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Running & Jumping through the Mushroom Kingdom on the go.
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Console: Nintendo 3DS (Virtual Console) |
I’ve got a
small confession to make. Even though I’ve been a Nintendo ever since I was
eight years old, I’ve never really been into Mario. Yeah, I played Mario Kart
and played through New Super Mario Bros. a little on a now-dead R4 card but
that’s was it. Mario just never really spoke to me. It was Pokémon that hogged
almost all of my game time back then. It wasn’t until Super Mario Odyssey that
I started to develop a taste for the red plumber. I enjoyed that game and over
the next three years, my appreciation for Mario started to grow. After
re-discovering the Wii, I picked up Super Mario Galaxy, started to look into
more of Mario’s history. Side-games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash
Bros. Ultimate, which I had a lot of fun with playing with my friends, helped
as well.
With Super Mario 3D
All-Stars now
setting on the shelf behind me and Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury in my
sights, I came to the conclusion a few weeks ago that I’m finally on the Mario
train. What I also did during this time was start playing Super Mario Bros
Deluxe. I had gotten the virtual console version on the Nintendo 3DS from
Nintendo years ago like many others. Since I now consider myself a Mario fan
and to celebrate Mario’s 35th anniversary, I feel like talking about the game
and what better way to do that then in a review? Is this handheld version of
the original Super Mario Bros. game the definitive way to play it or is it
better to stick with the original? In my opinion, the deluxe package is more
than worth it.
Let´s dive in.
I’m pretty
sure that every game knows the basic setup and gameplay for a Mario game but,
for the record, here it is once more. In Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Princess
Peach is kidnapped by Bowser and Mario must now rescue her. You do this by
making your way through the Mushroom Kingdom, running and jumping across
platforms and enemies alike with some nifty power-ups to help you along with
the job. Scattered across each stage, either just floating in the air or
contained in blocks, are coins. Collect 100 of them and you’re rewarded with an
extra life. There’s also a nifty score meter at the left top corner of the
screen. Every action you take, from defeating enemies to collecting coins to
getting a power-up gives you a certain amount of points. After finishing a
level by touching the flag-pole, your total score will be summed up with the
time you still had left. After a game-over, how far you got into the game and your
score is recorded so you can use it to show off to others if you wanted to.
To get my
thoughts on Super Mario Bros. itself out of the way first, I think it’s quite
good especially for its time. The game is easy to understand and thus play and
the gameplay loop is both fun and addictive making you come back to the game
often. I think it doesn’t quite hold up these days, the limited amount of
assets can only make the levels feel that different from each other, but that’s
only a minor complaint really. The developers managed to differentiate each
world and level much better then I thought they would. Water levels might look
very similar to each other, but the enemy placement and types of enemies do
enough in making the levels feel different. It ramps up the difficulty later in
the game quite nicely as well. The screen-crunch admittedly is a problem. To
fit the entire game on the much smaller screen of the Gameboy Color, the
borders of the screen are cut off. You can adjust the view of the screen by
pressing the D-pad and while it works, it’s not ideal.
Super Mario
Deluxe. doesn’t just make the original Super Mario Bros portable, but it adds
in a slew of new features. The biggest one is definitely the save feature.
Unlike in the original game, you can save the game at any time without losing
most of your progress. This turns the game from an arcade-style ‘do it all in
one sitting’ to one that is a perfect ‘pick up and play’ title. You do lose all
of your coins and your score-meter is reset every time you come back to the
game but its an understandable trade-off. The game, and by that I specifically
mean the scoring system, would’ve been pretty broken if you could just carry
over your score. It also means that if you want to unlock the games ‘bonus’ you
need to be a genuinely good player.
What is this bonus? Well,
technically speaking, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is a port of not one but two
games. If you manage to score over 300.000 points in the game after defeating
Bowser, you’ll unlock Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels under the name ‘Super
Mario Bros. for super players’. For those of you who don’t know, The Lost
Levels is the original Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan. This game was deemed too
difficult for Western players so a different Super Mario game was created for
us, our Super Mario Bros. 2. Be aware though: the difficulty of the Lost Levels
must not be understated. The levels in that game truly are very hard so if you
go into them unprepared by ready to get your ass kicked something fierce. A
nice bonus, but not for everybody.
Aside from
the bonus in the form of The Lost Levels, there are also a ton of different
modes added to the game. First off, there’s the challenge mode. Once you’ve
completed a level, you can replay it in a slightly remixed fashion. The layout
of the levels themselves have not changed, but enemy placement and behaviour
has. There are also new collectables to find in the form of red coins and Yoshi
Eggs. With the Vs. Mode, not available on the virtual console version I might
add, you can race against any other player in a set of levels specifically
created for this mode. In ‘You VS. Boo’, unlocked after scoring 100.000 points,
you can do the same but against a computer-controlled Boo instead. Lastly, you
got the toy box and fortune teller which can give you a boost in the form of
free power-ups should you be lucky enough.
Conclusion
All in all,
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is quite the package. It not only includes the
original Super Mario Bros., which is still as good as ever alongside a plethora
of new content. From the new save feature to the Lost Levels to a challenge
mode, there’s enough here to keep you busy for a while. The screen crunch is a
bit of a shame and the age of Super Mario Bros. is definitely starting to show
but that’s not enough to keep this game down.
There are a lot of ways to play Super Mario Bros. these days, like through the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service, but the extra amount of content Super Mario Bros. Deluxe offers makes it worth picking up over those other versions.
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