Christmas 1985 was supposed to be different in our house. Not because of any grand plans, mind you, but because my dad had pulled a proper blinder and somehow convinced my mum to let him buy a Nintendo Entertainment System. This was the same woman who thought our ZX Spectrum was “quite enough computer for one household, thank you very much,” so getting her to agree to another gaming machine must have required negotiations worthy of the United Nations.
I’d been banging on about Nintendo for weeks after seeing one at my mate Simon’s house. His family always had the latest kit – first video recorder on our street, microwave when the rest of us were still using proper ovens, and now this grey box that let you actually control what happened on the telly. My parents weren’t exactly early adopters. Dad was still using an 8-track in his Ford Escort, for crying out loud.
But there it was under our slightly wonky artificial tree, wrapped in paper that clearly came from the reduced bin at Woolworths. The box art showed this Italian plumber bloke in red dungarees, and even though I’d never heard of Super Mario Bros specifically, something about it looked… right. Professional. Like real games should look.
Getting it hooked up to our ancient Ferguson television was an adventure in itself. Three channels, dodgy horizontal hold, and a remote control the size of a house brick. Dad spent twenty minutes faffing about with the aerial lead while I bounced around like a lunatic, desperate to see if this thing actually worked. When that Nintendo logo finally appeared on screen, crisp and colourful in a way our Spectrum games never managed, I knew we’d entered a different league entirely.
Then came the music. That opening tune – you know the one, everyone knows the one – hit our living room like a revelation. Simple melody, but it burrowed into your brain immediately. Even my mum, who thought all video game music sounded like “a cat being strangled by a robot,” had to admit it was rather catchy. The title screen showed our moustachioed hero, and when Dad handed me the controller, I felt like I was holding the future.
My first attempt was absolutely shocking. Died on the very first Goomba – you know, that little brown mushroom thing that just walks in a straight line. My younger brother Kevin laughed so hard he nearly choked on his Quality Street. “You’re supposed to jump ON them, you muppet,” he helpfully explained whilst trying to nick the controller. But Dad, in a rare moment of actual parenting wisdom, said I deserved another go. Fair play to him.
Second attempt: made it past the Goomba but walked straight into the first pit like a proper numpty. Third go: discovered the Super Mushroom, which was like watching magic happen. Mario doubled in size, the music changed, and suddenly I felt invincible. Took me about six attempts to reach that flagpole, but when I finally managed it, the whole family cheered like England had just won the World Cup.
My obsession started immediately and showed no signs of slowing down. Every day after school, I’d leg it home, chuck my bag somewhere my mum couldn’t see it, grab a handful of digestives, and plant myself in front of the Ferguson for hours. Mum tried implementing a “homework first” rule that lasted exactly three days before I worked out I could just lie about having any. Sorry, Mum. Statute of limitations must be up by now, surely.
What struck me about Super Mario Bros, even at ten years old, was how perfectly everything controlled. Mario had weight to him – proper momentum that felt natural. Run and stop, he’d slide a bit. Jump whilst running, you’d go further. Little hop or massive leap, all depended on how long you held the button. Sounds obvious now, but compared to the stiff, jerky movement of most Spectrum games, this felt revolutionary. Like controlling an actual character rather than pushing pixels around.
The precision required for certain jumps taught me patience I definitely didn’t have anywhere else in life. There was this gap in World 8-1 that proper wound me up – simple jump between two platforms with a Koopa Troopa wandering about. Failed it so many times that Dad, walking past with a basket of washing, actually stopped to watch. “You’re overthinking it, lad,” he said, which was probably the most insightful gaming advice he ever gave. “Just run and jump.” Course he was right. Sometimes the simple approach works best.
The hidden secrets in Super Mario Bros created this sense of discovery that modern games, with their bloody great waypoint markers and objective lists, just can’t match. First time I accidentally discovered that certain bricks could be smashed by jumping into them as Super Mario, I felt like I’d cracked some secret code. Then came the warp pipes – green tubes that transported you to different areas. Some led to coin-filled bonus rooms. Others shot you up to unreachable platforms. The game rewarded poking about and trying stuff, which taught me to question the obvious limits of any system.
And then there were the warp zones. Bloody hell, the warp zones. First heard about them from this kid at school called Jamie, who always knew all the gaming secrets way before anyone else. Definitely had an imported copy of Nintendo Power or something. “If you go above the ceiling in World 1-2,” he whispered during break time like he was sharing state secrets, “you can find pipes that skip you straight to later worlds.”
Complete bollocks, I thought. Go above the ceiling? Sounded like one of those playground myths, like how you could supposedly unlock Ryu in Street Fighter by doing some mental button sequence whilst standing on one leg. But that afternoon, curiosity got the better of me. At the end of World 1-2, I found you could jump on a lift platform, leap above where the ceiling should be, run across the top of the level, and discover a hidden room with pipes marked as warps to Worlds 2, 3, and 4.
Absolutely mental. My ten-year-old brain couldn’t process it properly.
This wasn’t just a clever shortcut – it fundamentally changed how I thought about games. The rules weren’t fixed like I’d assumed. The designers had deliberately hidden these secrets for players to find, creating this whole meta-game of exploration beyond just reaching the end. From that moment, I started trying to break every game I played, looking for hidden paths, unintended tricks, secrets lurking just beyond the obvious stuff.
The Minus World glitch took this to another level entirely. Again, it was Jamie who spilled the beans – how if you did this precise wall-clip technique in the same warp zone area, you could access this bizarre, broken level called “World -1.” When I finally pulled it off after dozens of attempts, finding myself in an underwater level that looped forever, I felt like I’d glimpsed behind the curtain of game development. This wasn’t an intentional secret; it was an actual programming cock-up, a peek into the messy, human process of making games.
The technical achievement of squeezing Super Mario Bros into the NES hardware still impresses me today. Entire game fitted on a cartridge with just 40KB of program code – that’s roughly 0.00004 GB. Single photo on my current phone is often five thousand times larger. Within that tiny space, Shigeru Miyamoto and his team created thirty-two distinctive levels, each with different enemy patterns, architectural challenges, and secrets. They built an entire universe of mushroom people, walking turtles, and angry sentient bullets out of pixels you could practically count by hand.
The difference between this and the original Mario Bros arcade game was night and day. I’d played the arcade version at our local Wimpy, and it was just a single-screen affair where Mario and Luigi knocked enemies over and kicked them away. Fun enough, but limited. Super Mario Bros took that character and dropped him into a scrolling world full of imagination and variety. Like comparing a flip-book to a proper film.
Miyamoto’s design philosophy showed through every aspect. Rather than boring tutorials, Super Mario Bros taught through level design itself. World 1-1 is still a masterclass in this approach – introduces jumping, enemies, power-ups, pipes, and blocks without a single word of instruction. That first Goomba is placed so most players will either jump over it or land on it accidentally, teaching the basic stomp mechanic. The first mushroom is positioned to almost run into you, making it likely you’ll collect it even if you’re trying to avoid the bloody thing. These weren’t random choices; they were deliberate decisions to guide learning through experience rather than explanation.
My speedrunning attempts began early, though we didn’t have a name for it back then. Me and my mates would time each other with Mum’s kitchen timer, seeing who could finish fastest using warps. My personal best was around nine minutes, which felt godlike until years later when I discovered professional speedrunners finishing in under five. Still, those competitions taught me to optimize, find perfect routes, execute with precision. Every second mattered, every button press had to be exact. Didn’t realize then, but this was training skills I’d later use for everything from typing to driving to problem-solving at work.
As I got better, I started setting daft challenges. Beat it without warp zones. Beat it without collecting coins. Beat it without taking damage – never managed that one. My favourite was trying to finish with the timer as close to zero as possible without dying. Surprisingly difficult challenge that required knowing exactly how long each section took. Getting to the flagpole with three seconds left, heart pounding like I’d just run a marathon.
The music deserves special mention. Koji Kondo’s soundtrack did more with three audio channels than most modern games manage with full orchestras. The main theme is so iconic that people who’ve never touched a controller recognize it instantly. The underwater theme with its waltz-like rhythm created perfect buoyancy. The castle theme made my palms sweat before I’d even seen a Podoboo. Kondo understood music wasn’t just background – it was essential to the emotional experience.
My relationship with Super Mario Bros evolved over the years. When Super Mario Bros 2 arrived, I was initially confused by its different mechanics – picking up enemies instead of stomping them? Later learned it had originally been a completely different game in Japan, retrofitted with Mario characters for our market. Super Mario Bros 3 blew my mind all over again with its world map, power-up suits, and seemingly endless variety. But I always came back to the original. There was purity to it, perfect balance of simplicity and depth that later games, for all their improvements, couldn’t quite recapture.
My original NES eventually wore out – too many cartridge insertions, too many frustrated blowing sessions trying to get dusty contacts working. Mum suggested it might be time to “try other hobbies” – meaning “go outside occasionally, you pale git” – but naturally I saved up for a replacement. By then the SNES was already out, but I still wanted to play the game that started everything.
At university, I brought my NES to halls, where it became a social hub. People who’d never played classic Nintendo were baffled by the primitive graphics but quickly became addicted to the gameplay. My flatmate Andy, a non-gamer who mainly focused on his engineering degree, went from mocking my “kiddie toy” to staying up until three AM trying to beat World 8-4. “This game is mental,” he’d mutter, dying for the twentieth time to Bowser’s hammers. “Just one more go.”
The legacy of Super Mario Bros in my gaming life is immeasurable, really. Established my expectations for tight controls, thoughtful level design, hidden depth. Taught me the best games respect player intelligence rather than holding your hand like you’re five years old. When I play modern games with their excessive tutorials, unskippable cutscenes, and constant objective reminders, I sometimes long for the elegant simplicity of being dropped into World 1-1 with nothing but three lives and your wits.
I’ve played through Super Mario Bros on numerous platforms over the decades – original NES, SNES All-Stars version with updated graphics, various Game Boy iterations, Wii Virtual Console, Switch Online service. The muscle memory remains perfect across all of them. Could probably play through World 1-1 blindfolded at this point. Sometimes I boot it up just to experience that familiar flow state, perfect sync between brain, hands, and game that comes from decades of repetition.
My collection of Mario stuff has grown embarrassingly large over the years. Figurines, plush toys, t-shirts, even shower curtain with the original level design that my ex called “pathetic” – comment that may have contributed to her becoming an ex. I’ve got framed artwork signed by Charles Martinet, Mario’s voice actor, that’s one of my most treasured possessions. My current office features a shelf dedicated to Mario games through the decades, from the original cartridge – sadly knackered now – to the most recent releases.
Now pushing fifty, I sometimes wonder what it was about this specific game that hooked me so completely. Was it perfect timing, catching me at that impressionable age? Revolutionary design that still influences games today? Or simply that controlling this little plumber as he bopped Goombas and collected coins provided sense
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
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