This Week In Retro: Mario Bros. (Patreon)

March 1983: These pipes…are clean!

by Diamond Feit

Allow me to make an observation about Mario, Nintendo's longtime mascot and one of the few video game characters to achieve a level of general recognition with the public at large. My mother couldn't tell you a thing about Master Chief, Cloud Strife, or even Sonic the Hedgehog. But Mario? He's been famous for over four decades; she knows Mario.

When people reflect on Mario's past, they tend to start in one of two places: either they begin at the beginning with his role in Donkey Kong, or they focus their attention on Super Mario Bros., the 8-bit game that transformed him into an icon. Even for people who never owned an NES, when they picture Mario, they see him navigating large pipes, jumping on turtles, and collecting coins. However, these character-defining habits cannot be found in his 1981 debut, and they predate his first journey to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Yes, 40 years ago in March of 1983, everything changed for Mario as he split from Donkey Kong and struck out on his own for the first time. His objectives necessitated shifting professions from carpenter/amateur zookeeper to plumber, the job we still associate with him today even if he spends most of his time rescuing princesses or racing go-karts. Rather than go it alone in this new venture, he invited his brother Luigi along, and the two of them would take center stage in Mario Bros.

Before Nintendo of America christened him as Mario, the hero who jumped over barrels to rescue his girlfriend from a giant gorilla was simply called Jumpman. I'd argue that's quite the misnomer, for Mario's ability to leap does not impress in that first game, especially considering even the slightest fall will cost Mario one life. In Mario Bros., Mario and Luigi can now leap several times their height into the air, with falls of any distance no longer harmful.

What little we learned about Mario from his first two appearances in the Donkey Kong games, Mario Bros. rewrites. No longer does he navigate a high rise construction site; he now dwells in the sewers. Ladders, hammers, and Lady are nowhere to be seen down here. Instead, the brothers plumber must rely on their new-found athleticism to defeat swarms of pests emerging from the pipes and earn a few coins along the way.

The heroes generate tremendous upward momentum with each jump as their punches literally warp the ground, knocking over any subterranean creatures that might pass above helplessly onto their backs. One swift kick from Mario or Luigi will dispatch any struggling invader into oblivion. However, the crawly critters can right themselves if left unstomped, and when they get back up they move twice as fast. Likewise, any enemy that survives long enough to reach the bottom of the screen will travel back to the top via an open pipe with an increased vigor.

Whether played alone or cooperatively, each round of Mario Bros. quickly escalates into chaos as the beasts come out of the pipes in steadily growing numbers. The game starts with Shellcreepers, little turtles with big heads whom we now know as Koopas, who dutifully march forward without much urgency. After a few levels, Mario Bros. introduces Sidesteppers, crabs who outpace the Shellcreepers and take two thumps before falling over. The third variety offers the most challenge, as Fighterflies do not walk so much as hover, making small but steady leaps as they descend upon the brothers. The plumbers' punches can only harm an earthbound fly, making them the trickiest tormentor to topple.

Besides these three living obstacles, the sewers of Mario Bros. also offer natural hazards of hot and cold. Mysterious balls of fire, not unlike the ones Mario and Luigi would later wield in the Super Mario Bros. games, periodically spawn and bounce around the screen, frying either player upon contact. Slipice can also pop out of pipes and slide along the ground until melting into a slick coating that renders the sewer surface extra-slippery. These frozen foes can be destroyed from below with just one punch, but remain as fatal to the touch as any vermin.

With the odds greatly stacked against Mario, it only seems sensible to recruit a second player to clean the sewers as siblings rather than solo. Yet no hazard in Mario Bros. can hold a candle to the threat that your co-op partner represents. Mario and Luigi may have augmented their jumping skills, but their footing is far less inspiring, as they struggle to land or even change direction without skidding. They also cannot occupy the same space at the same time, so an errant jump, punch, or bump can leave one player vulnerable for just long enough to fall afoul of the myriad of dangers on screen at any given moment. In fact, since one punch will wake up a laid-out enemy, playing Mario Bros. with a partner can easily disintegrate into open hostility, as one brother can very easily revive a pest just as the other brother runs into it, costing them one life.

This chaotic, semi-competitive system injects the action in Mario Bros. with so much energy, it immediately became my favorite Nintendo game of all time. It helped that its 1983 arcade launch meant that Mario Bros. would appear on every contemporary platform over the next few years. While I only have faint memories of the original version, I know I spent hours with the crude Atari 2600 port and a much more faithful adaptation on the Apple II. Japanese players had the good fortune to see Mario Bros. arrive on Famicom just months after its arcade debut, but US players had to make do with third-party ports until 1986, by which point Super Mario Bros. had completely reimagined the plumbers as adventurers, making it difficult to go back to simpler times.

While I believe this release timeline, along with the massive success of Super Mario Bros., contributed to video game fans all but forgetting about Mario Bros., Nintendo certainly never abandoned the idea to rot in the sewers. Not only would the Kyoto company reissue the game on multiple subsequent consoles, but minigames based on Mario Bros. would make their way into several Super Mario games, most notably Super Mario Bros. 3. In any two-player session, either Mario or Luigi can challenge the other in Battle Mode on the world map, transporting both to a Mario Bros.-esque arena with pipes that spawn Spinies that must be overturned and kicked. Whoever earns the most coins (or survives,. should one player get hit) takes control once the action returns to the world map, enhancing the baked-in pettiness of the original Mario Bros. and turning it into a legitimate feature.

I remember the sensation of surprise and delight I felt when I first discovered the Super Mario Bros. 3 Battle Mode back in 1990; even though I was still but a child, it harkened back to some of my earliest video game memories. After all, to a 13-year-old, seven years seems like half a lifetime. Three decades later, I can still get a rush of those same feelings by booting up Hamster's Arcade Archives port of Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Switch. From its inviting attract mode to its single-screen gameplay, Mario Bros. remains as accessible today as it did in 1983.

Hence my objections to those who would dismiss the significance of this title in Nintendo and Mario's history. It did not begin Mario's career as a video game protagonist, nor did it revolutionize a genre like its Super-sequel managed to, but Mario Bros. deserves respect as a cornerstone of Mario canon. Lest anyone forget, by introducing his brother as a playable character, Mario Bros. gave us Luigi, and for that alone it belongs in the video game hall of fame.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.