A history of gaming

Posts in category Mario Bros

Mario Bros – Part Two

Jul25
2011 Written by allg7590

In the previous article we wrote about the development of the character Mario from his early days as a rescuer of the princess in Donkey Kong through to his monster battling antics in the first Mario game.  Perhaps unlike some earlier games which we now consider as classics, the arcade version of Mario was not hugely popular, especially in Japan.  It was the emerging console market which made the game the success is was and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the piece of hardware hosting it at the time.

Although of course a Nintendo development, the game was ported to a number of other consoles including the Apple II, the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair Spectrum.  In general these were well received by the games buying public at the time.  Over the decades the popularity of Mario Bros has ensured the original version has been consistently ported onto newer and newer consoles.  It’s also possible to locate free versions online if you feel the inclination.

Super Mario Bros

In 1985, two years after Mario Bros hit the shelves, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros, a release that would remain the best selling console game for two decades.  While Mario Bros was a single screen platformer, the new game was a side scrolling effort which brought unrivaled playability to the console arena.  To date an astonishing 40 million copies of Super Mario Bros have been sold and Nintendo still support it today, a version being available for download on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

The game did take one or two features from its predecessor, most notably Mario’s ability to jump up and break overhead blocks.  He also gained the ability to squash enemies by jumping on top of them.  Luigi still featured as part of the two player version.  A number of influential websites have variously named Super Mario Bros as the best video game of all time and it spawned a number of sequels in the subsequent years.  Check it out:

 

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Mario Bros – Part One

Jul18
2011 Written by allg7590

Mario Bros is, by luck or judgement, one of the most iconic names in video gaming history.  It was the domination of Mario in the mid-1980s which led to Sega attempting (and succeeding) in an effort to create a character as popular – Sonic the Hedgehog.

The history of Mario however, dates back earlier than the eponymous games in which he featured.  Donkey Kong was the game which created the character of Mario, battling to rescue the princess from the giant, barrel throwing ape.  Witness Mario in full flight below:

So the character of Mario was something of a natural progression for Nintendo.  Two of the developers of Donkey Kong, Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokai, were responsible for the creation of the upgraded Mario, now set to feature in his own game.  In Donkey Kong, Mario is somewhat limited in his abilities and, the developers realised, a new game called for something extra.  That ‘something extra’ was still fairly limited by the technology of the day, but Mario could now fall from any height.  He could also kill his enemies in a slightly convoluted way – he must jump up and hit the platform on which the enemy is standing (a feature that remained in future Mario games).  This would flip the enemy over and Mario would then run into the struggling creature – this would act as a kick and it would die.

In Donkey Kong, the character was known as Jumpman and an apocryphal story relates how the name Mario was derived from the landlord of the property where the American Nintendo staff were based.  The landlord apparently resembled Mario – Italian, moustache, etc.  Mario Bros also featured Mario’s brother, Luigi.

The sewer setting of Mario was also inspired by New York, with its massive network of pipes.  In the game, enemy creatures emerged from bright green pipes and it was Mario’s task to defeat these monsters to progress to the next level.

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