Super Mario Bros. (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
1,017A playthrough of Nintendo's 1985 platformer for the NES, Super Mario Bros.
It's Super Mario Bros.' thirty-fifth birthday this month.
I know, right?!
I feel like the old man telling stories when I say this, but it's hard to believe that so much time has passed. I got my NES for Christmas in 1988 (first grade!), and it came with the 2-in-1 Super Mario/Duck Hunt cartridge, and wow. I had a 2600 and I had played it to death, but the NES was worlds beyond the decrepit Atari. Playing Super Mario Bros. was like discovering video games for the very first time. Everyone talks about how revolutionary it was, and of course they're right. Nintendo is the company they are today largely thanks to this game, but it's hard to describe in words just how big of a deal it truly was.
But anyways, my gushing gaming origins story-tell aside, Super Mario Bros. is *the* game responsible for the platforming genre as we know it, let alone the lasting contributions it made to shaping the philosophy of game design in general.
And quite deservedly, Mario is one of the most widely recognized pop culture icons in the world. Does the game really need any further introduction?
Here are the timestamps for stuff that I'd like to draw your attention to:
0:06 First loop
9:09 1up trick with a Koopa shell
33:52 Second loop
41:25 Third loop and the Minus world
In the first loop, I play the game as straight as possible. No warp zones, and no bonus areas that skip large chunks of a level.
In the second loop, I take (what is, as far as I know) the shortest possible path through the game. I warp from 1-2 to 4-1, and then again from 4-2 to 8-1. Once I had finally mastered the game as a kid, this was the way I usually played it. It was a great way to burn ten or fifteen minutes before school or for when dinner wasn't quite ready yet.
Finally, the third loop is only played through 1-2, where I show how to access the fabled stage -1. I can still remember kids talking about this one on the playground! Just be warned that once you've done the trick, you'll be stuck in stage -1. When you enter the pipe at the end, the game returns you to the beginning of the level, and the only way out of an endless loop is to get a game over or to hit the reset button.
(Completely random aside: after playing FF7 Remake, now whenever I do the SMB 1-up trick, I can't help but think of the bit where Johnny says, "And then there was this crazy-looking house, right? And it was all like trying to kill 'em! But then Cloud was all like bing, bang, boom!" To which the incredulous pharmacy guy responds, "Your friend fought...a house? ...A house?" The house being a comic substitute for the koopa shell... yeah, weird association, I guess, but the guy's disbelief made me laugh so hard!)
I had a video of this game up previously, but it was showing some cracks from age. It was one of the first videos I ever put on YouTube (about seven years ago now!), and the 240p stream seemed like a poor showing for a now decidedly middle-aged Mario. This new playthrough, recorded at 720p60, felt like an appropriate way to give him a bit of confidence-boosting Botox without going all-out Melania. Mario deserves some dignity, after all.
Needless to say, I love Super Mario Bros., and chances are, if you have a pulse, you do as well. Doesn't the world seem so much nicer when people can universally agree on how awesome something is?
Happy birthday, Mario!
You can see the Game Boy Color version (SMB Deluxe) here:
https://youtu.be/V3FAsFHYQ2c
My video of Mario 2 is here: https://youtu.be/v3YZnbT02P8
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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