super-human abilities. He designed a prototype that had Mario "jumping and bouncing around", which he was satisfied with. The element of combating enemies from below was introduced after Yokoi suggested it, observing that it would work since there were multiple floors. However, it proved to be too easy to eliminate enemies this way, which the developers fixed by requiring players to touch the enemies after they've been flipped to defeat them. This was also how they introduced the turtle as an enemy, which they conceived as an enemy that could only be hit from below.[1] Because of Mario's appearance in Donkey Kong with overalls, a hat, and a thick moustache, Shigeru Miyamoto thought that he should be a plumber as opposed to a carpenter, and designed this game to reflect that.[6] Another contributing factor was the game's setting: it was a large network of giant pipes, so they felt a change in occupation was necessary for him.[5]

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