Super Mario Bros - A Detailed Look

Mario Brosstarted off as an arcade game made by the gaming giants Nintendo and was first released in 1983. Later on portable versions for home gaming systems were developed. It was a by-product of the popular Donkey Kong series with a heavy influence of the game Joust developed by William Electronics in 1982. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, it was the first game to use Mario's name in the title (Mario was called Jumpman in earlier versions). It also starred Mario's brother, Luigi (hence the name Mario Bros.) who later became a permanent fixture of Mario games. He is usually shown as Mario's cowardly young brother but later on due to his popularity he took a distinct personality of his own with surprising moments where he stood up for his own. Unlike Donkey Kong, where Mario appeared simply as a side-show carpenter, in this game Mario starred as a plumber, destroying pests that emerge from pipes.

A remade version of the game is included as a mini-game within the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) release of Super Mario Bros. 3 and also features in the remake, Super Mario All-Stars. Improved remakes of Mario Bros. were released on the Famicom Disk System. A contained version of this remake called Mario Bros. Classic was released solely in the European market.

The game begins with a classical music piece from Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Apart from the two main characters, Mario and Luigi, the game includes several enemy figures like;

Shellcreeper:

Sidestepper:

Fighter Fly:

Slipice:

Popularly known as Freezies, these are blocks of ice that, no points for guessing, freezes platforms. These resemble flies, as is suggested by the name, and can be hit only from beneath. Crab look-alikes, they take two hits to flip and are just a tad faster than the shellcreepers. These look like turtles and have to be hit once to flip and get eliminated.

The game strategy is to kill these vermin coming out from the pipes by hitting them from above or below, making them flip and then shoving them off the screen with a kick. The tricky part is that if they are not taken off the screen right away after flipping them, they flip over and become faster than before and therefore more difficult to kill. Small gold coins keep popping up through out the game which when collected give bonus points to the players. Three small square blocks appear in the game which when hit throws off all the enemies from the platforms. But as said earlier, they appear only thrice throughout the game and have to be therefore used sparingly.

Most, if not all, Mario Bros games revolve around the main theme of this one. Later additions were made to make the game more advance and complex to make it challenging and interesting for the players. Some of the later versions include, Super Mario Advance, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mario Clash.

Game Boy Advance, Game Watch, Saga, Virtual Boy and Virtual Console all offer Mario Bros. games.

Mario Game are available in a lot of platform such as the GameBoy Advance, Famicom Disk System, NES and many others. There are also flash game versions of Super Mario available for download. Checkout Free Mario Game for free online games to play.

AP - President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday bid his native Hawaii "aloha" after a 12-day vacation.