Hello, my name is SNES Man.
As you guys might know by now, I'm a huge Mario fan.
But lately the series has been pissing me off.
How many "New" Mario games can they throw at us before they admit that they're old?
When it was just New Super Mario Bros on the DS in 2005, I was like "okay" because it WAS
new for Mario to go back to his 2-D roots.
But then there was New Super Mario Bros Wii and New Super Mario Bros Wii U. Both of them
essentially reused the graphics and the music and the feel of a DS game that came out 8
years ago.
How is that new?
Tell me, how is that new?
I'd rather eat a buzzy beetle than buy a Wii U and spend my college fund on that re-hashed,
cutesy mockery of Mario.
That's why I'm giving up.
I'm gonna take some serious time for catharsis and spiritual cleansing.
I'm going on a vacation with Super Mario All-Stars.
Come and join me, brothers and sisters, and let us remember what it once was like to play
a Mario game.
Super Mario All-Stars was an amazing little cartridge released in 1993.
It featured 3 golden NES games: Super Mario Bros 1,2,3 as well as the Lost Levels, which
is the Japanese sequel to Super Mario Bros. In later incarnations, the All-Stars cartridge
added Super Mario World to the mix, but the original release was just those four old-school
games.
Nintendo gave the games a graphical and musical overhaul, updating them for the 16-bit generation.
Now, the backgrounds were fleshed out and detailed.
Now, you could actually save your game!
In other words, buying this game was a great idea.
It had tons of quality platforming stuffed into one convenient package.
So, this is my chance to talk about NES games even though I'm SNES Man!
My inner 8-bit self is doing cartwheels right now.
Wow, I'm pretty stoked right now guys.
This is a big project — so I'm gonna cut if up into 3 separate videos.
For the first one, we're just going to discuss Super Mario Bros.
This is the original Mario adventure, and it's such an iconic game.
True, Donkey Kong and the arcade game Mario Bros came out before this, but they were nothing
in scope compared to this.
Super Mario Bros was the first BIG SCALE platformer of all time.
No more jumping around in a room full of pipes building up your score; this was an actual
adventure.
There were 8 entire worlds to explore, and all kinds of secrets.
Hidden coin blocks, power-ups, secret Warp Zones, and even Minus World (which I still
haven't succeeded in unlocking).
My point is Nintendo was a really progressive force in the 80's.
As modern day gamers, we're all benefiting from Super Mario Bros right now.
It influenced the developers of the 80s to start making whole adventures where the goal
was to win, not just build up a score forever.
That model of gaming has been used ever since.
And, Mario was the beginning of true level design.
But I'll elaborate on that more as we go on.
Let's get down to gaming.
Here we are at level 1-1, my favorite Mario level of all time.
There's just something so simple and satisfying about it.
The level has 16 Goombas in total and just one green Koopa Troopa , so it's not very
challenging in the enemy department.
And there's only a few pits you can fall in.
But the level prepares you for what the game is going to be like.
It lets you ease into things and get used to the controls and the general pace of the
game.
Plus Nintendo even tossed in a few secrets like blocks with multiple coins, an extra
life box, and a pipe that leads underground to a coin room.
In 1985, that kind of dedication on just the first level was pretty amazing.
Super Mario Bros was a trailblazer in terms of level design.
Ever since, the standard has gone up.
Now, if you want to be considered a good level designer, you have to create an original world
with memorable challenges, secrets, and recognizable geography.
And Super Mario Bros certainly has all those things.
When you think of Mario in a sidescroller, you think of mushrooms, fire flowers, stars,
koopas, goombas, piranha plants, castles, lava, Bowser, and Princess Toadstool.
All of those originated in this one game.
And of course, the most famous video game song of all time.
Think how weird of a concept that was at the time.
Yeah, our game is gonna be about a fat plumber (no he doesn't plumb anything, he just travels
through pipes occasionally), yeah a fat plumber who's got to save a princess from a dragon-thingy
and his army of frowning mushrooms.
But the plumber can EAT mushrooms if they don't have frowns.
The frown-less ones make him turn giant and then he goes into a psychedelic rampage.
Honestly, I think the mushroom was the most creative item in the game.
Sure, the fire flower and star were cool but they'd been done before.
Extra firepower and invulnerability were common stuff in the space shooters from the early
80's.
But giving yourself extra health?
That was a pretty new idea.
When you're big Mario, you can survive an extra hit.
Instead of dying, you just turn into small Mario.
That was a great concept because it allows for some trial and error.
In a game about adventuring, you should be able to take risks and not die on impact with
one measly Goomba -- Super Mario Bros realized that.
As far as challenge goes, I'm not sure how to rank this one.
Sometimes I feel like it's a pathetically easy game that I can breeze through.
My fastest speed run using warp zones is 12 minutes.
But, if you go through the game one level at a time and actually beat it the traditional
way, it can pose somewhat of a challenge.
Mainly, the 8th world is difficult.
8-1 is just a long sprint through enemies and it's fast paced fun, but 8-2 is a pain.
If I'm little Mario, I often make mistakes and die on this one due to all the long jumps
and the bullet bills flying around.
8-3 is the Hammer Bro fortress level.
There's Hammer Bros everywhere and they're all like, "Bro, I'm gonna kill you."
If you're Fire Mario, it's a pathetically easy level, but as small Mario, it's really
intense.
Finally, 8-4 is Bowser's final castle and it's a big maze.
It's a pretty easy level once you work out which pipes you're supposed to go in, but
that last Hammer Bro before Bowser is a pain in the ass.
If you run past him too fast, a fireball will come out of nowhere and kill you.
If you go too slow, he chucks a hammer at your head and smashes your skull to pieces.
I swear, Hammer Bros are the hardest enemies in the Mario series because you can't predict
what they're gonna do!
And what about Bowser, or King Koopa as they called back then?
He's a pushover.
You can kill him with fireballs (yes, some people still don't know that to this day)
or you can just run under him and take the axe, cutting the bridge so he tumbles into
the lava.
Mmm, deep fried Bowser meat.
On most of the castles, it's a phony Bowser.
If you kill him with fireballs, he turns into another enemy before he dies.
And then, you get the Toad who says, "Our princess is in another castle."
Thanks, Toad.
You're really the man of the year.
You're so damn helpful that I want to chuck you in the lava too.
Then, as you scream and your skin melts, I'll say, "Sorry, Toad, but my sense of pity is
in another castle."
In all seriousness, the multiple castle thing is pretty repetitive.
Super Mario Bros is a great game, but it can be a little primitive to come back to.
There were a lot of recycled levels and not a ton of enemy variety, but you have to give
it a break.
Mario was just trying out the whole adventure thing for the first time.
Considering that, it's still a pretty good game!
For advanced Mario speed runners, it's the perfect game.
It's quick-paced and simple, but it allows advanced tactics like crouch-jumping and sliding
through narrow areas.
Super Mario Bros has a really heavy gravity compared to later Mario games so if you jump,
you fall right back down really quick.
It's not my favorite style of Mario jumping but I think it works for this kind of simple,
fast paced game with flat stages.
I'm not going to do a "THINGS TO MAKE IT BETTER" section in this review because we're covering
8 bit territory right now, and it's unfair for me to judge games on the same tier as
Super Nintendo games.
I'll just tell you, this is an amazing game and I'm so glad it existed because otherwise,
who knows what gaming would be like now.
Thanks for watching.
This has been part one of my Super Mario All-Stars review.
Next time, we'll discuss the finer point of Super Mario Bros 2 and maybe even the Lost
Levels if I'm feeling extra magnanimous.
This has been a SNES Man Review and I look forward to seeing you then.