Super Mario Brothers 3

Looks a lot better than the first 2 games did.

Go back (not to Jail, you may pass Go) and recall a time when games were new and fresh and exciting. That the latest game in a series didn't just introduce a single new gimmick like riding in a car, or throwing in bigger areas with more guns. Back when a sequel meant something worthwhile like a complete revamp of a game, adding in many MANY new features, spruced up graphics and a much bigger and more appealing adventure than the previous instalments of the games had produced. Now think of Super Mario Brothers 3.

Sadly the "Dogshit filled kebab" did not live up to this claim

Having reviewed game 1 and 2 (Doki Doki Panic re-skin version) it's about time I look at what could possibly be the BEST game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. So first of all, what's new and what's the same. Well, we still have Mario and Luigi doing what they normally do which involves jumping up and hitting blocks of "?" to gain coins and powerups. You still get bonus lives every 100 coins and you still can kick shells after jumping on them. There are also levels, 8 worlds and that's about where the similarities stop from the original game. Oh and Mario is still spelt the same but I'm running out of things to say here.

Every 80,000 points, you can find this little bonus. Match the cards to gain the item.

What's new? Roughly everything. It's still a platformer, you still move left and right, you still try to get to the end of the level and you still have bosses to kill at the end of each world. One of the biggest and foremost changes are that there's a world map. You can see each level on the map and routes to take to get to those levels, you can skip some levels or elect to do them all. You can see where bosses are and where item houses are for bonus items that can be used at the start of a level, giving you that item's effects before you begin the level.

This game does throw lives at you like it's going out of fashion.

Your items now range from mushrooms and flowers (larger and firepower respectively) to a leaf (giving flight and a tail to smack things) frog suit (for swimming) Cloud (to skip a level) hammer suit (turns you into a hammer brother) Tanooki suit (let's you change into a statue while able to fly like the leaf permits) stars (the old invincibility trick again) a hammer to smash blocks that can open access shortcuts or bonus places in the world map, whistles to warp across worlds, anchors to stop the boss flying across the land and a P-Wing which gives you unlimited flight (until hit).

Or have him castrated and toilet trained.

The sheer size and scope of the items themselves, is enough to make one wonder how it all fits into the game. Each world has between 4 and 11 levels that need to be navigated (or avoided) skipped and tackled as you navigate each level from start to Boss where upon you fight the boss in their flying airship (of wood and cannons) and then jump on them a few times. Within such levels you may encounter a whole host of different level types. Some will be standard levels with no height change, some might race up into the clouds if you can fly, some might be auto scrolling levels, some can be underwater levels (AND Auto scroll for bonus shit-kickies) and some are mazes of pipes and warps and doors where your biggest enemy is simply finding an exit before the time runs down and kills you.

Later levels really begin to throw the challenges at you.

The controls are much more precise than previous iterations of the series. You'll run, jump and smash blocks with surprising ease and accuracy very shortly after playing the game and making those "pixel perfect" leaps are much easier in this game than in the earlier ones. The use of the powerups is performed suitably well save for the idea that really it would have been nice to have had 3 buttons, one jump, one run, one "item/power" use but instead it falls onto the run button. However this ties in better with the flight mechanics as one needs prolonged running in order to build up the speed to launch oneself into the air with the grace and majesty of a turd covered brick with its arms out.

Big difference #1, a world map. It does give you some size and scope of the world.

Some of the earlier levels however feel really short in comparison to the earlier games. While some of the later levels can feel like overly long slogs through an unending onslaught of adversity and increasing difficulty where there's so much going on and so many potential routes that you'll want to try and visit them all but there's not enough time in the level in which to do that. While some of the powerups are so rare and infrequent that many players can go through the game repeatedly and NEVER see them (such as the hammer brothers suit, which for many a year was refuted as being a myth by many during the days before the internet was available as the World Wide Web).

Yay.... An ice world... Everyone loves those...

Though if you've seen the film "The Wizard" (California!) you'll already know about one of the warp whistles found in possibly the most unlikely and randomly hidden of places. But I'm not here to rip apart what was ostentatiously a film for the release of the game, it's shit and that's all I'm going to say on the matter regardless of comments and feedback. Back to the game.

It's not a series of Space Invaders shots, it's meant to be coins.

Each world brings a new theme and with it, new (usually) enemies. The variety and differences are quire stark for specific enemies. Going from the Goombas to the Angry Sun and Fire Snake to Bob-Ombs and beyond. Some enemies are simple sprite swaps and variations of other enemies while there's those that rarely and infrequently appear (Goombas in green boots on just ONE level in the entire game) and different sprite sets for every single boss, it's a lot for a game to have and this game does very well with it, especially compared to the original.

Line the face up and get bonus lives! Or balls it up like I have.

There's little here to criticise about the game save for it perhaps being TOO much new in too short a span of games. But that's a ridiculous comment and a poor one at that, just a comment for the sake of a comment that's barely relevant. It's a large, impressive and enormous expanse of a game that takes many players by surprise with the sheer scale and scope of the game, especially when compared to various games made later and made on more capable systems.

Sadly, this one doesn't want to be walked to the Slime Dungeon...

Accompanied by a very memorable soundtrack, clear and crisp effects that go almost perfectly hand-in-hand with this game, Super Mario Brothers 3 is one of THE games that everyone should play at least once in their lives. Take a look at a good platformer that's been done well and executed nearly flawlessly back when a game needed to be good to draw people in rather than being tagged with enough money to qualify for "Triple A" status.

One plumber vs. One Tank Platoon... Sounds rather fair.

And now to wear a turtle shell and lob hammers at people. My record was three windows, a car and an old lady before I was handcuffed, I hope to beat this record.

Super Mario Brothers 2

REDdy for the new characters? I wasn't.

Ok, let's get the geek wank out of the way by me saying that this Super Mario Brothers 2. I don't want to hear the usual crap of people blathering out that the game is actually "Doki Doki Panic" of which I don't care. Nor do I care that it's not "The true Super Mario Brothers" known as the Lost Levels. Even more do I not care that this game was sold back to Japan as Super Mario 2 USA and basically was Doki Doki Panic being re-painted and resold... as a game already released and sold in the first place.

Actually, all hats off to Nintendo for selling the same thing twice and broken teeth for everyone who didn't realise at the time that this would be an ongoing pattern of selling us the same game again. "Oh hello Zelda franchise, another Hook shot you say? Another fucking water temple too you say? Well come take another fifty notes out of my sky-rocket while I roll out the barrel, drop my trousers to my ankles and hand you the hot spice lube"

Rant over. (yeah, right...)

Get used to this enemy, you'll see him... her... it, a lot.

Let's take a look at what we have. It's a completely different engine of a game compared to Super Mario Brothers and if you're expecting more than go play the Lost Levels or perhaps a Kaizo Mario level... Please post up a video of you playing it on your first run through though. We'll happily laugh at your misery. For those still here, this is a game that takes a very different approach to the original game. Though do remember, it's a sprite swap of a game.

First a start, you can select one of four characters each with their own stats in jumping, running while holding something, and one can float. Your characters main methods of attack is to pick stuff up and throw it at something else. This includes most enemies in the game, jump on it (But... That kills things??? No, prick, it doesn't) and you can ride it around like you've hi-jacked an old aged pensioner until you decided to hoist it up over your head and turn it into a projectile of death, or it gets thrown to the ground, rights itself upright and resumes attempting to be a pain in your arse.

Taking a tip from the TARDIS, some pots and routes are deceptive large.

That is your Modus Operandi for this game, pick stuff up and lob it. Though don't throw the baby out with the bath water just yet. As a game it's very bright, very colourful and certainly a lot more visually appealing than the original was. The controls are more responsive than the original and movement can catch players off guard if they're used to the formers almost sluggish acceleration compared to this. Unless you're Luigi, in which case welcome to inertia and make friends with it. Mario is your average man, Luigi the high-jumper with slippy shoes on, Toad the plucky strongman and Princess being the weakest but can float over ravines.

The more interesting facet of this game is that there's usually more than one way in which to beat a level. Some ways are more obvious than others while whole sections can be by-passed by abusing high jumping with a leaping enemy you're riding on, or using the floater to navigate annoying ledges and back under them to warp pipes and such.

Yep... Whales. With spouts and blowholes. Having a whale of time here.

There's a lot more the weapons and inventory to play around with it this game. You start with 2 health points and can gather more IF you a) find a magic potion, b) drop it to make a magic door, c) hope the dark world that houses coins underground, has a magic mushroom you can pick up to boost your HP by a point FOR THAT LEVEL ALONE. On top of that, if you pick up 5 healthy veggies, you get a time stopper, grabbing 5 cherries grants you an invincibility star and there's other items from Shells that you can ride and kill enemies (watch for jumping ones though) keys to unlock door (and likely get chased the whole time) and items like rockets that take you ahead in the level.

From the first screen, you'll notice this game scrolls in the 4 main compass directions. Which then leads into the problem in some levels where you don't know where the bottom of the level is leading to the death-pits. Because the screen doesn't scroll unless you're near the bottom of where you can see, so by that point, it's usually too late to do anything about stopping your descent and you get a nice life to vanish.

Level over! So everyone sodded off for a while and a bird's head was rather surprised

If you're lucky during a level you might have collected a coin or 14 and get to spin a fruit machine to try and win more lives. Good luck with that, though there is a timing point where you can usually win one or two lives with cherries, and sometimes 5 lives from it. Aside from that, you've a fairly varied game with a steadily increasing challenge though it can feel a little under populated at times for enemies and challenges.

You've your grassy normal lands that tend to mess about in the clouds from time to time, desert levels, ice levels, some underground focus levels, levels with high climbs and long falls. There's less levels than in the original but there's a lot more variety and flavour in the selection rather than having just a large, plain, selection.

The only chance some people will get a life, is here.

Enemies come in many flavours (sick joke avoided there... perhaps) with the usual walkers and runners, leaping enemies, enemies that shoot at you, enemies that are taller and can't be picked up. The puzzles in the game range from getting bomb a to wall b at times while some make you use enemies as a safe-platform in which to navigate over spikes or gaping chasms which can be somewhat jarring if you're not quite used to the fact that landing on enemies here usually doesn't kill them.

Oh and there's Birdo. The odd looking... thing that spits out eggs (at first) and serves as a low-boss for most of the ends of the levels and at the end of each world is one of a few bosses. A rat with shades on that throws bombs, a crab that hurls rocks, a 3-headed snake that gobs fireballs, a large fireball and the final boss. (One surprise boss, but I'll not ruin that). Each boss takes the usual hits before dying and some of the bosses are repeated with slightly different level layouts to make up that thing called "Challenge".

Sometimes it all gets a bit much, or you just can't control the slippery little git.

The music is suitably chirpy enough with enough of catchy snatch of notes here and there that you might be listening to it for a while and be able to recall it quite clearly at times. Though the "danger" music does grate quickly as there's a definite lack of variation to stop the repetition from becoming beyond annoying.

But was there a point to all of this. Yes and no. As a game it stands upright on its hind legs and can walk and squeak with all the other games. As a Mario game it can't exactly be overly criticised as it's brought in a wealth of new characters, enemies and settings to the original that helps expanded the Mario-verse (You know, when he's not a Doctor, or Hotel manager, or Graffiti cleaner or EVER A PLUMBER! Let's see 'Mario puts his hand through shit in the U-Bend to fix a blocked toilet' as something indicative of his profession) and a case can be made in that the game itself has variation, there's a lot of ways to play it and beat it and the addition of multiple, different, characters does give that replayability factor a new breath of life.

She floats, it's handy at times, but usually you won't care enough to play her.

It's an odd one. I want to say I dislike it, but at the same time I also appreciate it. In truth, it's not bad, but it's not great and yet it still will feel at home amongst the games that it shoe-horned its way into with a bit of Miyamoto magic and a paint job on the sprites.

Super Mario Brothers

For what might be one of the most iconic platformers, possibly of all time and the most definitive article in establishing the 8bit gaming era, Super Mario Brothers (on the NES) is one of the most played and purchased games of all time (or at least, very heavily disputed to be as such). But we're not here to discuss the validity of such claims as if we're some over-inflated, self-important, critical analysis of gaming. We're an over-inflated, self-important, game reviewer. A completely different kind of asshole, but still as much of an asshole as anyone else.

The general idea of the game is as such, Mario (a plumber... bear with me on this one) is tasked with rescuing a princess who has been kidnapped by a large turtle/ox thing, called Bowser (Or King Koopa... or both, depends which manual you read on this one really). To get her back, he's going to have to run through the Mushroom Kingdom and travel 8 zones/worlds, each made of 4 sub-zones/levels, and battle Bowser to save the princess and consequentially, the day.

On the way you'll do all the things known and loved in most Mario games. Namely, running, jumping and punching blocks above your head. Oh and landing on things, Mario loves to land on things. Which highlights nicely how different we all take things as I'd end up with a long, arduous slog through whole armies of turtles, mushrooms, weaponised-clouds and armour-plated beetle-things; duelling giant turtle ox creatures in castles over moats of lava while sweating through the heat and exhaustion of battling a creature twice my size and trying not to succumb to the tiredness of the mammoth task; drop-kicking hammer-throwing turtles into large pipes and feeding them to the voracious plant-traps that live in some of those pipes unless they provide me the information to find and use the secret warp pipes; before rescuing the Princess and walking alone into the sunset to ready myself for another day of fighting the same armies.

Mario takes the light-hearted approach, he'll run, he'll jump, he'll eat a magical mushroom (this is for kids?) and grow to twice his size before collecting a flower and throwing fireballs at his enemies, or a star and just running through them with his indestructible (save for falling to his death and running out of time) status. He'll collect coins for extra lives and use warp pipes to get to hidden areas and zones, swim underwater and run across bridges and platforms before hop, skip and jumping his way through castles and side-stepping bosses before being told the real princess is in another castle. Unless it's World 8 of course.

It's simple, it's effective and it has a lot of hidden depth within the game.

The levels do get progressively harder but there's never really anything that screams at being hugely unfair. There is nothing in this game that is on the levels of platform-hell games like I Wanna Be The Guy or CloudBerry Princess (in its later levels at least) where death is often the ONLY option unless you're the computer and even then... It's a pure game. I don't have to worry about combos, or special moves done only with sequences of buttons and controls, I just have to move right (duck and climb rarely), jump when I need to jump and run/shoot when I feel the need to.

At first.

The game becomes more complicated and more interesting in the later zones when you get to meet up with enemies that can survive being landed upon, such as the turtles, but then become ammunition for being kicked across the floor and taking out more enemies, which sets off the multiplier bonuses for accumulating scores and clearing out your adversaries. Just be care in case it bounces and comes back, then you're in trouble if it hits you. Other enemies might be better to just bounce off and land on others for combo points or killed (if you have it) with fire/flower power. While later enemies will be tougher and some immune to being hit with your shoes but not fireballs, while others are immune to fireballs but not the shoes.

To mix it up, there are a few themes within the levels. The underground levels tend to have a roof over them which will let you run along and bypass some/all of the level and access the secret warp zones. Some levels are underwater and tapping jump will allow you to swim in some fashion but now you cannot land on enemies. Other levels are more a series of platforms suspended in the air rather than having ground to run along and the 4th level of each world is a large castle with variable heights and floors with lava and fire themed traps and obstacles. There's plenty of variation and with each new world, new setups and different enemies.

Speaking of which, the enemies are quite varied in their inception and design. There's the usual low grade enemy of the Goomba which takes one hit of anything from landing on or a fireball to disperse. Turtles that either mindlessly walk onwards or patrol platforms that can be kicked after landing on them to destroy other enemies. Turtles that can bounce or fly, making for less predictable enemies than their ground-bound cousins. Large bullets that fly the distance of the screen sometimes from random heights or sometimes from cannons. Clouds that roam the skies with a little bastard hidden inside that throws out spiked enemies that can't be jumped upon. Squids, fish (swimming and flying varieties), fireballs, water, pits, lava, swinging lengths of fireballs, bosses and turtles that throw hammers at you are all included and several more enemies that I'll likely remember after publishing this write up. It's a grand old world out there and the population is varied and colourful.

On top of that are the many secret pipe routes. Through the game you can explore Mario's Plumber roots and take trips down specific pipes (no indication as to which pipes WORK, you just have to jump on and try to... Piranha Plants, knew I'd remember more enemies... press down so that you can descend into the pipe) and find secret rooms usually laden with coins and perhaps a power up or multi-coin block, before ascending a way ahead of the level you were previously in. While other levels will have bean-stalks that grow up into the ceiling, allowing you to climb up and explore the upper areas where you'll find lots of coins and collectibles and maybe even a few secret warp pipes (if you're on Level 4-2).

Control wise, you can run and leap bounce and jump and so on with relatively good control in mid-air after jumping (yep, realism), and there's a good level of inertia and sliding when coming to a stop but nothing excessive and nothing that really ends with you sliding off the end of a platform into the eternal ether that is the lost life pit. Swimming adds a little extra problem over certain holes and areas where you'll be sucked down rapidly with NO indication where these undercurrents are... Aside from recalling where you died previously, but that's hardly a fair measure of progress.

It's bright, it's smooth, and it’s simple for the most part with only the real challenges coming from later worlds and castles where the route you take through a castle determines success or repeating a section of castle again. Even the music is so catchy and well known nowadays that most people can simply just say "Mario" and have someone immediately start thinking of the first few bars of the main level music. Slight variations for underground levels and water levels and the castle/boss levels but the majority of what you're playing will be the standard tune, which thankfully is cheerful enough to be memorable without being annoying. Most of the time.

Nowadays, it's still a firm staple of gaming and which many games emulate in some manner or another, being that the ground was laid back then, many platforming games try to copy it and fail hopelessly at the task. It takes a considerable effort to match this game and takes a great deal more to be considered "as good" and even rarer is being seen as "better", especially if it's not another Mario game.

Super Smash Brothers Melee

"But why not the original, or Brawl?"

"Quite simply, I don't have those games, so this is the one I'm reviewing"

To answer a few similar questions over the last few months of "Why this and why not that?" I have to point people to the header of the website and the tagline, but most in particular "Leave disappointed" In which case, you got what was offered.

The premise of the game is an interesting one, take a whole bunch of Nintendo’s mascots, outfit them with platform game mechanics and give them a myriad of attacks and moves, then up the ante by giving them weapons, power-ups and other such pickups and let them go mental at each other until either the time runs out or the last one is left standing.

Nintendo certainly know how to milk a game these days, the initial starter roster featuring characters such as Mario, Fox, Pikachu, Link, Peach, Bowser, Kirby, Captain Falcon, Donkey Kong and a LOT more, with more becoming unlocked as the games continue and rounds are won and lost. The final roster has a lot to offer and plenty of variation between distinct characters, and variations of characters (Mario and Dr Mario, Fox and Falco).

The game presents as the ultimate party game, up to 4 players picking a character and systematically beating the shit out of each other in a variety of levels from various franchises. Paying homage to a lot of Nintendo’s history and structure of their games. Samus from Metroid appears and a few of her levels too, serving mainly as a nod and short trip down memory lane for the players that remember, or cared. The game can be customised fully to permit specific items appearing in matches, or none at all, or just Pokémon for a huge fight throwing god-knows-what at each other while creatures that fit in a pocket wreck havoc on almost interplanetary scales of damage.

Each char has the rudimentary move set of attacking in 4 directions, jumps, double jumps (sometimes more), blocking with a bubble that slowly fades, dodges in the air and along the ground, B-Moves in 4 directions for more specifically suited attacks to the character (Mario’s cape, Bowser’s flame throwing and shell spin etc), and 4 smash attacks where the player has to press the direction AND attack at the same time for a harder hitting attack that can be charged too. This is not counting moves that stack and build up, counter attack moves, catch moves and grab/throw moves which alone give the characters a huge variety of attacks and skills. Then they pick up a baseball bat...

The aim of each fight is to knock the opponent out of the area. You can beat on them, smack them around and slap the shit out of each other until the cows come home, but the damage only increases the height and distance they get knocked back. Hitting someone on 10% damage will knock them back a little, hitting someone on 250% damage will likely launch them into the stratosphere (though not always). Smash them off the sides, the top or the bottom and you score the kill/point. Person with the most points at the end of the timer, or if it's a life game, the last one standing, wins.

Some of the levels are static, while most of them are themed from various characters and having changing aspects to the level. A flying airship that travels across an arena, eternally looping Ice Mountains, lava filling death pits, fighting across a race track, the choices and hazards are huge for the game's possibilities, down to the final battle arena that's a simple flat area with no platforms for those that like combat to be decided upon fighting rather than avoiding unbiased hazards.

The single player mode gives people the choice to play the adventure, which is a series of levels themed on various games such as Mario with a level taken from the series with minor enemies within it, to the duels with other characters and making your way towards harder and harder challenges like Metal Characters, mazes to boost your collections and the final battle with a large Bowser (and maybe Giga Bowser) or the Master Hand (and Crazy Hand if you did fairly well), or even worse... a lot of the Game and Watch nutcase characters.

Collectors will find trophies dotted around the games to collect and unlock further things, other collectors will try to receive every battle award from "Switzerland" where you never attack or get hit, to the more elusive "No damage run" where you beat the whole game without being hit even once.

The game doesn't stop there, with the single player challenge mode, 50+ varying challenges that have players trying to fulfil specific criteria while either choosing their character, or being dictated by the computer/setup. Such as a Pokémon match where ONLY Pokémon moves will cause damage and nothing from actual melee will work. To one-on-one duels to try and unlock bonus characters.

Otherwise there's the sandbag that you have to launch within 10 seconds to send it the furthest after beating it up. Or play smash-the-ten targets.

The control system is incredibly responsive, reacting to each twitch and flick of the analogues and button presses, making the characters as nimble as your reactions. You rarely ever feel that the game has stitched you up, but more that a loss or failure is down to the player rather than the game's mechanics. (Except in sudden death... random bob-omb explosions). Some of the levels are better designed than others, with combat taking a back step while people JUST navigate the level and failure to do even that, will likely result in a loss of life (if the fight waits that long).

The game seems to borrow a lot from Power Stone 2, with the moving levels, 4 player chaos and multiple items, but like that game, it also suffers from over congestion. 4 players on screen, each throwing a pokeball, gives another 4 Pokémon on screen doing their moves and some of those moves smother the screen in special effects, it's very easy for people to lose track of their character and accidentally try to control the wrong one, and walk themselves off the edge of the level. (Throw in 4 ice-climbers, leading to 8 characters on screen at once...).

Musically, Smash Brothers Melee comes with a huge accompaniment of remixes from earlier titles tracks, be it from Metroid, F-Zero, Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong Country and many others, enough to be significant of a change to warrant their inclusion, while also bringing a new flavour that will remind the older players while being upbeat enough to be interesting to the younger players.

Sadly, with the game's huge roster of characters, there's a tier of skill and ability falling in place. Some characters will constantly and consistently outshine and outperform other characters unless there's some heavy luck based pickups doing well for those characters. Though if the opponent is that high in tier, they should have no difficulty in navigating around the attacks and going on to win the battle regardless of the other character's ability and skills. It can get rather one-sided when you're competing faster characters against slower characters or fast-fall characters (gravity does what it wants here) with those that not only fall slowly, but can double, triple, quadruple jump and more. But then, it's not about balance but more about having fun and enjoying the game with the characters you like the most.

The game is the ultimate party game for platform enthusiasts, perhaps not for beat-em-up hardcore nuts. The combat is a little lacking in complexity when you compare it to games like Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive (ignoring the excessive tittage), or even the Street Fighter games, those looking for a more in-depth fighter will find this game coming short against the competition in that regard. Having said that, with the right people this game can become a huge boon to any gamers library of games, on its own though there's the challenge of getting through the single player modes with their difficulties, getting the fastest times but the game really comes into its own with 2-3 friends round and going silly with the fighting.

It's also a great game for settling those pointless playground fights of who'd win between Mario and Kirby, the answer is 'The Off Button'