World 5-3 Bullet Bill puts in yet another appearance to create the most interesting twist on the World x-3 “mushroom platform” (though, in this case, it looks like we’re back to trees) stages to date. The fundamental design aesthetic dials things back a bit to resemble earlier x-3 levels, largely dropping the moving platforms and […]
World 5-1 The second half of Super Mario Bros. kicks off with a devastating tease: A level where three different enemy groups appear to almost, but not quite, allow you to earn a 1UP by kicking Koopa shells. The last group even demands a touch of finesse to not-quite-acquire the precious prize of a […]
World 4-4 marks the halfway point of Mario’s adventure, and as such introduces one of the most devious tricks to date: Split paths. While the level design appears at first glance to be no different from previous castle stages — only only enemy appears besides Bowser, leaving the bulk of the active threats to take […]
In keeping with the overall “back to World 1” theme of World 4, World 4-3 reprises many of the elements of World 1-3: Tall mushrooms poke into the sky, patrolled by turtles and connected by dropping lift platforms. And as always, the brevity and overall design of the stage precludes the presence of traditional secrets […]
I made a terrible factual error in the previous entry. It has been amended. World 4-2 takes Mario back into the underground in a level that calls back to World 1-2 in obvious ways, but does so primarily to throw you off-guard and hoodwink you. In fact, the general layout of World 4-2 strongly resembles […]
On to World 4-1. With Mario’s arrival in the game’s fourth world, Bowser introduces a new kind of hazard to the action: An infinite hazard that pours on the pressure from start to finish. His name is Lakitu, and he hates you. Lakitu himself doesn’t pose much of a direct threat; he flies around on […]
World 3-2 I love world 3-2, because the entire thing is an elaborate troll. The whole of the stage takes the form of a series of wide-open expanses patrolled by Koopa Troopas and Goombas, with the free areas divided up by narrow columns of blocks, single pipes, and the occasional small pit. It’s a low-challenge […]
Super Mario Bros. tells a story. It’s not a very complicated story — Mario saves the princess from an overgrown turtle — but it’s a story nonetheless. And the game embellishes that story through small details. For instance, after liberating the castle of the second world and the illusory Bowser within, Mario resumes his quest […]
World 2-3 continues the trend established by the previous two stages: Paralleling the design of Worlds 1-1 through 1-4, but in a sideways manner that goes beyond mere cyclical repetition. And in a way that makes sense, too. Just as World 2-2’s journey underwater echoed World 1-2’s descent underground but played out in a completely […]
Lest you think Super Mario Bros. will be content to simply cycle through variants on the first four stages over and over again until you reach the end, World 2-2 demonstrates that this is not the case at all. Yeah, it begins with a little cutscene of Mario leaving a fortress and taking a pipe […]
With World 2-2, Super Mario Bros. officially breaks from the standard cycle of previous Mario games. Rather than cycling back through the previous four levels after conquering them, the hero moves on to new and bigger challenges. The classic arcade level-cycle approach still holds some vestigial sway here, as the subsequent seven worlds do generally […]
[Blog post topic requested by Will Coon] After the first write-up on World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. (yes, I wrote three posts on that single stage, perhaps as a result of insanity), Fritz F. posed a question: Was Super Mario Bros. really that well-designed, or is everyone who dissects the game simply playing The […]