Improved Mario review. Compleated articl

When one thinks of video gaming, one of the first characters to come to mind is the fat Italian plumber known as Mario. Since his humble beginnings as 'jump man' he has quite literally become the face of Nintendo. This article is going to be having a brief look at one of his early adventures – The appropriately named “Super Mario Bros”, released in 1985 on the NES. This was truly a ground breaking game. The pixels that made up Mario occupied less space than the code, meaning Mario could have near misses with Gombas without dying – this was a first in the video game industry.
The version featured in this article is a re worked version which was released on the SNES, which was released in 1993, truly a testament to the games popularity. The only change made to the game were the graphics were upgraded giving a whole host of pretty new colours, making use of the SNES's power.

The game itself is iconic. It introduced many of the concepts still used in Mario titles, The fat red and blue plumber, the famous power up mushrooms, Toad, Princess Toadstool (later renamed peach) and Bowser.
It was the first game that I ever played, and immediately I was hooked. The famous line “I'm sorry Mario, but our Princess is in another castle!” has become the bane of gamers everywhere.
For a simple platformer, Super Mario has to be one of the most addictive. While always challenging, the levels always seemed to have a simplicity and feasibility to them – always demanding that you take just one more try, because you were so close to getting that jump right.
The game was one of the first in which speed was such an important part of the game. You needed to hit jumps at just the right time and place to end up in the desired location.
It was also one of the first to really test reflexes, running along and quickly jumping out of the way of the flying Koopa Troopa that had suddenly appeared on screen and was hurtling towards you.
The game was a success, and sold 40.24 million copies world wide. That's a lot of players finding out that their princess is in another castle.

Lawrie Rose