Everyone remembers the first game they finished. It’s a memory etched on the frontal lobe of your brain. The triumphant highs as you smash through level after level, the bottomless lows as you die repeatedly against the same annoying boss. This is a sacred rite of passage in the gaming world; it marks those first steps into something no one can really prepare you for. The endless nights washed away in a haze of pixels until the sun comes up, the weekend binges which are just so much better than anything Netflix can throw at you, the repetitive hours learning the patterns of the enemies and levels, the trash talking, the screaming at the TV, the smashed controllers and the fact you plug your other controller in and keep playing. These are all things people who have finished even one game have experienced in some way or another, and once you finish it you want to jump straight back in and do it all over. The game that first gave me a peek of this experience is a little game called Super Mario World.
One small step
The popularity of the Mario Bros. series is what helped Nintendo dominate in the 80s and 90s. The Mario Bros. series can trace its origins all the way back to an arcade cabinet, originally released in 1981 called Donkey Kong. In this one unassuming arcade game we witness the birth of two historic characters who would go on to become pillars of Nintendo’s roster. The titular character Donkey Kong started as the villain of this very game, where (in a very King Kong inspired scenario) he has kidnapped a woman named Pauline who Mario must save. This game showcased basic elements of themes that would become synonymous with the Mario Bros. series: rescuing a damsel in distress, using power ups to battle through levels and overcoming animalistic like antagonists to progress through the game. Donkey Kong is also significant because it was one of the first arcade games to introduce different levels, each of which progressively became harder and harder. While Donkey Kong would go on to have sequels in the arcade format, Mario would go on to have his own arcade games which eventually lead to the development of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Donkey Kong….any relation to King Kong?
Super Mario Bros. and the NES were a match made in heaven, it was like peas and carrots or vegemite and cheese, it was just meant to be. It was a culmination of everything that made the Donkey Kong and the Mario Bros. arcade cabinets great, and more. You played as Mario (and his brother Luigi if you played two player) as they travel through the Mushroom Kingdom to save Princess Toadstool from the evil Bowser. Super Mario Bros. retained that addictive arcade quality of platforming, jumping, running and shooting and racing against a time limit for each level. It helped define what a side-scroller was and helped popularise the style for several generations of home console gaming. Super Mario Bros. 2 introduced new playable characters and attributed certain skills to them, such as Luigi’s ability to jump the highest or Princess Peach’s ability to jump the farthest. It also introduced the ability to walk back in the level, which was restricted in the original. While you can only play as Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. 3, many of these new additions to gameplay were still available as well as new power ups with which to fight Bowser and his Koopalings.
Arabian nights! Like Arabian days!
Into this landscape stepped Super Mario World. Super Mario World was first released on the Super Nintendo in November of 1990. It is the fourth game in the Mario Bros. series, sometimes also known as Super Mario Bros. 4, and was a launch title for the SNES. The plot was simple: Mario, Luigi and Peach are on vacation to Dinosaur Land. Peach disappears and the brothers soon run into a friendly dinosaur named Yoshi who tells of how the Koopas have imprisoned Yoshi’s friends. It seems that Bowers evil minions have taken over Dinosaur Land and it’s up to Mario and Luigi to stop him, free Yoshi’s friends and save the princess. Super Mario World introduced a host of new enemies and power ups but its major addition to gameplay was the ability to ride Yoshi. Yoshi, who is able to get his own power ups by sucking up different coloured shells of Koopa Troopa’s for different effects, helped add a deeper layer of gameplay and challenge to a classic example of the platforming genre.
Haven’t I been here before?
For me Super Mario World is so much more than just another part of the Mario Bros. series. This was a game my whole family played. We played it separately, we played it together, we played two player, and we played one player. Everyone in my family was addicted to it. My mum had to devise a roster of hourly play for each of us if we wanted to work on our own games, but most of the time we were happy to all play in the communal profile. One of my favourite levels in gaming history is the haunted house levels in Super Mario World. The attention to detail here is one prime example of what makes this game spectacular. How the ghosts have different personalities, how each new haunted house represents a new mind-bendingly frustrating puzzle, and how now that I’m older I can see the dark, twisted connections between the Sunken Ghost Ship level in Super Mario World and the airships from Super Mario Bros. 3. Every now and then my brothers and I still hook up the SNES to an old TV and spend the night playing through the levels, trying to remember every little secret, trying to beat each other’s high scores, playing level-for-level-life-for-life and talking trash when someone dies and has to give up the controller. This is a game that has aged incredibly well, and still beats out a lot of modern games for a spot in my top five of all time.
The Mario Bros. series has been a mainstay of gaming for nearly as long as home console gaming has been around. It is one of the main reasons home consoles were able to come back from the video game market crash of the early 1980s (that’s right, the video game market actually crashed, mainly thanks to inflation…and the Atari 2600), and cemented Nintendo as the industry leader for nearly twenty years. If I were looking to introduce someone to gaming, it would be through any of the early Mario games. They all contain the spirit and philosophy of that ancient gaming tenant: ‘easy to learn, hard to master’. Super Mario World is arguably the best of the early series, combining everything that makes Mario Bros. great and adding more to the magic formula. It’s a game I’ve played and finished over a hundred times, and will do so again a hundred more. In fact, I think I might just go and plug the SNES in and have another crack. What was the first game you finished?
