Super Mario Bros.

Revisiting a classic on the eve of Super Mario Wonder.

The original Super Mario Bros is the very defenition of classic when it comes to gaming. This is the first game to do platforming right, and to this day it has not aged at all.

At any time you can pop this bad boy in, have a good 1 hour sesh and beat the game. And it never gets boring even after 35 years.

Lots of games from the same era suffer from really bad game design due to the fact that game development and design was still experimental, but Super Mario bros is the shining diamond that has stood the test of time due to it's brilliant design my Mr Miyamoto.

For me it is unbeatable without the saves. As a child I don't think I have ever passed beyond 4th or 5th world. Then, some day when travelling by train, I finished this in one go, thanks to saves that are available these days. Nevertheless, this game is iconic and very fun.

While patently influential for sidescrolling tile-based platformers as a whole, it has not aged particularly well. The biggest problem here is that it runs out of new stuff to offer mere levels into the game. Each new world is nearly indiscernible from the last, with each usually being some variation of the plains—like the plains, but at night; or the plains, but...silver? This paired with the odd water or castle level mixed in makes for a pretty repetitive experience. No joke, a handful of levels are literally copy-pasted throughout the game. Like, 1-3 is identical to 5-3...which isn't exactly great. The "boss" of each world is exactly the same each time as well, with these encounters consisting of simply jumping over them and hitting a switch. But alas, the game is extremely old, and the platforming still feels relatively good for its age. Some of the castles have branching paths that need to be traversed in a certain order to proceed, which is kinda cool, if a bit tedious. I still think that the Koopa turtle enemy is brilliant, which can be knocked out of its shell and used as a projectile—either to your benefit or detriment. Ultimately, it's still fun, but very dated.

timeless (but certainly not perfect)

Awesome start to an amazing franchise

Virtual Console on 3DS.
"Cheated" using the save function to explore further levels, for the sake of curiosity.

Level designers got lazy at some points.