Super Mario Bros. turned 25 years old today.

I first played this NES masterpiece when I was about six years old — around late 1986 or early 1987. I remember visiting the house of my brother’s friend, venturing upstairs and seeing a futuristic grey box attached to his TV set. There, on the screen, unfolded an astoundingly magical, enchanting, mysterious, and captivating world of mushrooms, flying turtles, and flowers that imbued your character with the power of fire.

What enchanted me the most (aside from the fantastically whimsical setting) was the fact that Nintendo had packed the game with secrets like invisible blocks, hidden extra men, and — my god — warp zones. Us kids had even heard rumors of the Minus World, which prompted joyful quests to uncover every mystery of the game.

Before the NES, video games to me meant Atari 800 and 2600, which I had seen my older brother playing throughout my early youth. I loved them, sure, but Super Mario Bros. simply blew my mind. It was nothing, and I mean nothing, like that which had come before. SMB elevated video games to an entirely new plane of existence in terms of its worldview and philosophy of play. For the first time, I truly felt like I was visiting another land — and living out an alternate life — in a video game.

For folks born after 1990 or so, what I’ve written above may seem like a load of hyper-inflated flowery language. But it’s very hard to exaggerate the impact that Super Mario Bros. — a game that sold 40 million copies — had on the video game industry, on the cultural world at large, and on the lives of an entire generation. It was that important.

You Tell Me

So now I turn to you. What are your memories of Super Mario Bros.? When did you first play the game and how did you feel about it?

25 years ago today, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom in Japan. In honor of this anniversary, I decided to dive into the depths of Super Mario lore and legend.

I surfaced clutching 13 examples of Mario-related weirdness, which I conveniently packaged in a slideshow format for Technologizer. The result is Super Mario Oddities, a gallery in the same vein as my Game Boy Oddities piece from last year. I hope you enjoy it.

SOME PEOPLES ASK ULAF THIS: HOW IS IT THAT MY MIND CAN CAPTURE THE SPEED? TO WHICH ULAF RESPAWN A SIMPLE WORDS: WITH THE SPEEDBOARDS OF COURSE. IT IS TRUE THAT THE SPEED OR THE BOARDS HAVE BEEN HARDEST TO TAME OF ALL ELEMENTS, SO THE MAGIC OF THESE DEVICE CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD.

SO THEN ALWAYS RECALL THIS DAY THAT HERE YOUR MIND SEES THIS SPEEDBOARDS PHOTOGRAPHY, ONE PICTURES OF THAT ULTIMATE MASTER DEVICES FOR THE NINTENDO ENTRAPMENT SYSTEM (NES FOR ABBREVIATED). ULAF USE IT AND USE IT, THEN OBTAIN HIGHEST SCORE EVER DURING MEGA MEN II WITH FINGERTIPS. NO SMALL FEET.

JUST A QUICK NOTE FROM MY MIND. GO BACK TO LIFE NOW. UNTIL NEXT TIME THIS IS ULAF SAYING BE THE MASTER.

—

Ulaf Silchov is an expert in video games and computers. He also writes for “Svadlost Weekly” and “The Almost Perfect Circle Newsletter.”

“Hand-cranked and chock full of juicy new tidbits.
All stuffed into authentic id Software casing.”

Quake II will be 13 years old this December — has it been that long already? Seen here is a 1999 advertisement from EGM promoting the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 ports of the classic PC shooter. The designers of the ad chose a clever theme that parodies a grocery store circular (commonly inserted into newspapers here in the US), complete with a fake coupon and flashy pricing. Very clever, and very effective.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Let’s talk Quake. Best game console version of Quake? How about Quake II?

“ASG: Eating the Rules” (It really says that.)

Rack and stack, Jack! This totally radical ASG Video Jukebox allowed you to play six of the Sega Genesis games you already owned for only $49.99. Imagine finally being able to play those games you bought without having to insert and remove them from the system every time. Imagine.

The problem with this device was one of scale. If you had only six carts to choose from, it’s wasn’t worth buying a jukebox device to let you switch between them quickly: keeping track of six cartridges was easy. The ad says you could chain up to six of these jukeboxes together for a total on-line selection of 36 carts. By that point you were looking at a $300 investment in gadgets that weren’t actually that useful.

On the other hand, if you had a device that let you switch between 100, 200, or 500 carts at once, that would have been legitimately handy. But the device would have cost $1000 and nobody owned that many carts back then anyway. Today, we have the same functionality in the form of emulator software, so lazy Genesis fans have long since been appeased.

If anybody actually bought one of these, I’d be interested to know about it.

Discussion Topic of the Week: How many Sega Genesis cartridges do you own? How many did you own in 1994?

Road + Baby = Road Baby

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best four player game for the Nintendo 64? Feel free to list a few if you like.

So that’s what belly buttons are for. (Dig Dug)

Discussion Topic of the Week: In your opinion, which is the superior system: Atari 2600 or Atari 5200? And I’m not talking tech specs.

The original touch-screen game system.

Pop quiz: which video game console first featured a touch screen? (Hint: It’s not the Nintendo DS.) How about this one: Which handheld console first supported Internet connectivity?

Believe it or not, Tiger Electronics — a toy company famed for its cheap electronic games — came in first on both counts with the Game.com in 1997. (Sega Saturn was the first home console to support Internet in 1996).

I was a Game.com early adopter, having bought one close to its release. The wonder of its primitive touch screen alone seemed to make up for its deficiencies at the time, so I was pleased at first. The unit shipped with a built-in version of Klondike Solitaire and a Lights Out game cartridge, both of which showed off the system’s touch capabilities well. But my infatuation with the Game.com turned out to be brief.

[ Continue reading [ Retro Scan of the Week ] Tiger Game.com » ]

He soon landed with an embarrassing splash.

This Double Dragon scratch-off game card came from a pack of Topps “Nintendo Game Pack” cards that I bought, likely in a drugstore, circa 1989. Of all the cards in the pack, this one remains unscratched for whatever reason. Perhaps I wanted to preserve the mystery and potential of a single unscratched scratch-off card. After all, the cards become worthless and ugly after you impart jaggy scratch lines all over those silver little pads.

The reason Nintendo and the scratch-off concept share the same milieu is that each card presents the owner with a game of sorts. Once you scratch a pad, you reveal a graphical symbol that determines your fate depending on the directions printed on the back of the card. In this case, you need “1 arrow and 2 kicks or 3 elbows or 4 punches” to win. I’m not sure how many variations of the symbols Topps printed under those silver pads, but I hope there was more than one. Otherwise, if you had multiple copies of the same card, the “game” might have unfolded in exactly the same way if you scratched the same pads.

Nintendo Game Packs cards featured Super Mario Bros., Punch-Out!!, and The Legend of Zelda as well, although those were too irresistible for me to not scratch off, so none survive in tact in my collection.

A number of websites examine these cards in more detail. This one has scans of all the cards in the series. Another one features photos of the stickers that came with each pack of cards — I remember plastering those all over my walls as a kid. I may have a couple of the uglier stickers left un-peeled somewhere. If I ever find them, I’ll probably just burn them as an offering to Hgnagg, the God of Nostalgia.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you collect trading cards as a kid? What kind(s)?