Mario Bros – An arcade style game that keeps evolving

How Mario Bros All Began

Everyone has heard of the Italian plumber who was created by a Japanese artist.  This little man in red with a moustache was featured in more than 100 video games. The story of this popular plumber begins in the 1980s. The president of Nintendo at the time, Hiroshi Yamauchi commissioned an artist to create a game for Nintendo.  The artist’s name was Miyamoto.  He was not a programmer, but was able to develop a storyline before the workings of the game were designed, and had a good knowledge of technology and how the current trends would affect his creation.  The game was Donkey Kong which was a love story between a man, his girlfriend and a gorilla.  The main character was Jump Man and he could climb and jump ladders, move left or right and jump over obstacles and between platforms.  This game was unlike any other game at the time and the American team did not like the game and did not think it would be a success.  Clearly they were wrong and the game took off.

How Jump Man got his Name

The American Nintendo team were late in paying their rent and the landlord whose name was Mario came in and demanded the rent.  The team began calling the Jump Man Mario which later became his real name.  In 1983 Miyamoto designed two Donkey Kong sequels and then created an arcade game which featured Mario.  The game takes place under the busy streets of New York and features for the first time Mario’s brother, Luigi.  In this game Mario is unable to die and has super-human powers.

The Evolution of Mario

In 1985 this game was the most popular and most recognisable game in the gaming world, just like the online Blackjack Canada has to offer is now.  The game has 24 different levels and contains spaces which are larger than Donkey Kong and the Mario Bros and this game features power-ups.  Mario is now able to grow a much bigger mushroom and can shoot fireballs using a flower.  The game also has left to right scrolling which defined platform games and is still that way in many instances today.

This popular arcade game had two sequels which were both given the name Super Mario 2 and in 1986 a Japanese version of the game was released which was almost the same as the very first Super Mario Bros.  This new version was extremely complicated and Nintendo did not think that it would do well in America and was not released until 1993 and it then formed part of the Super Mario Brothers All Stars.  The other sequel that was released was a game known as Doku Doku Panic that was actually supposed to be the new Super Mario Bros 2, but was scrapped.  This game was completely different to the first Super Mario game, which was released in 1988.

1988 saw the release of Super Mario Bros 3 and had the same controls as 2.  The game was different in that it had a map of the world and inventory and there were new power-up features.  Players had the option of skipping levels if they wished and is thought to be the best of all the Super Mario games.  1990 saw a new console from Nintendo and Super Mario World was released.  Mario’s new friend Yoshi the dinosaur was introduced and new levels with multiple solutions were included.  Super Mario 64 was released in 1995 and was a 3D game and involved exploration.  There were different tasks in each level for players to complete.  The next release was 12 years later, Super Mario Galaxy.