A Review And Analysis Of Super Mario Brothers 1.

0.  author's note: too lazy to fix any formatting issues. 

   0.  About the author’s relationship with the work analyzed below

Super Mario Brothers 1 is a videogame released in 1985. And it fucking sucks. Hard.

The furthest I’ve ever gotten in Mario in a continuous, No-Warp run before dying and rage-quitting instantly was World 3, Level 1. I’ve beaten Mario 1. With Warps. Like everyone else. This officially marks me as the LEAST qualified person to go in-depth about this game. Or does it? Does “playing a game the whole way through” or “experiencing the full game” REALLY mark me as the single WORST choice of critic and analyzer here? There’s WAVES, DROVES, of pretentious, shit-slinging, out of season sweater-wearing YouTube monkeys out there all READY to pull shit out of their ass and stretch it as far as they can with their 2 hands like gum across a 3 hour long videogame analysis video where they cite at least 2 novels they haven’t read and 3 political manifestos written after the 19^th century that they’ve only skimmed through once in the span of a single afternoon and you’re saying that I’M the problem? Since when?

1.  1.    DER MARIO

Since I was 8. And I played all the Mario games that my 10 year old computer could run through emulators, for 5 minutes, and I proclaimed myself a “Mario fan”. Furthest I’ve ever gotten in Mario World? End of Vanilla Dome. Mario 3? Second level of World 8, using the double flute warp. Mario 2? Second level of World 2. Mario Sunshine? Quit 2 stars in. Mario 64? I beat that one! …With 70 stars, over the course of a year. Who beats Mario 64 with ONLY 70 stars on hand? Me.

That is all to say that if there was a Mario equivalent of video essayists acting way smarter than they actually are (which is most of them, anyways), I would be that equivalent. I have skimmed through Mario the same way most aspiring video essayists have skimmed through The Communist Manifesto. They’re all communists. And they can’t read a less-than-a-hundred page booklet the whole way through. I’m anti-Mario. And I can’t play a less-than-32-level game the whole way through. That’s the political ideology presented here. Anti-Mario.

Welcome to Der Mario.

2.   2.   WHAT DOES MARIO 1 HAVE TO SAY?

2.1  BRIEF LOOK AT MARIO BROS. 1983

What does Mario 1 have to say? First we’ll have to look at Mario Bros, the arcade game, the supposed direct prequel to Mario 1. My experience with the original Mario Bros? A level and a half before I quit. It opens with a demonstration, showcasing the abstract enemy-eliminating mechanics present in the game, all to the tune of Mozart’s  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. This juxtaposition of crude electronics and classical music is reminiscent of Walter Carlos’ Switched-On Bach Vol. 1, in which he’d play various iconic pieces on an old Moog synthesizer, before being kicked out and replaced by Wendy Carlos, who’d continue his legacy with the subsequent volumes. The game then throws us into its world proper and asks us a very simple, yet daring question: “Can you kick off all the pests?”, as a giant, grotesque turtle squeezes out of the pipes above. It’s as if to mock the player. The developers place us in a sewer, at the bottom of the screen, below the first enemy we encounter, which just so happens to be a turtle. A sort of symbol of security, longevity even, considering how long some turtles live. Can you REALLY kick off all the pests? Considering even the first pest you meet directly mocks you? Mario will die of either natural causes or methane poisoning before this single turtle does. That’s why it must be knocked over and kicked, so we can defy fate itself. Like toppling an authoritarian regime, Mario, the revolutionary, flips the system on its head and (literally) kicks out (or rather, off) anyone responsible for it. And he does it several times! In the first level! He kicks many turtles! Until he’s met his turtle-kicking quota for the day! Then he gets taken to a special part of the sewer, with gold-covered platforms, with coins hanging above! The US has funded a LOT of coups. The US is bankrolling Mario so he can kick pests off blue platforms in random sewers. Then I got to the second level and the crabs and floating fireballs of doom were too much for me. I died and then I quit.

From the first level of 1983’s Mario Bros, I can infer this: Nintendo were trying to create the Eine Kleine Nacthmusik of videogames, but videogames are not equivalent to music, they’re equivalent to videogames, STUPID.

2.2 NEVER GOING BACK; YOU’RE FUCKED

What does Mario 1 have to say? Well clearly, it says that Mario Bros. sucks, considering that Mario Bros. is just Mario Bros. and Mario 1 is, in actuality, SUPER Mario Bros. I tend to agree! What’s Mario Bros.’ gameplay loop? Watch a demonstration, play the first level, get approximately 3 coins in the bonus stage, fuck up the second level, restart your emulator, repeat ‘till empty inside. What’s Mario 1’s gameplay loop? Press Start, play ‘till the first warp, then play ‘till the second warp, then fuck up the last level, because you don’t remember which pipes you had to go down in order to reach Bowser, press the shut down button on your computer and make sure to keep it pushed for a couple of extra seconds so it shuts it off extra hard. Yeah, that’ll show ‘em. Either way, Mario 1’s way more interesting, since it involves me turning off my computer rather than staying on my computer some more, and in my opinion? It’s always better to be OFF than ON when it comes to chairs in front of computers. I want to be OFF the chair, rather than ON the chair… with the computer turned… you know, off… rather than, than on. I am not taking you seriously if you use Twitter. And if you use Twitter as a personal diary? I’ve bookmarked your page already. To stare at, and examine like an ant farm. And the more mundane it is? The more pleasure I get from it. You’re ON 24/7. You might think I’m referring to you in particular, no, I’m referring to all of you, because you’re all the exact same.

Mario’s JOBLESS now. Mario Bros? Plumbing on a direct US government payroll. SUPER Mario Bros? Princess saving duties. That’s not a real job. Matter of fact, he might be homeless as well. Did he really have a house before Mario 2 USA, where we can see him sleeping in his bed? I don’t think so. This is Mario at his absolute lowest point, and that is directly emphasized by the game’s gameplay mechanics.

A man who’s got nothing to lose never takes a step back. He always goes through with his plans or bouts of unplanned action. In Mario 1, Mario CANNOT go back to previous sections of the level, it is expressly FORBIDDEN. This is a technical limitation. The way I see it? This is mainstream gaming’s first use of a literary device. What’s it called? What does it represent? I don’t know, it is completely unique to videogames as an art form. To show that Mario has lost everything near and dear to him, including his princess, Nintendo opted to make it so he always pulls the screen to the right, and as he does? The level folds, blocking him from unraveling it back. I have never seen anything like this in my gaming career. And I’ve played a LOT of games, matter of fact, I’ve played a lot of SMART games, like Tetris, I like Tetris.
TOP 3 GAMES: TETRIS, DOOM 2, DEUS EX. HONORABLE MENTION: METAL GEAR SOLID V. I’ve finished Doom 2 once. I’ve finished Deus Ex twice. I’ve finished Metal Gear Solid V at least 15 times. There was this period in my life where I’d just beat it, then erase my save file, then beat it again, for months on end. Point is, I play games whose developers tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how to fuck with the player. Doom 2 has endless monster closets and hilariously devilish and cartoony level design. Deus Ex combines speculative fiction with real world events and conspiracy theories to deliver a game that not only makes you think during gameplay, but also makes you think AFTER gameplay, as you lay in your bed at 3 AM thinking “shit, do the Chinese have lightsabers? I mean, they made COVID, right? And they made the virus in Deus Ex, right? So by that logic, they should have lightsabers like they do in Deus Ex. Or did they just manufacture the vaccines for the virus in Deus Ex? In Hong Kong? I managed to be wrong AND insensitive about both a game AND a country at the same time.” Metal Gear Solid V asks you to read books for 5^th graders with its endless references to Moby Dick and 1984. Something that communists STILL can’t manage to do, even after 1157 words of this script. Tetris. I mention Tetris last, because it’s very different from the rest of the games in my “Best Games” list. It doesn’t fuck with you. It fucks you over. After level 9 of the NES version? You’re screwed, dude.

Mario 1 is different in the sense that it screws with both Mario and the player at the same time, as opposed to only fucking with the player. Not being able to go left of the screen after walking to the right? It puts me in the shoes of Mario. A man who, for the thousandth time, is set on one goal and one goal only: rescuing the princess. He has no doubts. He has no qualms. THIS is the mysterious videogamey device (that’s what we’re calling it now) at play. In canon, Mario always rescues the princess by traversing the Mushroom Kingdom in record time, so of COURSE the developers set a time limit and made sure that you can never return from where you came from. Those are Mario’s circumstances. Now they’re yours. They’re heavy, aren’t they? The time limit. Doesn’t it fill you with fear? I mean, it’s generous, sure, but what goes on through Mario’s head? He can’t see it. We all have nebulous “time limits” that we keep in mind, like “I better eat those strawberries I bought before they go bad” or “I better cook this cut of beef I’ve kept in the freezer for 2 months before it explodes”. No, glass bottles explode in the freezer, STUPID. That’s besides the point. The point is, Mario doesn’t know how much time he has, nor does he know what’s going on with Princess Toadstool at any given point of the game. All he knows is that she’s in another castle. At some point, maybe he even enters a state of Sunk Cost Fallacy! “4^th castle without a princess? Shit, I’ll go look for some more castles, I’ve already snooped around so much, NOT snooping would be a total loss!” Toadstool is getting fucked, dude. Mario 3. Koopalings. Mario Sunshine. Bowser Jr. You’re fucked, man. Bowser’s kids are Janissaries, born from an enslaved woman, made to do Bowser’s bidding. You lost. There’s no going back.

2.3.  DRUG JOKES

Listen, I know this is a tired trope, Princess Toadstool getting fucked? There’s at least 700 NewGrounds animations with a varying degree of pornographic content depicting said joke. But you know what joke has more animations? Mario doing drugs. Dude. There’s at least 700,000 animations on NewGrounds just about THAT.

I don’t like the idea that Mario does drugs. “Woah, he pops a mushroom and he gets taller, he gets higher???” Yeah, yeah, shrooms, sure. Fireflowers. What’s that? Stars? Yeah, it starts falling apart quick. Why is Mario the face of videogame characters doing drugs when Pac-Man is clearly the bigger drug addict? I don’t think “Power Pill”  is the official name of the single power-up from Pac-Man, but it’s pretty widespread. He’s popping pills, dude. All the orbs he eats along the way? Microdosing on his way to the REAL high. Or he’s doing poppers or something. Does Pac-Man have an anus? Mario has an anus. And he hits bricks with his head. I like that joke, Mario hitting bricks with his head. His fist is on the same level as his head in his in-game sprite, so I wouldn’t be surprised if  people at the time genuinely thought that he was bashing the blocks cranial-first. People love to mock. Especially the downtrodden and the difficult to look at. People love to mock Mario, for he is all these things.

2.4.  GRAPHICS

Mario 1 is ugly. It’s wrong. It looks like the exact opposite of your typical Mario game. In comparison to Mario 3, Mario 1 looks grimy, offputting, industrial. The question mark blocks are a glowing bronze as opposed to a golden yellow, Mario wears an unappealing combination of ketchup-red overalls and a shitstained shirt, or a jumpsuit. His face is full of either contempt or airiness and pure will. Either way he is not smiling, and that’s not normal. The clouds in the sky look like cardboard props in a cheap schoolplay, the bushes are just the clouds, colored green, the mountains have eyes, some of them have lots of eyes. It’s either eyes or some weird abstraction of craters, or houses in the distance, I wouldn’t know, but it’s offputting, it feels out of place even in Mario 1, let alone any other Nintendo-published NES game. The solid color backgrounds of every level look about as amateurish as they look deliberate and evil, swallowing the player’s soul by the bucketload while taunting him with their abyss-like qualities. The last levels of each world, the castle levels, are mostly grey and red, a nod to death, anger, fire, stillness, lack of life. These are the makings of Mario 1. I’d even argue that storywise, Mario 1 is the last game in the Mario series. Playing Mario 1 or watching it in motion is like a release, like being stuck in the last reveries a dying man will ever lose himself in. The ground in the overworld levels is brown and has cracks all around, as if to signify that it’s been around for an incredibly long time, maybe even too long. The events of Mario 1 don’t unfold at the end of the franchise’s world, they unfold AFTER it. Long after the last flagpole has been claimed, long after the last bridge has collapsed. Sure, they’re still there, but what tells us that Mario didn’t set them up himself? He probably hung up the flags on all the flag poles just to take them down again. It’s evident by his in-game sprite. He’s old, judging by the length of his nose and rough, jaundiced skin, the brown shirt and boots that he wears have an appearance close to that of the ugliest color that us humans came up with in 2012, that we put on cigarette packages to deter people away from them. His design is visceral, he screams out in pain with each jump, creeping ever closer to absolute dismemberment of his legs. In subsequent games, when Mario grabs a fireflower, his shirt turns white, leaving his overalls intact. In Mario 1? His overalls turn white and his shirt and boots turn red. Mario 1 intentionally opts to cover Mario in white, the symbol of life, the opposite of death, in this dying world. And as if to compliment his, either lively and dedicated or angry, face, the inner layer of his clothing is red. Mario is the only man who’s truly alive, the only man who can truly feel the life flowing through him. Watch any expert play Mario 1 the whole way through and they’re gonna be “Fire Mario” the whole way through, gathering additional Fire Flowers for the sheer flair of it. The bride, carrying a bouquet of flowers, walking down to face her husband. And she does. At the end of the game, Mario rescues Princess Toadstool, and she’s wearing the exact same colors as him. Red and White. By that logic, that might lead you to believe that she’s the only other real, living human being in this world, but that relief is quickly cut short by her message to Mario, and her message to the player. “Thank you Mario!” she says. “Your quest is over.” That’s when she starts talking to the player, completely disregarding Mario. “We present you with a new quest.”, although this may seem like a direct continuation of her last statement, it actually refers to the New Game +. “Push button B to select a world.”

That’s all she wrote. At this point in the story, Mario realizes that he’s just a vessel for the player to gain access to HIS princess. If we compare “Fire Mario” side by side with Princess Toadstool, we’ll see that she appears to be way brighter than him. Contradictory to the theory that Mario 1was arranged by Mario himself for his sick kicks, it seems that he wasn’t ever alive. He’s a mimicry of all that is real and true. A bastardization of himself. Princess Toadstool holds the keys to a good time. Will you press Start?

2.5.  Confidence

Mario 1 had the balls to singlehandedly revive the videogame industry with a game about death. Mario 1 is surreal, ultrareal. It has everything good about Asteroids, everything good about Pac-man, everything good about Pitfall, everything that mathematically made up the great games at the time. And it has a terrifyingly good story to boot.