What do you think?
The game that went on to define “platforming” — leaping between suspended platforms or past puzzle-like obstacles — Super Mario Bros. was a side-scroller unlike any other.
It took players through a bizarre fantasy world in which a squat, mustachioed, Italian plumber named Mario worked either solo, or — in a two-player game — with his taller, skinnier sibling Luigi, to bound through level-like “worlds” filled with flying turtles, piranha plants, fireballs, hammer-tossing koopas and mushroom-like creatures called “Goombas” in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from a part-turtle, part-dragon creature named Bowser.
This is the game that defined so much of what we’ve been doing in games since its arrival on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985: coin-collecting, hidden power-ups that rendered Mario bigger and more powerful or awarded abilities like fireball-tossing or invincibility, jumping on enemies to defeat them, battling end-level “bosses,” using “warp” zones to shortcut between levels and jamming to musical themes now as recognizable as any top 10 pop tune.