Mario Brothers
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Mario Bros. (マリオブラザーズ, Mario Burazāzu?) is an arcade game made by Nintendo, released in 1983 and later ported to many home systems. It was a spin-off of the Donkey Kong series, and heavily influenced by Joust. It was the first game to feature Mario's name in the title. It was also the debut of Mario's brother, Luigi. Unlike Donkey Kong, where he was a carpenter, in this game Mario became a plumber, exterminating pests that emerge from pipes.
A remade version of the game is included with the original NES release of Super Mario Bros. 3 and in the remake, Super Mario All-Stars. Enhanced remakes of Mario Bros. were released on the Famicom Disk System (named Kaettekita Mario Bros.) and with all four games in the Super Mario Advance series and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. It is also available to download on Nintendo's Virtual Console.
Game Play
Mario (or Luigi) must defeat all the enemies coming out of pipes in the corners of the screen. Enemies must first be hit from below to flip them over, then touched to kick them off the screen. However, if an enemy is left upside down for too long, it will flip back over becoming faster than before. Coins also come out of the pipes, and they give the player points.
Enemies in the game include:
- Shellcreeper: A turtle-like enemy that simply walks around. They take one hit to flip. In Japan they are simply called turtles.
- Sidestepper: Crab-like enemies that are slightly faster than Shellcreepers. They take two hits to flip. In Japan they are simply called crabs.
- Fighter Fly: Fly-like enemies that hop around on platforms. They can only be hit from below when they're touching the floor.
- Slipice: A block of ice that slides around, until it stops on a random platform and freezes it. Most people today know it as a Freezie.
Music
The game begins with the opening of the first movement from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
Other Versions
- The Game & Watch version's name is the same. However, the gameplay is different. Instead of knocking away enemies and punching the POW Block, the object is to send objects to the truck through conveyor belts without dropping them.
- In all of the Super Mario Advance games and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, a new version was released. This version had smoother controls and new music. However, Shell Creepers had their appearance changed: they now look more like Spinies than Koopa Troopas (perhaps to keep players from trying to jump on them). This version also features both single-card and multi-card (all five games are compatible) multiplayer abilities. This is the only version to support three or four simultaneous players.
- A cut-down version of Mario Bros. is used as a two-player mini-game in Super Mario Bros. 3. In two-player mode, either player can initiate the mini-game when both players are at the same place on the overworld map. The two players compete to earn five coins; the first one to get five wins the mini-game and gets to continue in the main game, although the loser can still rematch if they quickly react before the winner moves to a different spot on the overworld map.
- A game titled Mario Clash was released for the Virtual Boy in 1995. It was heavily inspired by the original Mario Bros.
- An emulated port of the NES version is available for the e-Reader itself. It comes in an NES card pack entitled Mario Bros.-e
- The Virtual Console version was released for the Wii in North America on November 19, 2006 and is a port of the NES version. It was released in Australia and Europe on December 7, 2006 and December 8, 2006, respectively. It was released in Japan on December 12, 2006.
Kaettekita Mario Bros.
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?) was a revision of Mario Bros. released November 30, 1988, for the Famicom Disk System in Japan. The game featured a few revisions as well as some added features.
Legacy
- A Mario Bros. stage can be unlocked in the Wii game Super Smash Bros. Brawl, even featuring Shellcreepers and Sidesteppers that can be stunned as in the original game, and then thrown at opponents to knock them away. This adds a new strategic element to the stage, as its design makes it difficult to knock out opponents through standard methods. The track of the stage is essentially a remix of the original Mario Bros theme. Also, the Freezie appears as an item in both Brawl and its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee. It can be thrown at opponents to encase them in ice for a short time. The POW block appears in both the Mario Bros. stage of Brawl and the Mushroom Kingdom stage of Super Smash Bros.. Hitting it works in the same way as it does in Mario Bros., making opponents jump up.
- The POW block also makes appearances in the American Super Mario Bros. 2, which defeats all on screen enemies when thrown, Yoshi's Island where it turned all enemies on the screen into stars, Paper Mario as an item that attacks all enemies, and Mario Kart Wii, where it will spin all opponents out unless they jump at the right time.
- This game introduces Luigi and role of the brothers as plumbers, which has been their canonical profession ever since.
