Let’s backtrack a bit, shall we? Now a couple posts ago, I mentioned that Nintendo had devised a cunning Trojan Horse through their ROB the Robot peripheral, designed to get people into their cleverly-named Nintendo Entertainment System. The strategy worked and people bought the NES because it was a toy and not a video game console. People saw the light, but the games were so good and well designed that nobody seemed to mind.
About a year later, Nintendo dropped support for the robot entirely and hedged their bets that consumers will pick up their new video game system with a single game included. The game chosen was Super Mario Bros, a game about a portly Italian plumber and his brother saving a Mushroom Princess from a bunch of rogue turtles. Some were predicting doom for Nintendo, but were quickly disproved when Nintendo sold a crapload of NES consoles, thereby ensuring not only the company’s future but also their growing success into one of the new juggernauts in the video game industry, as well as opening the doors for other companies to ply their trade.
But while people were firmly enjoying their copies of Super Mario Bros on their NES systems in the late-1980s, I was happily passing along my own gaming path with the Commodore VIC-20 computer system and Atari 7800 video game console. Both were fairly decent systems and the VIC-20 even had a minute BASIC language built in so you can make your own little programs and games, but in the end, neither were as exciting or advanced as a Nintendo. Around 1990 or 91, I got my first NES and as luck would have it, it included the SMB game. To say I was hooked is an understatement, but that’s another story entirely.
Nothing can be said about Super Mario Bros. that hasn’t already been said by countless others. It’s the game that was responsible for pulling the video game industry out of recession and making it hip again. It’s the game that redefined the standards of what a video game should be all about. It’s the game that stands the test of time by being a fun well-designed game for the time and is still fun to play even today. It’s undoubtably the single top-selling video game of all time, hitting numbers equally the number of titles sold within a single gaming franchise combined. Not many single video games of any time or place could make the same claim that SMB can; only a couple games have a chance of getting up there and… lo and behold, they’re on a Nintendo system as well.
Super Mario Bros was the gold standard in video games and in many ways, still is the gold standard in video games. What it lacks in extras and features that dominates most of the current offerings, it makes up with simple balanced gameplay, smooth scrolling of the playfield, solidly responsive controls, non-existent learning curve, and replayability that makes for an overall fun experience even over two decades after its initial launch in 1985. But setting aside the lifespan of the game and the standards it would establish, Nintendo made the right decision in going with Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt showed off the Zapper, Gyromite showed off the robot, but Super Mario Bros. showed off the NES itself and presented would-be gamers a glimpse into the future.
Without ROB The Robot, Nintendo would not have gained a foot in the untapped video game market. But without Super Mario Bros, Nintendo would not have gained and maintained a stranglehold in the video game industry that would make it a lucrative and successful company. It almost begs to wonder what the scene would have been like if they packed another game besides Mario with the NES. Would Nintendo have been as successful? Probably not, but we won’t really know.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to save some Princess who’s in another castle.
dtm666 