Mario Bros

Mario Bros. (マリオブラザーズ, Mario Burazāzu?) is an arcade game published and developed by Nintendo in 1983. It was developed by Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Mario franchise. It is a follow-up to Donkey Kong and stars Mario, a plumber who was previously named "Jumpman". To date, Mario Bros. has been rereleased more than twenty times across more than a dozen platforms. It has been commonly featured as a minigame in the Super Mario Advance series and other games. Mario Bros. has been rereleased for the Wii's Virtual Console service in Japan, North America and some PAL regions.


In this game, Mario is portrayed as an Italian-American plumber who, along with his brother Luigi, has to defeat creatures that have been coming from the sewers below New York.[2] The gameplay focuses on Mario having to exterminate pests in the sewers by flipping them on their backs and kicking them away. The original versions of Mario Bros., the arcade version and the Nintendo Entertainment System version, received positive reception. In Japan, the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Mario Bros. had sold more than 1.63 million copies.

Gameplay

Mario Bros. features two plumbers, Mario and Luigi, having to investigate the sewers of New York after strange creatures have been appearing down there. The objective of the game is to defeat all of the enemies in each phase.Both sides of every phase feature a mechanism that allows the player to go off-screen to the left and appear on the right and vice versa.


Mario Bros. features a scoring system in which points can be earned in several ways, such as by collecting coins or defeating enemies. The player gains points by defeating multiple enemies consecutively and can participate in a bonus round to gain more.Enemies are defeated by running up to them and kicking them when they are flipped on their back. Player cause enemies to flip by hitting them from below the platform they are on or by hitting the POW block to overturn all enemies on the ground. If the player allows the enemy to get up, the enemy becomes angry and increases in speed. Each phase has a certain number of enemies, ended with a more powerful enemy. Enemies come in variants—for example, Sidesteppers, a type of crab, are usually red, but turn blue and become faster when they recover from being flipped or if they are the final enemy. Each enemy has their own mechanics—the Shellcreeper, a type of turtle closely related to Koopa Troopas, can be made vulnerable by hitting them from below once, the Fighter Fly, a type of fly, jumps into the air every once in a while and must be hit from below when they are not in the air, and the Sidesteppers must be hit twice from below in that fashion to become vulnerable. Another enemy is called a Freezie, which has the ability to melt down and freeze the platform it is on, making it more difficult for the player to control the characters.

Development

Because of Mario's appearance in Donkey Kong, with overalls, a hat, and a thick moustache, Shigeru Miyamoto thought that he should be a plumber as opposed to a carpenter, and designed this game to reflect that. Another contributing factor was the game's setting: it was a large network of giant pipes, so they felt a change in occupation was necessary for him. A popular story of how Mario went from Jumpman to Mario is that Nintendo's Italian landlord, Mario Segale, had barged in on them to demand rent, and they decided to name Jumpman after him. Miyamoto also felt that the best setting for this game was New York because of its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes." Mario Bros. is one of the first platform games ever created, along with Donkey Kong. It also introduced Mario's brother, Luigi, who was created for the multiplayer mode by doing a palette swap of Mario. The two-player mode and several aspects of gameplay were inspired by an earlier video game called Joust. To date, Mario Bros. has been released for more than a dozen platforms. The first movement from Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik is used to open each phase. This song has been used in later video games, including Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Ports and follow-ups

Mario Bros. has been re-released many times by itself and as a sub-game in other games. It was also rereleased on the Wii's Virtual Console service in North America, Australia, Europe and Japan. It is also remade on copies of games in the Game Boy Advance's Super Mario Advance games as well as Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and it was included as a mini-game in Super Mario Bros. 3. The NES version was included as a piece of furniture in Animal Crossing for the Nintendo GameCube, along with many other NES games, though this one required the use of an e-Reader, a Game Boy Advance accessory, and an Animal Crossing e-Card.This version was released in the second series of NES e-Cards as well, and was also released in the Famicom Mini series, the Japanese variant of the Classic NES Series of games. It never came outside of Japan.[33] A remake was made called Mario Bros. Classic—known as Kaettekita Mario Bros. (かえってきたマリオブラザーズ, Return of Mario Bros. or Mario Bros. Returns?) in Japan—featuring similar gameplay with added features and new revisions to the gameplay. It also featured cut-scenes and advertisements.

Hudson Soft made two games based on Mario Bros.. The first was Mario Bros. Special, which was a re-imagining of the original Mario Bros. with new phases, mechanics and gameplay. The second was Punch Ball Mario Bros., which featured a new gameplay mechanic involving punching small balls to stun enemies. Both games have been described as average for the most part, neither the best or worst games in the series.

A sequel to Mario Bros., Mario Clash, was released in 1995. The game was released for the Virtual Boy and produced by Nintendo. It is the first 3D Mario game and is heavily based on Mario Bros.. The objective of the game is to knock all the enemies in a particular phase off ledges. Instead of hitting them from below, like in Mario Bros., the player must hit enemies using Koopa shells.