~ Estimated Reading Time: 8 min ~
At some point in my life, I began to assume other people's nostalgias were artificial. I feel mean, but it's hard not getting desensitized to "it's a classic".
When you're a kid, you don't have the critical thinking to always understand why something is a classic, which is unfortunate - because nobody is going to explain it for you. I watched a lot of Youtubers as a kid talk about how retro games were freaking awesome, but I struggled to get into them. Booting up Pac-Man on a cheap D-Pad for five minutes was never going to make it clear why it was literally the only video game my mom ever enjoyed playing. I hadn't been provided with the tools necessary to understanding how to appreciate anything older. There is a canyon of difference in mindset between modern gamefeel aiming to make play itself fun, versus older games - which are gratifying through ritualistic grinding of self-improvement. I suspect this is why diehard fans of modern Nintendo's output are often who I see put up the most resistance to some really great NES games.
I suspect the gamer-influencer landscape hasn't changed much since then. My girlfriend and I hate-watch autoplay Youtubers sometimes, and recently we landed on a multi-million views video about Mario. When they got to discussing the quality of Lost Levels, they stated it was a less important sequel than 2 USA, because it introduced less "iconic" things such as Shy Guy. Regardless of how you feel about Lost Levels, it is obviously ridiculous to rank a video game by how many important objects it introduced to a franchise - it's like when powerscalers praise a shonen protagonist for having a lot of "feats". This is what happens when you let discourse be dominated by collectors, rather than those who play the things in their collection. A game's impact is shortened to a list of the ideas they brought to the future of a franchise, rather than what those features meant within the context of their introduction. I think that ineloquence is exactly why my childhood self began to doubt if old Mario games even had value. The assumption that Super Mario Bros. was a transitory title that serves no purpose in the modern day, other than to exist as a pipeline to the existence of the newer, better Mario games.
But something about that assumption felt improbable, or mean - or maybe I just didn't want it to be true. It's a bit sad to imagine a whole worldwide phenomenon as a collective set of millennial's coping that their childhood didn't have sauce. I mean, just look at Mario - nobody even tries to design mascots like that guy anymore. Surely, there had to be something about this game that made a bunch of children idolize a mustached, vaguely-middle aged plumber guy. It feels statistically improbable to be otherwise!
When I was younger, I much preferred something like Megaman 2 to Super Mario Bros., which had more simplistic, natural controls to get the hang of. A common criticism you'll see of early 2D Mario is that they are "slippery"; I don't think these people have the wrong opinion persay, but I'm not sure it's entirely the game's fault. There's a freedom to the way Mario moves that was simply too much for me at first. Those WiiWare releases we were being provided were never going to cut it. I don't think I ever truly felt like I had control of Mario's full range of motion - that is until I had the opportunity to use a lagless emulator, paired with a low-delay monitor.
Just doesn't feel like anyone my age was given the proper circumstances to experience the game holistically. A lot of people I've spoken to who've played it had that sort of playthrough, where they used all the warp pipes - speeding through it before they've had the chance to learn the walking path. Its secrets were so prevalent in the pop culture osmosis, I knew how to get to World 8 before I had even touched the game. Once, was Super Mario Bros. designed with secrets in mind that'd unravel in parallel with mastery. So in order to give its entire whole its flowers, I made sure for the first time in my life, to actually play every single level.
And when I finally got through it, I was amazed by how much bespoke course design they had managed to pack into here. We've all missed the forest for the trees by over-analyzing 1-1 alone. I was impressed by how many of the courses worked together to funnel me towards taking advantage of Mario's momentum, or how your jump increases in height when you reach max acceleration. Like how the Lakitu drops all those spiky guys, as if to remind you to not let the hazards pile up. Stay ahead of the flood always. The water levels feel the most purposeful they'll ever feel in a 2D platformer - tightly wound so that you have to keep moving so persistently, you can duck under a descending Blooper without losing speed. When everything is so singularly focused on getting me to the fun bits, it's hard to imagine it took me so long for it all to click.
One big filtering point for me were the Hammer Bros. on 8-2 and 8-3. Their hammer tosses are so much more volatile than any following game - and they honestly still are too hard for me to consistently break through from a stand-still. But when I began to hold more confidence in my footing, I realized how much of their variance is from letting them stay on screen for too long. All Mario 1 ever wanted to teach us was to believe in our ability to never stop running. That the greatest defense is to never give them the chance to touch you in the first place.
Honestly, the most impressive part of Mario might still be his jump arc. There is a lot of responsibility in piloting an action with so many fluid outcomes. Games would be afraid to give you that much control for a solid twenty years after; Super Mario Bros. shares a lot with the games we are now describing as "expressive". Explains why the term "Character Action Game" came back with Devil May Cry 3, when the term was conceived in the 80s exactly for the purpose of describing the process of reining in the complexities of a character in something like Mario 1.
But maybe it's exactly because it was overwhelming at first, that I learned something about learning. Now, this wasn't my first rodeo with permanent loss of progress; I was practicing for a 1cc of Perfect Cherry Blossom around the same time. But my feelings were reaffirmed by the process of beating Mario 1 in particular. When I play games with frequent checkpointing: I may only be able to barely pull a task off, but there's still a chance I'll fluke it first try and move on - only to hit a wall five minutes later when I'm forced to perform once again. There's no doubt that frequent checkpoints are less frustrating in the short term, but part of me thinks they don't internalize information as well in a way that can sometimes form long-term frustration. Meanwhile, in Super Mario Bros., I am asked to clear four whole levels to make any permanent progress - there is a bare minimum level of consistency required to get anywhere. And because of that, I am also given ample place to practice and grow alongside the scaling challenge. Childhood me didn't even know you could press A + start to restart on whatever world you game over'd on, but I'm glad I even got the chance to try playing it like that.
None of that is unique to Mario, especially within the arcade-dependent context of the 80s, but... There is something magical about that first time you run two or three times as quickly through a course than in your first attempt. The main criticism I see levied towards permanent loss is how frustrating retreading can be, which is exactly why Mario ensures that “treading” is not a strong enough word to describe the way you plow your way through revisited ground. Momentum directly translates familiarity into speed. There's an unforgettable viscerality to learning how to turn minutes into seconds.
I first played this game through in 2023, and it's kind of adorable looking at the old clips of me playing it. I used to run so much less confident... just an anxious little super mario
And I can't help but think that having this joyous experience with it finally brought some subtle feelings I had to words. Since they were the ones with enough buffer to feel smooth on a fat HDMI TV, my main experiences with Mario in my youth were the New entries, which had been filled with dozens of secrets and collectibles. They were "bigger" in the way modern titles are expected of. But something never felt right about that, and I can say now with confidence that my problem with secrets in Mario is that they demand a minimum level of taking in your surroundings that, ironically, slows me down. Star Coins had never done anything other than pull me away from getting to the meat of what makes Mario distinct. No shade to Mario Wonder - it was fun enough. My feelings were cemented when a friend and I agreed to do a speedrun race using the game's advertised online VS multiplayer. What made it fall apart so quick was that they had chosen to lock a big, meaningful chunks of the level behind a collectible you can walk by. Sometimes one of us would intentionally grab it, and the other would miss it. It made me think about how Mario 1 was so timeless, one of Wonder's back of the box features would suit it better than it does in its own game.
So, playing the original SMB, and running as fast as I could without care - it was freeing. And, to quote a friend: "I think there's something special about growing up, and getting to develop these relationships with these old games for yourself". It truly is a unique feeling to finally understand one of those big names, deified as "important" to you for so long without explanation, and feel like you in particular connect with what made it a cultural landmark. Something will only feel special if you feel it out for yourself. Adulthood is gaining a confidence in yourself to not need instructors. And NOW, my enemies are DEAD, and I'M THE ONLY ONE LEFT TO EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY MARIO IS GOOD.
BUT DON'T LET THE CYCLE REPEAT ITSELF.
...isn't it so funny to become a mario fan in your 20s???