Super Mario Bros. is a fun and challenging game. While later games obviously perfected the formula, upon replaying this, I can appreciate what it did and how it innovated in multiple aspects. The game is a departure from the simple platformers that came before it.

It manages to still feel good to control and play through now (although I gotta admit some parts of it, especially in world 8, are frustrating). I don't think I can say much which hasn't been said in the last 35 years. It's still exciting to see where the magic started.

Monolithic though it may be, the original NES version of Super Mario Bros. simply didn't age very well. The physics feel wonky and inconsistent, and a great deal of the game's length is buffered by difficulty rather by actual content. It's hard to feel accomplished upon beating a tough level or world when you know you'll just have to come back and beat it again if you run out of lives. I appreciate the placement of warp pipes to alleviate this issue, but saving your progress should be a game feature, not a hidden secret or easter egg.

However, I did have fun playing this game. It's easy to see how this game jump-started the platforming genre, as many ideas pioneered in this game became staples of the franchise as a whole. The game may seem bare-bones in hindsight, with a relatively small variety of power-ups, enemies, and levels, but the content that IS there is surprisingly polished for such an old game. The enemies become predictable and consistent once you understand how they work, and there's a ton of different twists that make each level unique, such as underwater segments, moving platform challenges, and, of course, the dreaded hammer bro gauntlets. This is an incredibly satisfying game to master and beat.

Regardless, there's just too much missing here to ever justify playing the original over the SNES All-Stars remake, which fixes a lot of the game's problems, making movement feel more consistent, saving your game at the start of each world, and looking/sounding better overall. In contrast, the punishing game-over system makes the original version of the game feel more suitable to an arcade machine than a home console. I feel some guilt judging this game alongside its successors and remakes, but for a guy born in the 2000s, there's not much reason to go back and play this game if I'm craving some Mario. Unless you're looking for a particularly challenging experience, everything this game does is done better in future installments.

Un pequeño replay con el Switch online por los jajas que he hecho en ratitos sueltos desde el sábado hasta hoy

Como plataformas rapidito está y sigue genial pero aún me supera como era la dificultad en los 80: 7-4 y 8-4 son niveles que me he podido pasar sin guía pero tras unos buenos minutos de ensayo y error (la mecánica de pasar por los pasillos correctos ha envejecido fatal)

Me ha sorprendido mucho cosas que había olvidado como que solo hay dos niveles acuáticos en todo el juego o ciertos enemigos introducidos gradualmente (no hay poodoboos en el 1-4 pero sí en el 2-4)

Es Super Mario Bros. Es icónico.

Beat over the course of an evening, with no Warp Zones or savestates but ample continues.

My problem with SMB1 has always been that Mario doesn't control like Mario—he has the moves, but they come with much more inertia than in later games, especially in the air, and he sometimes accelerates at weird times. The result is physics that are OK for a platformer but pretty bad for the series.

Despite the limited engine and relatively small enemy and object palettes, the game is varied enough; no two levels feel the same, and most of them are fun. The infamous Cheep-Cheep Bridge was much easier than I expected (only one death across multiple continues), but 8-3 was absolutely dreadful—a whole level built around the worst enemy in the game! World 8's levels felt a bit long in the tooth in general, and not just because they ate over a dozen continues.

I wish someone had warned me that the continue cheat restarts you at the beginning of the current world.

"Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!"(c)
I eventually beat the game. No Save states, just original NES, Mario and me. That's a kind of a milestone for me. I moved towards this day more than 25 years of my life :)
Super Mario Bros. was the first serious video game I played being a child. That time I was crazy about it. I woke up in the morning and immediately ran to my non-color TV set which parents allowed to use for gaming. I spent a lot of mornings playing same levels of Mario and that's curious how I wasn't tired of doing this again and again. I think I stuck somewhere in the world 4 those days.
A lot of time has passed, I completed a lot of more modern Super Mario games and finally I returned to the origins. I must admit the game is really difficult. Till the world 7 it's pretty straightforward but then it punishes you for every small mistake or loosing of concentration.
That was a surprise for me that the game has just 3.5 on this resource while I always counted it to be a great classic. So I'd like to be an advocate for it in front of modern gamers auditory.
This game is great because it aged just perfectly. It's still interesting, challenging and creative. No matter how many new Mario games you finished this one will be able to surprise you. Good prove of these words is that it was not annoying to pass through start worlds again and again as in childhood. Because you always have a chance to pass them perfectly and hence to have more extra lives for really difficult levels.
Music here is just a magic. I know these themes by heart from a childhood. Even being repeated hundreds of times they're not annoying.
The game motivates you to be creative. Even this early Mario had a lot of secrets hidden on the levels. Ones which give you extra life or bunch of coins. Finding them without any guides is a pure enjoyment. Closer to the end you really need to follow strategy to beat the level with minimal loose of your lives. And also plan a strategy for entire world.
I think the main reason why people not fully enjoy the game nowadays is this glorious feature of Save states and replays in NSO or just on any other emulator. It removes from the game all the challenge. But it's essential here. Without feeling of excitement and a risk of loosing everything you don't get even 10% of enjoyment. I beat game last year on NSO using replays. I felt just nothing at the end.
I'm proud to join the club of Super Mario Bros. completers. You really think you could pass the game without modern replay feature? I bet you won't ;)

Jump man jumps.

I haven't played the misadventures of Italian jump man in god knows how long. Probably since I was a kid, but playing it again there's two things that kinda stood out to me more than anything. One, it was a lot easier than my memories and than the occasional online murmur portray it as. The only particularly aggravating thing about the game was figuring out the puzzles.

It was just an annoyance that was relatively easily solved by bashing your head against the wall until you had the solution. The other thing it's just how much inertia Mr. Italian Jump Man has to deal with. Certain jumps miss because you don't have enough speed despite that working before, slipping off platforms when landing because of said inertia. It's just a bit rigid.

Plus, each level set is basically four or five level types remixed into chunks of four, it's pretty darn repetitive. It's still a decent like 30 minutes of your life, but like, I don't really think there's a reason to play this one much now. There's better platformers on the same system alone.

What else can be said at this point? It's not only an important game for Nintendo but an important game for the entire video game industry. It's by far the most jam packed Famicom game when it released back in September 1985 and was more or less the last hurrah for Famicom cartridge games from Nintendo before moving to the Disk System (and we all know how that ended). Meanwhile in North America this game is credited for saving the video game industry which I personally think is a bit silly although there is some level of truth to that. As for the game itself, its still fun 35+ years later! This is the game that got me into retro gaming and I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't played this on original hardware when I was a kid. A timeless game that will never get old.