From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Super Mario Bros. - Getting to Know the Legend
My introduction into a world of strange and wonderful things.

Though I'd been playing video games since 1981, I didn't have a console to call my own until late in 1988--until Christmas morning of that year, when I came downstairs to find an NES waiting for me under our ceiling-high Christmas tree. This was when my relationship with games started to change.

In the years prior, I'd done most of my gaming on my brother's systems--on his Atari 2600 and Commodore 64--and in arcades, where friends and I would pound away at the cabinets of classics like Rolling Thunder, Double Dragon and Rampage. Wherever I'd go, be it to a friend's or cousin's house or a strip mall, I'd find myself immersed in video games. Having fun with games was part of the fabric of my life. Yet, for reasons that made sense only to a narrow-minded 10-year-old, I'd erected a soft barrier between us. Certainly I had a fondness for games--particularly the social aspect of them--but the fact was that I just didn't take them all that seriously. I regarded them as a novelty--as a secondary activity in which I'd partake only after all other entertainment options had been exhausted.

If ever I had a choice between playing games and engaging in my usual hobbies, I'd most likely settle on one of the latter. I saw greater value in going to the park with my friends, watching cable TV (whatever was on Nickelodeon or the four movie channels), drawing monsters, and tossing my G.I. Joe figures into the in-motion ceiling fan, which would often result in their exploding on contact.

Well, it seemed hilarious at the time.

But the truth was that I wasn't an aficionado. I didn't follow the gaming scene. I never felt compelled to read up on games or seek out information. My frame of reference was limited to the games and systems that were right in front of me. And for a long time I operated from within this tiny bubble, my obliviousness its insulation.

Still, I had some measure of knowledge when it came to the NES (the "Nintendo," as we termed it back then), which had become a hot product. I was introduced to it by my best friend, Dominick, who lived four blocks over (on 85th Street, between 7th and 10th Avenue); he and I had been enjoying those from its game-selection since late-1986. Though, it was mostly the early-years titles like Ice Climber, Balloon Fight, Pinball and its ports of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros.--three games with which I was already familiar, since I'd played either their arcade or 2600 variations.

They were all fun games, yeah, but never once while playing them did I feel that they were superior to the games to which I already had access. Really, they weren't that much different from the Jumpmans, the Hard Hat Macks, the Megamanias and those other arcade-style games I'd been happily replaying on my brother's 2600 and Commodore 64 since the early 80s. It never entered my mind that I needed to own one of these Nintendo systems or any of its games; really, I was content to relegate them to the role of "things I like to experience only when visiting friends' or cousins' houses."

Though, as the bigger, more-complex titles like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Contra and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! started to take center stage, my thinking began to shift, if only a bit. Their power was such that suddenly I could sort of recognize the appeal of personal console ownership. But that was as far as I was willing to go. These games were eye-opening, absolutely, but they could only scratch at my mental barrier, whose fortification continued to hold. I remained convinced that I didn't need to own an NES--that what I had now was good enough to last basically forever. And if ever I was feeling the desire to play a Mario or a Zelda, I could always travel a few blocks over and play them at a friend's house.

Things changed, of course. As the years dropped off and it got to a point where I'd replayed those in our existing 2600 and C64 game libraries to the point of fatigue (and it wasn't as though these libraries were likely to ever expand, since the 2600 was now long dead in terms of new releases and my brother had moved on from collecting C64 titles), I could no longer deny that the NES, with its growing library of high-profile action games, was becoming a very attractive platform. It didn't help that my two closest friends and my cousins were always introducing me to the console's newest, most intriguing releases--games like Dragon Power, Adventure Island and Mickey Mousecapade, all of which I found to be worthwhile games despite their having poor reputations (I can be a little too kind when it comes to judging games). Honestly, I was starting to feel left out.

In time, my mental barrier could no longer repel the constant stream of incoming strikes. Soon it would shatter, and the void created by its purging would become filled with a newly developed need for belonging.

Ultimately, I gave in and asked my parents if they could buy me an NES for that upcoming Christmas.

Growing up, I was bit overprivileged, sure, but I was never a greedy person; before asking for any new toy, I'd always check to make sure that it was within a reasonable price-range. That's why I felt a little self-conscious when I asked my parents to buy me the NES, which in 1988 was still retailing for about $200 (a considerable sum, I thought). So certainly I wasn't comfortable with the idea of asking my parents for both an NES and a $50 game, even though the console would be useless without one. And though I deeply desired to own at least one game, I couldn't bring myself to make the request--not even in that feeble, weaselly "you know--since all of my friends got a game with their systems, I was thinkin'..." way.

Now, had I been paying attention, I would have known that the NES came bundled with a game--a Super Mario Bros.-Duck Hunt two-in-one pack, in the case of the currently available SKU. Rather, it was my assumption that consoles and games were, by rule, sold separately (I didn't realize that the 2600 came bundled with Combat, since I was, you know, a newborn at the time). That's what made it such a great surprise when I tore off that wrapping paper and saw the cartridge displayed on the box's front side! I was especially excited for Super Mario Bros., with which I'd been meaning to spend more time (I'd never played it for more than a few minutes, and in most instances I was merely an observer). (Later in the day, I received The Legend of Zelda and Metroid from my aunt and grandmother, respectively; somehow, amazingly, they knew that I was getting an NES for Christmas! I'll discuss their apparent clairvoyance in upcoming pieces.)

In truth, Super Mario Bros. wasn't even at my mind's forefront when I asked for the NES or when I began putting together a list of potential purchases. More desirably, I wanted to get my hands on recent releases like Contra and Double Dragon--and possibly Bionic Commando, which was drifting more toward the periphery but nevertheless had my interest (naturally, I never purchased either Contra or Bionic Commando, since by then I'd played the former to death and I promptly abandoned the latter after I played it for myself and was left baffled by its controls). It could be said that my ownership of and eventual fondness for Super Mario Bros. was the ultimate bonus--an unexpected-though-immensely-appreciated byproduct of my desire for everything but.

At that moment in time, in 1988, Super Mario Bros. was to me the video-game equivalent of the film The Godfather--a classic, beloved production that had long since established itself as one of the medium's magnum opuses yet somehow remained one of those that I'd experienced only in pieces. The complete picture had alluded my stare because, as previously mentioned, I'd only sampled the game; my experiences with Super Mario Bros. were limited to minutes-worth of jumping and stomping my way through the first two worlds. Sure--I'd seen World 8 and watched on as friends attempted to negotiate its challenges, but it was always a certainty that they'd get there by way of the 1-2 and 4-2 warp zones; really, none of the them could make it to World 8 otherwise.

So there was still so much I hadn't seen--so much I hadn't discovered. I knew a lot about the game, yeah, yet I wasn't anywhere near the point where I could hope to grasp its full scope. And that's why I was so eager to finally seize the opportunity.

So that Christmas morning, I excitedly unboxed my new NES; brought it upstairs, to my room; and hooked it up my 20-inch Sony-brand television (with much trouble, embarrassingly, since I was entirely unfamiliar with NES-style RF adapters and twist-on coaxial cables; until then, my experience in connecting consoles to TVs was limited to affixing the 2600's switch-box prongs to the VHF terminals). Moments later, I began enjoying my first truly-personal interaction with Super Mario Bros.

There was a certain euphoria to those early moments. As the action commenced and Mario came into view, feelings of surreality began to envelop me. The surrounding atmosphere was suddenly saturated with a quality that felt strangely unfamiliar yet wonderfully exhilarating. This was like nothing I'd ever experienced.

Now, it wasn't like I hadn't played video games before--or even this specific game; no--I'd played dozens of them. But there was something new about what was going on here. I'd played plenty of games in the past, sure, but never one that belonged to me. That's what was different: This was console was mine. That copy of Super Mario Bros. was my possession, and I could play it whenever and however I pleased. I could spend as much time I was wanted analyzing and absorbing it, and no one could take it away from me or throw me out of the room--tell me to head back the den and play with my own stuff. This was my own stuff!

That, right there, was something only a console-owner could feel. That was the value in having a console to call your own. It was right then that I finally understood what I had been missing all those years.

Super Mario Bros. was instantly captivating. From moment one, I was fully engrossed in it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that playing it was a magical experience. It didn't matter that the game was three years old or that I'd already played it a couple of times: The Super Mario Bros. I was playing on this day in this intimate setting was something entirely new.

Super Mario Bros. showed itself to have more substance than I thought. My original assessment was that the game was lacking for a variety of content and its level design was equal parts repetitive and redundant, but now I could see that I'd seriously misjudged it; rather, Super Mario Bros. featured a considerable amount of uniquely rendered environments, all manner of thoughtfully crafted platforming challenges/scenarios, a system of secret-finding that enticed players to explore the game's spaces and experiment with its revolutionary jumping mechanics, and many in the way of hidden bonus areas. There was so much to see and do! So many possibilities! Super Mario Bros. was "simple" only in aesthetic.

And the game was much tougher than I realized. It would soon become clear to me that its lively, charming overworld theme and cheery renderings were designed to bely its particularly high level of difficulty--that beyond those first few stages lay troubling series of long, tricky jumps and Hammer Bros. onslaughts (by the way: Hammer Bros. suck). But I wasn't scared off by its ever-more-menacing challenges or discouraged by my failure to immediately overcome them. No--it was quite the opposite. I wanted to face my fear--to find satisfaction in conquering these challenges. And I'd credit the game's ingeniously schemed progressive difficulty for instilling such bravery in me; its perfectly plotted incrementation was such that I felt encouraged to keep at it--to play through these worlds again and again and continue improving until such time that I was skilled enough to effortlessly execute that 12-block jump and deftly dash beneath that pesky Hammer Bros.

Though, I had no choice but to put that plan on hold until the next day, since afternoon had arrived and it was time for us to head on over to my aunt and grandmother's house for Christmas dinner! I couldn't wait to return to it!

Over the course of that 9-day Christmas break--a very special time in my life--I spent many an hour joyously exploring Super Mario Bros. every space. (I also put in some time with Duck Hunt and had a lot of fun experimenting with the NES Zapper. I'd never used one before, so I was kind of amazed by it--by how accurate it was. Attempting to comprehend how its technology worked made my brain melt.)

Super Mario Bros. came to occupy a large space in my mind. I played it virtually every day, normally splitting my time between both it and The Legend of Zelda (I spared Metroid only limited attention, since I didn't understand what it was). In those early days, I didn't even bother trying to progress through the game's 8 worlds in natural order. I couldn't; I'd always Game Over in either World 6 or 7 (remember when coins and 1ups actually had value?). So usually I'd stick to the coward's route--take the warp zones in Worlds 1-2 and 4-2. In any such run, victory was a matter of enduring World 8's four treacherous stages, whose challenges, at that point in time, were some of gaming's most intimidating. Conquering them always made me feel as though I'd accomplished something major.

But I wasn't satisfied with skipping over 80% of the game and limiting myself to such cheap victories. I knew that Super Mario Bros. had so much more to offer--that the rest of it was too good to ignore. So I put in the effort to memorize all of the stage layouts and therein increase my skill-level. Eventually I grew capable enough to advance to World 8 warplessly and have enough left in the tank to take down the mighty Bowser! Well, provided that I could get to 8-4 with fire power. If instead I arrived there as small Mario, it would be a sure bet that I'd fall to that final Hammer Bros.

Whether I warped my way through the game or not didn't really matter. I just loved being in its world. I loved that I could have fun with it in so many different ways. Super Mario Bros. made my early days of console ownership a wondrous time; our connection was such that Mario's endearing classic became a deeply embedded staple of my youth. My friends, my family, and I extracted endless amounts of enjoyment from it.

Thankfully my friend Dominick was there to provide me some helpful tips, all of which I would forever remember. It was he who showed me how to access the 4-2 warp zone. He informed me of all of the secret 1up locations. He pointed out that I could evade and wait out the enemy flood at the start of 8-2 by crouching on the stairs' second-lowest step. He taught me the infinite-1up trick, wherein you repeatedly bounce on an overturned Koopa Trooper or Buzzy Beetle shell when it's positioned at the edge of a block and within one tile of a wall. And he told me about a glitch called "small-fire Mario," a state Mario could attain by making simultaneous contact with Bowser's head and a drawbridge's support-cutting axe. I remember spending hours trying to correctly execute the required maneuver; after failing many times--with even attempts that appeared to be successful resulting in nothing--I started to think that I'd been had. But it turned out to be a real thing! You could attain a small-fire Mario state in which the little fellow would briefly expand to Super Mario size while tossing a fireball! Was it worth all of that effort to trigger what amounted to a fleeting visual? Probably not. But it was still really cool!

I can't forget how blown away we were when we learned of the minus-world glitch--when we learned that we could access a -1 stage by clipping our way into 4-2's warp room. We taught the glitch to all of our friends and classmates, our sense of enormity such that you'd think we were imparting the secrets of life. Thereafter it was a race to see who would be first to find the exit to this endlessly looping stage. "There has to be a way out," we thought, since we were convinced that its inclusion was intentional. There was no escape, of course, but that didn't stop us from spending a ton of time trying to find one. And we spent an equal amount of time trying to uncover a hypothetical -2 stage. There wasn't a wall or surface through which we didn't attempt to clip, I tell you. We were sure that it existed somewhere in that game.

In any other era, we would have been critical of Nintendo's sloppy coding, but back then, such things were acceptable. Non-game-breaking glitches, screen-flickering, and slowdown were considered to be essential parts of the experience. They're what helped to make the game what it was. Apparently agreeing with that sentiment, Nintendo didn't remove any of them in the subsequent re-releases.

My only regret is that I didn't engage in a whole lot of alternating multiplayer with my brother and his friends, since I always had a great time when I did. I remember how we'd make up lyrics to the game's music--particularly the underground theme, which we turned into the "Happy Birthday, Paulie!" song. This was of course a reference to the robot in Rocky IV, whose mode of speech had similar pacing and rhythm to the theme's opening strain. Also, it would have been nice to get Luigi some more face time, seeing as how he rarely factored in. And that didn't seem right. He is, after all, one-half of the iconic Super Mario "Bros." and should have been celebrated for holding that distinction.

But alas--the poor guy just could never get his time in the sun.

Even years later, after the SNES arrived on the scene, I was still keen to find new and interesting ways to extract enjoyment from Super Mario Bros. One of my favorite things to do was to snap its cartridge onto my Game Genie (which Dominick gave me when he no longer had any use for the device) and mess with its coding. I spent many an afternoon inputting random letter strains and concocting pages-worth of my own Game Genie codes, the best of which produced floating Bowsers; severed Bowser heads acting as Goombas; strange and unusual minus-world stages; randomly generated dungeons (their type usually inescapable); and normally-dry stages now flooded.

There was always more fun to be had with Super Mario Bros., it seemed. There were always new secrets to discover.

That's how Super Mario Bros. resonated with me. There was a mystical element to it, a certain quality that suggested to me that there was so much more to the game than what I was seeing on surface--than what my senses were perceiving. Even though I'd seemingly found everything there was to find, I wouldn't give up on the idea that there were more treasures waiting to be discovered. Super Mario Bros.'s implicative nature was such that it never ceased having the power to convince me that there was at least one more big secret hiding somewhere beyond those bricks. That I might discover a hidden world if only I could find a way to sail over one of those flag poles and explore past the castles' exterior portions.

Games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and the like were dripping with this quality. The sense of wonder they evoked invited us to dream about the possibility that there was more to their worlds than what Nintendo Power and the strategy guides had illustrated. We were sure that there was a whole lot more to be discovered, and we believed it so badly that we wouldn't allow anyone to tell us otherwise.

Those were the best times, man.

It may seem true that all of that mystery and sense of wonder was lost once we entered the information age--once hackers and data-miners were able to pore over and thoroughly inspect the games' coding and mark their every boundary--but I promise you that it isn't. I know for sure that vestiges of them still exist in places from which they simply can't be purged: in our hearts and in our memories. If we can continue to remember these games as they were--remember how they once shaped our worlds--they'll never lose their ability to spur our imaginations and invite us to wonder.

Super Mario Bros.'s accomplishments were many: Its incredible success helped to elevate the console market and push the entire industry forward. It was the era's most influential game, Mario's platforming classic spawning countless homages and clones across the NES, rival consoles, and even home computers. And it set a new standard for player-friendly controls, its remarkably-well-implemented jumping mechanics allowing for the player to influence a leaping Mario's every movement and control the height, width and momentum of his jumps (playing it now, its jumping controls seem slippery and kind of heavy, but back then, in 1985, they were nothing less than exemplary).

To me, Super Mario Bros. was a touchstone that illustrated how games could have a much wider scope--how those on modern consoles could move beyond what I was playing on our Atari 2600 and Commodore 64, whose standouts were weighted down by their reliance on old arcade conventions, often difficult to control, and at times needlessly arcane. I have nothing against arcade-style games--quite the opposite: I have great fondness for them--but console games needed to expand beyond them; they needed to forge their own identity. Super Mario Bros. helped them to do that; it became their icon. Furthermore, it played a big role in cementing the NES as my favorite video-game platform of all time, which it remains to this day.

In the current era, playing Super Mario Bros. serves to illustrate that Nintendo has sadly forgotten one of the game's most important lessons. The company doesn't seem realize that its original masterwork presented the perfect scheme for progressive difficulty--that you could make a game that was highly challenging without tossing away the element of accessibility. Super Mario Bros.'s desire is to encourage players to improve; it wants them to take their lumps, understand why and how they failed, and then come back stronger. Its amazingly addictive core gameplay, which is formed via a combination of rock-solid controls and great level design, is what inspires them to return; it's the incentive that drives them to keep pushing forward--to gain the confidence and skill necessary to push past previous stumbling blocks and achieve the ultimate victory.

Despite what Nintendo's developers might think, the majority of new customers aren't looking to have their hands held for the entirely of an adventure, nor are they in the market for piss-easy games. This philosophy of "we have to make games that everyone can beat"--this mindset that "inclusivity" should be a game's most important value--is stupid. Not everyone needs to beat a game to have fun with it. Hell--even people who have never beaten Super Mario Bros. continue to play it regularly and enjoy it. It's the challenge to which the masses are drawn; it's what they love about the game. So what if some of them can't finish it? I'd bet that most of them are fine with setting their own goals ("Maybe this time I'll try to make it to World 7!").

That Super Mario Bros. re-releases always speed to the top of best-sellers lists for any system on which they appear is testament to the fact that people of all ages and skill-level adore what the game does. "Simple to learn but tough to master," it shows, is an enduring concept. "Anyone can win!" is not.

Super Mario Bros.'s wonderfully designed challenges are certainly what inspire me to return to it as often as I do. Though I've since become a highly skilled player, I still shudder a bit when I load up the game and those pressing questions start to fill my head: "Will I be able to advance past those two sets of Hammer Bros. on 8-3 without losing my fire power?" "When I make it to the end of 8-3, will I be able to perfectly time my jumps and clear the Hammer Bros. and their hammer-spray?" "If I lose my fire power, will I be able to get past that lone Hammer Bros. in 8-4?" Really, that final Hammer Bros. is the whole game. If you don't make it to him with fire power, he can be an absolute terror; you might be effectively screwed. Man--Hammer Bros. are absolutely monstrous in this game!

But that's the appeal of its challenge: You dread the confrontations to come, but you enjoy the ride so much that you're driven to see the game through to its completion no matter what it throws your way.

That, Nintendo, is what makes Super Mario Bros.-brand action what it is.

Games on the NES would come to look better. They'd become more complex. And they'd grow ever-broader in terms of length and scope. But none would ever render the original Super Mario Bros. obsolete. No--Mario and Luigi's console opus would stand the test of time like no other. Its simple, whimsical aesthetic; iconic musical theme; instructive level design; and revolutionary control scheme would come together to form the image of an unforgettable, timeless classic. And it would continue to appeal to mass audiences in eras wherein its competition were big-budget epics made for machines that measured in at thousands-of-times-more-powerful than the NES.

Indeed, the old legends never die.