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| The Mario Bros. arcade cabinet |
Let's do a little history lesson and go back in time before the NES was out. Mario and his brother Luigi existed back then too, starring in the game Mario Bros.
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Mario Segale might be the
true face of Mario |
Mario Bros. features the two brothers, trying to kill all enemies in each stage. The story is that strange creatures have been appearing to the sewers of New York and the two brothers were sent to investigate what is going on.
Unlike feature Mario games, the screen is static and the enemies cannot be killed buy stomping on them. They first have to be flipped over by hitting the platform underneath them or by hitting the POW box.
A popular story of why Donkey Kong's Jumpman was renamed to Mario, is that the landlord of Nintendo of America, Italian-American Mario Segale, barged into the Big N's headquarters to demand the delayed rent, as the company was struggling back then. The staff decided to name the character after him.
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| The NES box |
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| NES box rear view |
There was also a port released for the NES named Mario Bros. Arcade Classic Series on late 1986 in Europe and US and in 1983 for the Japanese Famicom. Despite the fact that the game came out in US and Europe 1 year after the far superior Super Mario Bros. it sold pretty well and is ranked 91st on the IGN's Top 100 NES Games list.
The gameplay is the same as the arcade version with no enhancements. The graphics and the sound are worst than the arcade, as you might expect as the NES was technologically inferior to the coin-op machine.
Nintendo gave birth to a legend with this game. 30 years after its debut in Japan, the game is still played as a mini-game in some titles or as a stand alone game downloadable from Wii's, Wii U's or 3DS Virtual Console. Mario Bros. sequels come out to this day and each game is a landmark for its kind. Nintendo really knows how to take a classic to the next level and has proved it many times since the series beginning.
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