Matt's take:

Undoubtedly the most respected, revered, even worshipped title in the collection, we come now to Shigeru Miyamoto’s master work, and the game that truly kick started Mario’s career. In 1984 the gaming world had reportedly fallen into stagnation. A portly Italian plumber seems an unlikely choice to save the industry, especially when running through a frankly disturbed world of giant green pipes and talking mushrooms, but apparently, that’s exactly what happened.

This game was bundled with the NES in 1986 and helped spread the message far and wide – here was something truly original. It shaped every platformer to come, and a great many other genres too. It started the great secret hunt, prevalent in many games of today for example. Such was the obsessive nature of the players’ search for hidden tricks and techniques, they even managed to find a few unintended by the developers; the sort of thing they would later work into the games intentionally.

As this re-issue is as exact as you can get every one of these tricks is present, including all the warp pipes to help you finish the game in record time (currently an astonishing 5 minutes and 17 seconds!). The only difference (as with many of the games in this collection) is the high score save, which can be updated at any time. Frankly though, that’s a bit useless, especially when they could have included a proper game save. There’s 32 levels in the game overall, and without using the warp pipes, that’s a tall order for a single sitting. Still, for any who’se played the original all the way through, that may be half the fun. Maybe.

And now we come to the re-release bit again. But guess what, it hasn’t been released for the Game Boy Advance before and is not on Animal Crossing! But damn it if it hasn’t been released on the Game Boy Color! And damn it if GBC cartridges don’t work just fine on the GBA, and damn it if the GBC version isn’t called Super Mario Brothers: Director’s Cut, which means extras. Yes, the Game Boy Color got a version that included the infamous Lost Levels, the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 which was deemed too difficult for Western gamers at the time. This might be a little difficult to find now actually, but I’m sure that those willing to look a little harder than usual will be able to still pick up a copy.

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Stephen's thoughts:

When I first played the nes, way back in 1988, I was treated to Super Mario Bros. I couldn't believe my eyes, a near perfect version of the actual arcade game was now in my friends room. After playing it for some hours I noticed incredible things. Hidden secrets such as special techniques, and even warp pipes that would take you ahead a couple of levels. Some of these things had been done, but not to the extent of what was laid out in front of me.

Later once I had my own nes I soon fully realized how impressive this game was. It set new precedents, and launched hundreds of copycats, hoping to jump on the bandwagon, no pun intended. The Minus world is still one of my favorite things about the game, in case you are not familiar; it is a trick to proceed to a world that has no end, you have to just wait and eventually die when the timer runs out.

All these things are proverbial icing on top of the core gameplay this is Super Mario Bros. The basic idea is that you progress through a stage, while trying to avoid being touched by an enemy, and make critical jumps to progress. Your best defense was to jump on top of and enemy, but how you deal with the enemy depended on the type. Add to this a power ups that allowed you to become a giant, hurl fireballs. Super Mario Bros is a classic in the most basic sense of the word, it single handly brought Mario to a generation of gamers.