Sorry But Your Good Game is on Another Cartridge

I have a big problem with games these days, that can be summed up in two words: graphics hype. Everything is about the look, the immersion into a realistic setting, or something that at least looks as realistic as possible. First person shooters come to mind most readily, games which hit you in the face with beautiful landscapes and crappy stories.

It’s nice once in a while to see a game that cuts back on the graphics in favour of game play or story line, both rather underrated elements in the video game industry. With that in mind, I put my 3D glasses down as I went off to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., a 2D platformer that gives graphics a vaguely pixilated middle finger.

Now I understand why people complain about bad graphics. Everything is flat, bland and repetitive. There’s no variation in shape or size, and the colour swapped pallets look ridiculous, especially on the few power-ups the game offers. On the one level that even pretended to offer a background other than clouds, the scenery was made up of the same brick blocks I was breaking with my head. And the one time in that background there was a hidden block, it was made obvious by the sprites white line interrupting the otherwise seamless brown.

I want to harp a bit more on the eye-piercing colours. Ye gads those things are painful. Red and blue do not make for a good colour combination, but that white and green on the second player is just too painful to bear. The turtles come in shades of red and green, so I guess Christmas never ends for the local amphibian population. Backdrops were either blue or black, without exception. All blocks were brown and yellow, the underground zones were bluish, and the water level had pink seaweed. I don’t think I’ll be eating sushi for a little while thinking about that.

For one level, the game decided to have a little fun with the colours. Instead of the brown castle I was used to entering and leaving at the start of each stage, I found myself in a gray landscape, with red tinged clouds. This marks the only real variation, and is just so startling that I briefly wondered if I had accidentally entered a Zelda final dungeon. Then a fish popped out of the bottom of the screen and killed me.

Yes, there are flying fish, but only for three levels, and it is always the third level of a world. Super Mario Bro gets broken up into 8 “worlds” that are supposed to have a theme I assume, but are completely interchangeable with one another without affecting said “theme“. Each world has 4 levels in it, and all 4 levels follow the same pattern: 1 - flat level. 2 - Underground or water. 3 - suspended pillars. 4 - Castle with lava. Level 2 might vary a bit, depending on its mood, and forgo the water and underground section for another flat map. It does this pretty often, actually, with only worlds 1,2, 4, and 7 offering a difference. Even then, 2 and 7 have the exact same level.

This irked me more than anything else, probably. After world 4, it was like the designers got tired of making levels, and just decided to reuse old ones with more enemies or slightly shortened moving platforms. The castles at the end of each world were no exception to this rule, with only castle 4 and 8 getting any respect, though both followed a similar “maze” pattern. Woe unto the player if he should take the wrong of two paths, and be forced to start over under a time limit that never runs out. When you drop to under a hundred seconds left, though, the music speeds up, urging you to reach the flag at the end.

I‘m a big fan of video game music, I just can‘t make myself like the limitated tracks offered. The main theme, which plays in every level that isn’t a castle, water, or underground one, gets tiresome quickly. The underground theme lasts about 20 seconds before it starts over, and the castle theme is much the same, but more grating. Only the water levels have a decent track, jaunty in a place where white squids bounce their way toward you, and they do not want to give you a happy tentacle hug.

It’s a bit too surreal for me, without any explanation of why. Mushrooms can give you an extra life or grant you an extra hit, depending on the colour. To enter the underground areas, you walk through a pipe. Mushroom people at the end of castles tell you that your princess isn’t there, and when you shoot down the fire breathing spiked turtle with your own fire power, he turns into a random enemy. For sanity’s sake, I made sure to swim above water whenever possible in the underwater levels. I didn’t want Super Bro to drown.

This might be acceptable if the game offered a semblance of a plot. Instead, I’m left scratching my head: Who is this mysterious princess, and why does she have the nerve to be in another castle? Who built all these castles, anyway? Why are they being guarded by the ninja-turtles’ relatives? Look, I don’t care about your princess, I just want to know why I can’t go backwards. There’s a mushroom I hadn’t picked up before that would be really useful right about now.

Overall, I have to give Mushroom Bro. a rather sad shake of the head. Just because something is two dimensional, doesn’t mean the mechanics within the game have to be one. Worse than that, it’s glitchy - more than once I fell through a floor for no apparent reason - and Mario handles like a broom on a string, going vaguely in the direction I ask him to but unable to turn back around once he starts moving. Running and shooting fireballs use the same button, so you can only do one at a time, which will result in confusion and the inevitable running head long into an open pit.

Nothing was gained by sacrificing graphics in this game. In fact, it looks like everything was sacrificed - including a continue option - for a point system that serves no function. If I wanted to keep track of arbitrary high scores, I’d be wasting my money on arcades, not consoles. Though to be fair, I couldn’t afford the Nintendo Entertainment System on my non-existent salary, so I just downloaded it for free. I wonder if that makes me a felon.

It can be a hard game, not because it’s actually difficult, but because it just doesn’t want to co-operate. I assume that if you master the controls and memorize the levels, you could probably clear the whole game in about 8 minutes. For the average gamer, a successful play through won’t take more than thirty minutes, and if it takes any longer you probably died to the countdown anyway.