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Classic Game of the Week  Mario Bros.
- By Eric Tajchman


The second title to feature our plumber was the single-screen platformer Mario Bros. This time, instead of saving damsels in distress and battling mischievous Kongs, our mustachioed hero must scourge the city’s sewers of rascally creatures

Mario Bros. takes a different turn than Donkey Kong. The object of the game is to guide your respective plumber, Mario or Luigi, through a single-screen structure where little evil creatures come out through pipes. You must first flip them over by hitting the floor beneath them and then run over them to eliminate them. You can also use the POW block located at the bottom to flip over every enemy on the screen, but it can only be used 3 times. Every so often, you’ll be treated to a bonus level where you will be able to grab coins to raise your score.

The game was based off the main character from Donkey Kong, but some changes were made to Jumpman before Mario Bros. Jumpman was renamed Mario after Mario Segale, the landlord of the warehouse where Nintendo of America put together the first arcade cabinets of Donkey Kong. Segale had complained to Minoru Arakawa, then president of Nintendo of America, about the rent being late. Arakawa eventually repaid him and immortalized him by renaming Jumpman to Mario. Also, many people that Shigeru Miyamoto, original designer of Donkey Kong and Mario, commented that Jumpman looked more like a plumber than a carpenter. Miyamoto changed Mario to a plumber and set the game underground with creatures coming out of pipes.


Mario Bros. (Arcade Version)

This second game featuring Mario was also the first game to show off his brother, Luigi. Luigi was introduced to allow simultaneous 2-player gameplay. Not only could you fight the reptiles and rodents that came through pipes, you could battle one another. By jumping on someone’s head or hitting the ground beneath them, you can temporarily disable them and destroy creatures they had their sights on and gain their points.


Mario Bros. (Atari VCS Version)

The game appeared on many systems, some more powerful than others. The Atari VCS version was very basic in graphics while the NES and arcade versions were more sophisticated and detailed. A picture below shows the different Mario characters used on each respective system.


Picture made by the complex Paint program built into Windows.

Though not as successful as Donkey Kong, it was still a hit and proved once again showed the potential and creativity of Nintendo. Addictive as a single-player game, and entertaining as a 2-player platformer, the game has been included as a mini-game in many of Nintendo’s future titles, such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario Advance, and Super Mario Advance 2. Mario Bros. was a worthy successor to Donkey Kong and the beginning of one of the greatest video game characters in history.

- 8.5.2001