Firing up Super Mario Bros. for the first time in 2024 feels less like playing a game and more like looking at a museum exhibit. Every few minutes, another now iconic piece of music, scenery, or enemy will pop up to remind you of the cultural impact this game had.
Unfortunately, the gameplay didn't really grab me. Mario's moveset feels fairly restrictive compared to modern titles, and the game seemingly tries to make up for that with its extreme difficulty. Perhaps it works better on an NES controller, but playing it with joycons on a Switch made me rely on the rewind feature to make it through a lot of the stages. While games like Celeste have the decency to respawn players at the beginning of a screen, Super Mario Bros. will completely reset the player's progress after a few deaths.
All in all, I recommend at least trying the game to see why it has its place in gaming history, but I suspect only hardcore gamers will make it through it without relying on save states or cheats.
Unfortunately, the gameplay didn't really grab me. Mario's moveset feels fairly restrictive compared to modern titles, and the game seemingly tries to make up for that with its extreme difficulty. Perhaps it works better on an NES controller, but playing it with joycons on a Switch made me rely on the rewind feature to make it through a lot of the stages. While games like Celeste have the decency to respawn players at the beginning of a screen, Super Mario Bros. will completely reset the player's progress after a few deaths.
All in all, I recommend at least trying the game to see why it has its place in gaming history, but I suspect only hardcore gamers will make it through it without relying on save states or cheats.