Classic Games revisited – Super Mario Bros.
Alan looks at just how Super this underdog plumber turned out to be…
Over the past few editions I have been revisiting classic games and assessing how well they have stood the test of time. This month I wanted to pay tribute to the Famicom - which celebrated its 40th anniversary in July 2023 (Ed. – “Wow - am I really that old?!”).The Famicom was Nintendo’s cartridge console for the third generation and was originally launched in Japan in 1983. It was then redesigned and re-launched as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for its roll out across the USA and then Europe during 1985-1987. Although slightly different machines, they did run the same 8-bit games, and with the help of Sega’s Master System they can claim significant credit for the explosion in the home gaming market in the late 1980s.
In honour of the Famicom’s milestone birthday I will be talking about Super Mario Bros. - the game that changed gaming forever, became the must-have title for the NES and went on to break sales records for fun.
Are you living in a cave?
It is hard to imagine that there could be anyone on the planet that hasn’t heard of Mario, and a brief venture into the murky world of the interweb only serves to confirm just how insanely popular Nintendo’s poster-boy has become. A bit of Googling directed me to a number of gaming sites that had compiled various charts, lists and polls. And you don’t need me to tell you where this is going…
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The most iconic video games character of all time? - Mario.
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The 25 most popular video game characters of all time? Number one was, yep, you guessed it - Mario.
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The video game character to appear in the most games? Once again, Mario sits on top of the pile, with an astonishing 275 game library under his belt, released for the various Nintendo consoles and handhelds dating back to the Game and Watch units from 1982.
Gaming royalty?
Created by Shigeru Miyamoto and voiced by Charles Martinet, Mario has become an undisputed legend of video gaming. And I would venture to suggest that it was Super Mario Bros. that really cemented his place in history.
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Mario made his original debut in the 1981 arcade classic Donkey Kong, and then appeared in the single-screen wraparound arcade platform game Mario Bros. in 1983. But it was Super Mario Bros. that catapulted him into superstardom. The game was released for the Famicom in 1985 and on arcade machines and the NES in USA and Europe in 1986-1987. It didn’t just rewrite the gaming rule-book; it tore it up and started again, including many gameplay elements that we later took for granted but at the time were quite unusual, pretty special and brilliantly executed.
It helped pioneer side-scrolling platform games (it wasn’t the first – that honour goes to Jump Bug from 1981, but it was the first side scrolling platformer to achieve stratospheric popularity). It also made great use of hidden blocks and secrets, some of which were pretty mind-blowing for the time; none more so than the ability to jump outside of the apparent play area and run along the top of the screen to reach the warp-zones and other secret areas. The first time I achieved this I genuinely thought I’d found a bug in the game!
None of this was unique. Easter eggs had been regularly appearing in games since the 1970s (with Atari’s Adventure perhaps being the best known example). But combine them with flawless execution, slickness, and sheer playability and you have a game that became the undisputed killer-app for the Famicom and the NES.
Record breakers
Let’s talk sales for a moment, and we ought to - since the numbers are breathtaking. Even by today’s standards the figures are remarkable, but they are even more impressive when you consider that this is a release from almost 40 years ago – a time when home video gaming was proportionately more expensive and significantly less accessible than it is today. The original NES game sold over 40 million units by the year 2000. If we factor in ports and re-releases it is estimated that in excess of 58 million units have now sold worldwide. These numbers earned it a Guinness World Record as the best-selling video game of all time, and it carried this title proudly until it was finally dethroned by Wii Sports in 2006.
We all remember our first time…
I remember playing the game when it was first released in the United Kingdom. There was an arcade machine in the leisure centre where I used to play five-a-side football early on Sunday mornings. As I became increasingly proficient I had to get up earlier and earlier to allow sufficient time for my pre-match video gaming session, eventually arriving more than an hour before we were due to play to fit a full game in!
This was the first arcade machine I remember where coins bought time on the machine, rather than a specific number of credits, presumably because a skilled player could make a single game last an hour or more!
Confession time
However, I must confess that this is not really a true revisit. For this feature I will usually boot up a game that I haven’t played in years, to see if it is still as good as I remember or whether my memory is playing tricks on me. But I don’t need to revisit Super Mario Bros. because I still play it often. I keep returning to it, even now, simply because it is just so bloody good.
I don’t use this word often…
In fact good doesn’t do it justice. We are talking off-the-scale extraordinary. We are talking jaw-dropping exquisiteness. This is a game that changed an industry. The design, the gameplay, the difficulty, the learning curve, and the graphics and sound (for the time) are all perfect. And that is not a word I throw around with abandon. But it is, quite literally, gaming perfection. Give me the game and a magic wand and I would change nothing.
It is normal for a Pixel Addict game review to conclude with individual scores for Graphics, Sound, Grab Factor and Playability, along with a Verdict final score. But that would be pointless; they would all be 100%. I literally cannot fault it. When I review a platform game, even in 2023, I always compare it to Super Mario Bros. This game is my personal barometer for gameplay, my litmus test against which platform games will forever be measured. I have played a fair number over the years, with many Mario games among them (of course). But while they have grown in complexity and in later years have become increasingly impressive by throwing 3D and high definition graphics into the mix, none have nailed the gameplay experience quite as flawlessly as Super Mario Bros.
In a running feature last year, the editors of Pixel Addict voted Doom as the greatest classic video game of all time. When making the judgement, all sorts of factors were considered. Doom won through (against some astonishingly stiff competition) in part due to its role in history, by helping drive the popularity of network gaming and the first person shooter genre. And while it would be completely out of character for me to disagree with my fellow editors (Ed. – “Stop it Grapes – you are killing me!”), if I am rating straightforward pickup-and-play gaming genius, Super Mario Bros. takes the crown. Classic video gaming simply does not get any better.
A belated happy birthday Famicom. And thank you.
AG August 2023
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Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 15.
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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com​
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Capcom Arcade Stadium – Review
Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows and PS4, 2021
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Alan sits down to dine at a rather tasty coin-op pick ‘n’ mix
Capcom is a name instantly associated with 1980s/1990s coin-ops. Perhaps not as prolific as Taito, Namco or Atari, but nonetheless they rapidly rose to prominence in the mid 1980s with a series of great titles that helped reinvigorate the gaming market after the crash of 1983. So, while browsing the store on my Xbox Series X, I was more than a little intrigued when I stumbled across Capcom Arcade Stadium.
You Pays Your Money You Takes Your Choice
Capcom Arcade Stadium was released for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows and PS4 in 2021, and is effectively a compilation of some of Capcom’s best known arcade games. But the clever twist here is that the core platform is free and you then download as many (or as few) of the compatible games as you like, each priced at £1.69.
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There are 32 titles available, offering plenty of choice - although (in line with Capcom’s library) the selection is weighted a little towards shoot-em-ups and beat-em-ups. I immediately went for those games I spent far too much money on in the arcades, starting with 1942, 1943: The Battle of Midway, Street Fighter II and Commando.
Expensive or Flexible?
Now I have to admit as to being in two minds over the pricing structure. On the one hand, it might be argued that this downloadable content method of acquiring the games could be viewed as rather expensive - over £54 to purchase all 32 titles seems a tad high, especially considering that a modified original Xbox, Wii, or handheld unit containing all these and thousands more games can be bought privately for not much more.
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However - on the other hand it is a nice touch that you only need to buy those titles that you want, and with each game costing little more than a packet of crisps you can build up your library over time without really noticing the outlay at all.
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On balance I’d give it the thumbs up. Yes it might be a little pricier than other methods of playing retro titles, but it offers a modern gamer easy access to some absolute classics. Furthermore, you can play them on a large telly with a modern wireless controller, with some added viewing and gameplay options not available on the originals; a comfort and convenience that may well appeal to those less committed gamers that don’t go in for full-on emulation or collecting the original hardware and software.
Options Aplenty
Presentation is excellent; you are transported back in time with the game selection screen resembling a series of arcade cabinets, where you cycle through the titles available. A quick tap of the shoulder buttons will apply some filters, enabling you to either browse by genre, those games you own, your favourites, or you can view the entire downloadable library.
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The settings menu offers some impressive options that emulate the pixilation and scan lines that would have been present in the original arcade cabinet’s VDUs. Not only that, but you can also choose from viewing the games in full-screen or in a cabinet type view, showing the screen surround, a little view perspective and even offering glimpses of other titles running in the cabinets alongside you while tackling your game of choice. You can even rotate your view 90 degrees should you be playing on a screen turned the same way, enabling a near perfect fit for those games that display in 16:9 vertically (or similar).
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There are added gameplay options too. The left controller trigger alters the speed that the games run, with two slower and two faster options available. The slower options are perfect for working out how to clear a difficult section, though I am not quite sure why anyone would want to use the faster ones! The right trigger rewinds the last five seconds or so of gameplay, so if you make a silly mistake when chasing a high-score it can easily be corrected. It works particularly well if you are stuck at a certain part of a game and you want to practice without having to play all the way through to that point each time.
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Also, holding the (Xbox) X button (Ed. – “It may be a different button other controllers...”) enables an auto-fire - ideal for those that want to avoid calling in to work on a Monday morning with RSI from mashing that fire button all weekend!
Gameplay Matters
The games play exactly as you remember; the ROMS are completely accurate, and as an added bonus you can choose between the Japanese or the European versions, should you be that way inclined.
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Overall I had an absolute blast exploring the delights that Capcom Arcade Stadium has to offer. With some belting titles available there is something here for everybody. And should 32 Capcom classics not be quite enough for you, you could always go and explore Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium (2022) which adds a further 32 downloadable titles, including the likes of Black Tiger, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo and more top picks from the Mega Man and Street Fighter series (though I might suggest that seven different versions of Street Fighter across the two packages may just be a couple too many!).
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All in all though, this is great fun, very slick, extremely well presented and an absolute must for Capcom coin-op fans.
Graphics - 87%
​​Perfect reproductions of the original games, with the added bonus of tweaking the visuals with filters to emulate that 80s cabinet look. A brilliantly intuitive and slick front end holds everything together.
Sounds - 90%
​Exactly as you would expect from the many available titles.
Grab-Factor - 95%
Some stellar arcade hits are on offer here with something for everyone. If you don’t dive straight in and have fun with this, I would be seriously questioning your gaming credentials!
Playability - 96%
​A fabulous selection of games - all with terrific arcade pick-up-and-play appeal.
Verdict - 91%
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AG - April 2025
Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue xx.
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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com
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