The original Super Mario Bros for the NES, what a magical experience.

[homerhomer]

I can remember playing it at a local bowing alley. They had a VS. cabinet with SMB on it. I thought at the time that the game was just okay for an arcade game. Nothing really exciting. But my opinion changed once saw the pictures of the new Nintendo console in the Sears magazine. I couldn't believe my eyes on how much it looked like the arcade. Not to much longer, my brother and I saved our paper route money and bought a NES. I was blown away how close the console game was to the arcade game. I felt like I had an arcade game at home. Needless to say I was pretty much addicted after that.

[Az]

I always made it a point to check out any arcade cabinets I came across no matter where they were at, and even if I didn't have any quarters I was perfectly content to watch others play or stare at the opening demos. The first time I ever saw a SMB cabinet was at a small pawn shop my uncle owned next to his body shop. One of the guys that worked for my uncle was showing me all about the game and explaining how to play it. After him telling me about all this and seeing him going in the pipe in 1-1 I came away with the impression he was some type of savant. It blew my mind that an arcade game would have all these hidden little things since they all seemed to be such straightforward affairs at the time.

It was strange that other than that first time I've never seen another SMB cab anywhere. I guess once it hit the NES it didn't exactly rake in the dough as an arcade game. Everyone had a NES and in turn had SMB so who would plonk quarters in a machine to play what they had at home?

I honestly enjoyed Alex Kidd in Miracle World better. I don't think it's a better game at all, but I was just more a fan of it.

I was in the same boat. I got my SMS at launch and didn't get an NES until around a year or two later and by then had spent plenty of time with Miracle World. I thoroughly enjoyed SMB and recognized that it was an amazingly designed game and a great conversion it quickly seemed very flat and simplistic when compared to Miracle World. By comparison the colors were muted, the stages weren't varied in composition at all, and really within the first world or so you've basically seen every audio/visual thing the game has to offer and experienced all the gameplay mechanics you're going to run into for the rest of the game. No dialogue, no new enemies or vistas to explore, and you're sure not going to start the next level in a speedboat or helicopter.

That's definitely not to say Miracle World is a better game, just one I had sank more time into prior to SMB.

[Tanooki]

I guess that would be no surprise if most people blew off the arcade SMB. They were fairly close even with the things changed I could see a lot just ignoring it when you have the experience at home. I've always been leery about arcade machine maintenance, but hell I stumbled into pinball of all things so I probably have little room to complain. I think if I came across a VS SMB machine I could see owning it because it is different, though I definitely wouldn't blow off a PC-10 cabinet either given you can store 10 games in that.


As far as Alex Kidd goes, objectively speaking I would find it very hard for someone to prefer it. I played the things side by side and Alex Kidd just has problems in design and gameplay mechanics. Slippery, one hit deaths, rock paper scissors bosses. Sure visually it was nicer, audio that would be a debate, but the mechanics are just lacking.

[Emperor Megas]

played the things side by side and Alex Kidd just has problems in design and gameplay mechanics. Slippery, one hit deaths, rock paper scissors bosses.

You just described several of the things I prefer about Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I love sliding around in that game (especially under rocks), I loved the quirkiness of the Janken matches, and I enjoyed the music more in AKiMW, the special items, the environments, the vehicles, the money bags, characters you met along the way, the Moonlight Stone puzzle at the end...

I appreciate SMB as much as the next guy, but I was just more a fan of Alex Kidd in Miracle World.

[Tanooki]

Sliding was ok, I'm talking how the whole control setup felt like I was on an ice platform as he's just slippery. The janken matches would have been awesome as a bonus for a 1UP, not a way to unfairly kick your ass into a game over screen no matter how good you were doing up to that point which is why I hate them. Music though that's taste, they're good in that game no doubt, just prefer the Mario themes is all. I think the vehicles and the items were very nice in Alex Kidd, don't get me wrong, it's a good game, I just think it had some good flaws.

[celerystalker]

I played Alex Kidd in Miracle World exactly one year after I played Super Mario Bros. for the first time, and in the exact same place (well, the other son's bedroom). The family my parents played board games with had two sons, Matt and Mike, and the New Year tradition went on for more than a decade. The cool thing was, Matt would get Nintendo's newest system, but Mike would get something off the beaten path. In 1987, Mike had gotten a Master System with Alex Kidd and Safari Hunt.

I remember his room as such a 1980's cool place for a kid/teenager. It had wood paneling on the walls, a modest fish tank, a big radio/casette player, and a probably 19" color TV, the sort that had VHF and UHF knobs on the right side of the front panel, on which he played his Master system.

We didn't know he had it until he got home after midnight that night. We'd been playing Matt's NES, which was hooked up on the larger TV in the living room. We'd been playing their new games, Rygar and Baseball especially, all night. I still played a good chunk of Kung Fu as well, getting slaughtered by that jerk of a wizard in stage 4 over and over. Since we'd just gotten our NES, I wasn't as concerned with Mario, because he was waiting for me at home. I got as far as finding the grappling hook in Rygar before getting frustrated, but I played a ton of Baseball. Of all of the games I played during this fundamental time, that is the game that I put the most time into that is all but terrible now to play. Baseball Stars just annihilated it, but I digress.

Mike got home and went to his room while my brother was playing his turn, which was just more Excitebike, because he loved the crap out of that game, and we'd just figured out how to create tracks (which, let's be honest, were just using the ramps (letter H) to do a ton of jumps). Shortly after, Mike came out and invited us to see his new toy.

Alex Kidd was beautiful. I loved how bright and colorful the graphics were, and I loved that he could punch. I still think Mario is far superior, mind you, but I loved being able to fight back without powerups. The vertical scrolling in that first stage was especially novel as well to me, even if it caused me to die a ton trying to escape the stupid reaper. I only made it to the water at the bottom of level 1, but it was awesome.

Safari Hunt was killer. Having more variety to shoot at, different backgrounds, and getting to shoot endangered species was great, and the Light Phaser didn't make that obnoxious noise that would inevitably wake up your parents if you were trying to play early in the morning when you were supposed to be in bed, and the screen didn't flash every time I pulled the trigger. Awesome.

Those games, along with Rygar and Baseball, were what got in my head that night. They were awesome enough to let me borrow Baseball for a week, which I played the bejeesus out of... but I wouldn't own my own Master System for over a decade. My brother referred to it as "Sega Masters" for all those years, and still does as sort of homage to our childhood, I think. Either that or he still thinks that's what it should be called despite revisiting it often. I don't ask, because it makes me happy. You'd better believe that in my initial pickup, I made sure to get Alex Kidd (which was fortunately the built-in game on mine) and Safari Hunt immediately (actually, it came with nearly 30 games, but that's another story), I called my brother, and we met up and played all night.

[CapnNostalgia]

Ahoy Mateys, does anyone know if Super Mario Brothers made it into the Smithsonian, or is it still just Pac-Man? Cap'n Nostalgia really be thinkin' SMB deserves to be in there due to its historical significance and it's part in resurrecting a dead (or dying) industry.

[FieryReign]

Never knew about any other games besides Virtua Fighter at the Smithsonian. Which is silly.

[Az]

You just described several of the things I prefer about Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I love sliding around in that game (especially under rocks), I loved the quirkiness of the Janken matches [....]

A lot of people complain about the controls in the game, either about them being slippery or that they're reversed. Obviously I respect anyone's opinion but to be honest I find Miracle World to be among the most precise platforming control of the 8-bit era. The buttons may be reversed from the platforming norm, but rereleases of the game changed this. The game also came out in '86 and didn't have 30 years of SMB setting the de-facto standard of platformer controls. I honestly think a lot of complaints aren't because of the actual controls but because it doesn't work like SMB.

Personally I don't find the controls slippery at all. I find them to be the exact opposite, they're extremely precise. You just can't approach it with a SMB mindset where you're character is slow moving and you hold a button to run. Alex can be a quick little booger and is set up to move faster the longer he moves in one direction. Higher or longer jumps require a little inertia built up from running two or three blocks prior to the jump.

That could easily be chalked up to saying, "well, it sucks, they should have done it like SMB and the same game would have been better", which is something we will never find out. I personally adapted to the controls and found them satisfying.

Some also act as if the Janken matches are this game breaking Mensa-level mind games that are impossible. The enemies pick the same answers every time. You really can't get any simpler than that.

[tom]

Ahoy Mateys, does anyone know if Super Mario Brothers made it into the Smithsonian, or is it still just Pac-Man? Cap'n Nostalgia really be thinkin' SMB deserves to be in there due to its historical significance and it's part in resurrecting a dead (or dying) industry.

It was a platform game, but just one of many out at the time.
Probably Pitfall would be a better choice, just check out David Crane talking at the GDC 2011, Pitfall was the more innovative game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBT1OK6VAIU


.

[CapnNostalgia]

It was a platform game, but just one of many out at the time.
Probably Pitfall would be a better choice, just check out David Crane talking at the GDC 2011, Pitfall was the more innovative game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBT1OK6VAIU


.

Aye, Pitfall was a great game, but it isn't as universally praised or respected as SMB. Also, it didn't help to repair a dying industry on the level SMB did. The historical significance of Super Mario Brothers is through the charts, matey.

[tom]

In the USA there was no dying industry, after the crash of 1984, people did computer gaming, the Apple 2 and the C64 were hugely successful, and the PC was gaining more momentum. Activision, ES, Origin, Microprose, Mindscape, Broderbund, Sirius, Datasoft plus many more companies had huge sellers on computer platforms.

The NES (not SMB) came along and revived the CONSOLE gaming industry (After a very difficult start, Nintendo's AVS failed twice).
SMB universally praised and respected, I'd say Pitfall was more so, the demographics were just smaller.

[Gentlegamer]

In the USA there was no dying industry, after the crash of 1984, people did computer gaming, the Apple 2 and the C64 were hugely successful, and the PC was gaining more momentum. Activision, ES, Origin, Microprose, Mindscape, Broderbund, Sirius, Datasoft plus many more companies had huge sellers on computer platforms.

The NES just came along and revived the CONSOLE gaming industry. SMB universally praised and respected, I'd say Pitfall was more so.

Home computers were very expensive and niche. Video games had become retail poison. It took herculean efforts of Nintendo to revive the video game industry that had all the appearance of a fad that had ended spectacularly.

[CastlevaniaDude]

This jagoff is back? This guy is nothing but a spammer.

He used to post here as "Retro Videogame Addict," pretending to start discussions but actually spamming.

Then, that failed, so he deleted all those accounts and became "BSlyTheGamerGuy," creating new blogs, spamming twitter and forums with that, and recycling the same poorly written articles that he wrote on that blog.

Eventually, people stopped giving a shit about that, so he changed his Twitter handle to this stupid pirate gimmick, created a new blog, and for at least the 4th time, reposted this SMB review and immediately went right back to the very forums that he was either banned from or laughed off of. The only difference is that he added some really corny pirate talk to his review.

He also creates alternate forum accounts (you can tell, because usually they incorporate the number 81 or the name Bill (his real name is Bill). He was retweeting all of his tweets with two alt accounts, one being GenericGamer81 (whose name was Bill) and one other account. Additionally, he makes fake, super generic comments on his blog posts to make it look like people care, while deleting any comments critical of his terrible writing.

Listen, OP, if you want to have a blog, that's great, but you are absolutely delusional thinking that you're important, branding your shitty Twitter account that retweets photoshopped pictures that you somehow believe are real objects (ie; the NES in a shoe or other mods that are obviously photoshopped) as "official," and getting views only from the forums that haven't yet banned you for spamming.

He's nothing more than a loser NEET with no job who tries to get famous by blogging and playing in shitty regional poker tournaments. You add nothing to any discussion and you are obviously only out to self promote your terribly written blog projects and your asinine fake fantasy pro wrestling title. If you truly loved games as much as you love yourself, you would do something constructive, rather than constantly trying to self promote your recycled 3 year old blog entries here, at AtariAge, and wherever else you go. It's so obvious and pathetic when you make fake accounts to try and make it seem like people are interested, up to and including saying shit such as "THIS GUYS GREAT, HE SHOULD DO YOUTUBE REVIEWS!" The pirate gimmick is the worst yet. Good god, man. Grow up. Go get a job. Get an education. Do something with your life. You're not a writer. You're never going to be a writer. I am a writer. I get paid to write words. Even if you went to school for journalism, you don't have a basic enough grasp of the English language and rudimentary storytelling ability to ever, ever, ever make a dime or become notable. The only thing you are known for is being a deluded spammer who recycles the same 3 or 4 articles over and over. I'm sure Hydlide and Rygar are next, because you've only ever "written" about four articles. You think that when you spam that people don't notice you're the same dude?

Please get the hell off of this forum.

Examples:


Here's an example of one of his thinly veiled spam posts on another forum from two years ago.

Here's a cached version of his deleted BSlytheGamerGuy blog with the Mario Bros. review that he recycled from last year for his new stupid pirate blog.

Here's the same review from his original blog, dated July 2013.

Here he is in his original persona spamming NA with what is almost exactly the same article, minus the pirate language.

In January 2014, he tried to spam NintendoLife with the same god damn article, but the mods removed the links and told him to self-promote in his signature.

Here is his most recent AtariAge spam for the same post which has existed for two years in various spammy forms. In that thread, he is "Retrogamer81081" who replies a bunch and suggests that Bill start doing YouTube reviews. I know this because "GenericGamer81" was Bill's generic Twitter account that he uses to retweet almost all of his posts. This account may have either been deleted recently after he was called out for it or deleted as a spam account. I know this for a fact, because literally the only thing it posted were retweets of Bill's tweets. Additionally, he used like "Manga4Life" or something as another spam account.

Can we please ban this idiot in all of his forms? He offers nothing.

[CastlevaniaDude]

Don't forget to copy your reply over to Nintendo Age where you're also advertising your blog.

This dude has spammed this forum under at least two personas. All he does is make a blog, watch it fail, spam it on Twitter, here, NintendoAge and AtariAge, create alt accounts to promote it, create alt Twitter accounts to retweet himself, eventually get banned or ignored, and then blows it up, creates a new blog, rebrands his Twitter, and copies and pasts his old reviews (he only has a handful) with minimal changes. In this instance, he's changed them to a pirate gimmick.

His old username here was RetroVideoGameAddict. Then he was BSlytheGamerGuy. He deletes all comments critical of him and writes fake comments on his blog, which is pathetic.

I called him out the other day for reposting, and he finally did go back and delete some of his old blogs that he spammed under different names.

Here's an example of one of his thinly veiled spam posts on another forum from two years ago.

Here's a cached version of his deleted BSlytheGamerGuy blog with the Mario Bros. review that he recycled from last year for his new stupid pirate blog.

Here's the same review from his original blog, dated July 2013.

He should be banned.

[PizzaKat]

Am I one of very few people who got this game on its own and not with the Duck Hunt game? My sister and her husband had it but I never had duck hunt growing up.

[CastlevaniaDude]

Update: The delusional spammer has now dumped his pirate gimmick and moved his old twitter to the @Stylinggamer username, which is now a spam account for what will undoubtedly become his newest incarnation of his shitty blog, @EvilRetroAddict.

Give it up, Bill. You're not even clever enough to hide your tracks, let alone the fact that you are a spammer who recycles 2 year old content over and over. You will never be a successful blogger.

Update 2: He has now deleted those names. Why even bother? I'm quite sure in 5 minutes I'll be back with another update with the NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW names.

Update 3: Now, he's @TheEvilRetroGuy backed by spam accounts @MntDewGuzler, and @Gama4life123. This delusional wannabe never quits! And he is in no way, shape, or form even clever enough to cover his tracks. Come on, man. I won't end my crusade until he stops spamming or gets banned.

Update 4: Only MntDewGuzler is left, and he has taken to retweeting weird pics of sexed up cartoon teenagers and vampire chicks. Dude is disturbed.