Super Mario Bros. 1-3

Closest thing to capture all three games in one image

Since it's Mario's 30 years anniversary (while writing this that is) and me skipping over Mario Maker (since creating my own courses is gonna fail, no stable internet access and me not want to play other people's hellish nightmares) I will instead look on the classics, the first three games for the NES that I played as a kid. Even though the picture at the top is from the SNES All-Stars I'm gonna speak from the perspective of the original games since those are the ones I most recently played (due to having them on my 3DS... and Wii U). So lets start from the beginning.

Ah, the classic look of a time-less classic

So we got it to the NES back in the early 90's. Best thing was that you could play as two players so either me and my dad could play or me and my sister. I think I used to be Mario, although I wanted to be Luigi since he was green. Never finished this as a kid. The closest I got as a kid was 8-1. I got pretty close when the browser based game with several different 8-bit heroes like Simon Belmont, the Contra guy, Mega Man and some others. The Contra guy being the best since every enemy or block gets destroyed before it can even hit me. I got to the final level and... failed the damn platforming maze. I  never reached Bowser. So when I finally got them on the newest systems with save state function, I play through them, compensating my lowered reactions and patience to relearn every single enemy pattern. Alright I might be pushing 30, but in video game years that must be in the late 50's. I need every help I can get. Of course the sense of beating it is of course lost and really, what is the point playing games if you have to cheat to beat it? Well, since most of my childhood was spent on learning these games, I think I put enough time on them to deserve to see the end screen. Also, there was a lot of secrets in the game like the warp pipes at the end of 1-2 or those at 3-2 (?, the first Lakkittu stage or whatever), but I can't in my life get how we found it out. This is pre-internet days so how did we know? Did we stumble upon them?

The Mario game that isn't a Mario game, and yet is a Mario game

The second game in the series and as we all know isn't the real 2nd game, but a reskin of another game that Miyamoto worked on, and later he took many of the enemies and put them in other Mario games, effectively adopting the game into the series. First time I played it was with my cousins game and when we travelled from Gothenburg one summer we found it in a store and bought it as well. This was the last of the first Mario games we bought. Then I got it again for the GBA as the first game as well. The fun thing with this game is you could choose between four different characters. Sadly I think the longest I got was past the first boss, the 3-headed snake at the bottom of the pyramid. The least played of the originals for me.

Interesting that in 2-3 Mario goes toward the right while in the first game it went to the left... which you couldn't do in that game

The biggest game of the three. And we actually got to the last world, but that was that. Easiest way was getting the two first flutes and enter world 2 and then warp forward. As the first game, how did we know how to get those two flutes as kids? I guess I saw my cousins play it and they got it, but how did they know? I don't think they saw the Wizard that let everyone else know. Maybe there is something in those Nintendo magazine we got from them. Again, me and my sister played this game over and over, if nothing else just so we could fight each other for the special cards you get at the end of each stage. And as always, we didn't finish it. I finished it on my 3DS and Wii U with save state support. How people could finish these games as kids I don't know.

So that's my memories from my childhood. coupled with some reflections as I replayed the games again. Didn't focus much on story because....  well 1 and 3 was Bowser or King Koopa kidnapped princess Toadstool later known as Peach and Mario and Luigi had to get her back. The second game was Mario dreaming about a door where he and his friends entered and they appeared in a world where some people asked for their help in stopping Wart. Music in all 3 games are rather good and are classics used over again... maybe not the second game, but the others as late of Paper Mario had many of the songs reused and remixed. Graphics are of it's time, but they are nostalgic and I prefer them over the vamped up sprites of the All-Star compilation and one reason I skipped buying the 25th anniversary game... especially since it didn't have anything else to show like Super Mario World or some other Mario games. Why get it, when I have all games on Virtual Console?