A Mario Bros Classic Series Review by Thermoptic!

I have always loved the Mario Bros game, ever since i first played the arcade port of it on my Commodore 64. Its one of those timeless games that you never can get tired of. Its super simple to learn and control for new players and the gameplay is also simple but at the same time it can be very challenging! Mario Bros is definitely a game that is best suited for two players, and one thing i really liked about this game is that you can choose how you want to play it; either you can play cooperatively with a friend and try to clear as many levels as possible or you battle up and try to stop the other player and get the highest score.

My favorite port of Mario Bros is the version released by Nintendo back in 1983. But it wasn't until recently I discovered a new and upgraded version of this fantastic game called Mario Bros. “Classic Serie”. For me this version spiced up the game and made it even more fun! I'm going to walk you through the differences between the “original” and the “classic” versions.

The Mario Bros. Classic Serie version is actually a port of a game called Kaettekita Mario Bros that only was available on the Japanese Famicom Disc System. Back then the only way to get your hands on Kaettekita was to buy a blank FDS Disc and find a “Disc Writer” Kiosk at the mall, insert the disc, pay about 500, yen and then you had the game! Maybe an easy thing to do back then but nearly impossible to do today. Advertisements where also shown between the levels, for example one of them showed an ad of the upcoming Super Mario Bros 3 game.

Kaettekita Mario Bros. was later ported and released in Europe as Mario Bros. Classic Serie but with a new title screen, and instead of ads they added small instruction clips explaining the different abilities and enemies throughout the game.

The sprites for the enemies has also been updated and now are more true to the original arcade version. You can clearly see the change on the first level with the new sprites for the turtles. And they have also added the animation to the turtles when they after a while crawls out their shell and flips it back just like the arcade version :)

The biggest change is that you now have the ability to change direction after you jump! This might sound like a small update but it really makes a big change in the gameplay.  You can climb the platforms really fast as you can jump around edges, you also have more precision on where you land which can help you avoid enemies and fireballs etc. If you master the jumping right you can clear a level very fast, and its fun!

There are also big changes to the levels. It's now three levels you have to clear before reaching the bonus level, instead of two. The bonus levels change style every time, for example in one bonus level all the platforms where invisible.

Here is a little movie i recorded comparing the Original and Classic version. Notice that the original version only has two levels and the Classic has three before reaching the bonus level.

 

Posted by @Thermoptic