Last year was 25th anniversary of a legend among video games, the portly, bouncy, plumber named Mario. So in order to celebrate 26 years of Mario, and the release of Super Mario 3d Land on November 13th, I want to create a blog entry for 13 of his biggest 2d and 3d platform adventures. Naturally I’m starting things off with the game that put Mario-mania into full gear: Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Super Mario Bros. was released on September 13, 1985. I didn’t play it at the time because I was just over a year old, but boy was I glad to be able to grow up with the world’s greatest video game character. Before that fateful day when my father brought home our NES, my older brother and I had tasted of Mario’s platforming goodness at friends and relatives houses. To say that we were ecstatic would be an understatement; we were excited out of our minds to have our very own Nintendo with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt! I’m sure we fell down many a pit and died from many a goomba or koopa troopa at first, but slowly we gained confidence in our jumping and stomping skills, defeated the evil King Bowser, and rescued the fair Princess Peach (or “Princess in another castle”) as Toad says in castles 1-7.
A quick personal example of Super Mario Bros. staying power after 25 years: While I was in college I bought a Wii and one of the first games I downloaded was Super Mario Bros. Even though I had plenty of Wii and Gamecube games to play, the game my roommates choose to play the most was Super Mario Bros. We even had a little competition going on to see who could beat it without losing a life or even taking a hit, turning into little Mario.
Mario became popular in Super Mario Bros for the NES, but his roots actually began in the arcade games Donkey Kong (1981) and Mario Bros. (1983). I plan on updating this post later to take a better look at these games.
I heard about a poll that was taken in the 90’s where children recognized Mario more than Mickey Mouse. If that same poll were taken today the children might say, “Mickey Mouse who?”. In my book Mario will reign as the king of video games for a long time to come, creating fireball throwing, goomba stomping fun for the young (and young at heart).
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