Super Mario Bros.

Name: Super Mario Bros.
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Genre: Platformer
Hours Played: Countless
Beaten: Yes, countless times

In the early eighties, most video games were about one thing.  Space Invaders was about shooting aliens, Pole Position was about racing cars, Pac-Man was about eating pellets and avoiding ghosts.  Then, in 1985, everything changed with the release of Super Mario Bros.  In this game, you could stomp enemies, break bricks, breath fire, throw turtle shells, grow giant, climb beanstalks into the sky, swim, jump off bullets, and more.  There was absolutely nothing else like it at the time, and to say it changed video games forever is an understatement.

The basic gameplay is simple: you walk from left to right, collecting coins, avoiding or defeating enemies, and try to reach the flagpole at the end of the level.  The genius is in how complicated they made the game with such simple rules and constraints.  For instance, taking damage.  Gain an extra "hit" and you grow to giant size; take damage, and you shrink back down.  This visually communicates in an instant whether or not you can afford to take a hit from an enemy.

Another example is attacking enemies.  You're taught at the very beginning that you attack enemies by jumping on them (the only exception being spiked enemies; another example of clear communication through graphic design).  As you progress, you start to realize the hidden depth of this attack: bouncing off enemies to reach new locations, stomping multiple enemies in a row for more points, jumping off turtle shells to send them careening at your opponents, etc).

Add all that to the wide variety of the game (traversing mountains, swimming underwater, riding platforms through the sky, avoiding lava spurts in castles, etc) and you have a game that offers a shocking amount of depth and replayability.  I've been playing the game almost as long as it's been out, and there's still techniques (the wall jump, standing inside a shell) I've never been able to pull off.  Super Mario Bros. is a game that's still as fun to play thirty years later as the day it came out, and that's a testament to amazing creativity and game design.

Graphics & Animation: 3 (Good)
Super Mario Bros. was one of the first games released for the NES, and while it's graphics remain iconic to this day (especially the design of Mario and his enemies), they still leave some room for improvement.  From his earliest days of Donkey Kong, Mario has always been shown wearing blue overalls and red shirt. Super Mario Bros 2 and 3 were both able to find ways to represent this, but in the original you're stuck with red overalls and a brown shirt for some reason.

Music & Sounds: 4 (Excellent)
Be honest; even if you haven't played it, you can still hum the Super Mario Bros theme song.  Like Tetris and Mega Man 2, the music from this game has permanently imprinted itself into popular culture, spawning endless covers and remixes.

Controls & Level Design: 4 (Excellent)
The controls in Super Mario Bros. set the standard for how people expect NES games to control, right down people always expecting jump to be assigned to the A button.  The real beauty though comes down to the little touches and tweaks you normally wouldn't even notice.  For instance, Nintendo designed the game so that if you almost but not quite clear a jump, the game auto-adjusts and puts you on the platform (it's the reason you can run over one-brick-sized gaps).  It's something you would never notice during play, but it adds a smoothness to the controls that make Mario clones (rip-offs) never feel quite right when you play them.

Story & Presentation: 3 (Good)
The story here is told through presentation (i.e. lowering a turtle flag and raising a star flag at the end of each level) and through cutscenes at the end of each castle (although every cutscene is identical save the last one).  The presentation is nice; the Mushroom Kingdom is clearly a world under construction, what with it's random brick formations, floating girders, and exposed pipes everywhere.  There's been plenty of debate over the years as to what the subtext of the game might be; my personal theory is that it's a statement against the urbanization of Japan's more rural areas.  Still, just the fact that we're still talking about it (and still referencing/parodying the famous "princess in another castle" line) is a testament to how enduring this game is.

Length & Replayabilitiy: 4 (Excellent)
It's been thirty years now, and people are still posting new Let's Play videos to YouTube showing off secrets and tricks of the trade for this game, and Nintendo is still trying to replicate it's success with the New Super Mario Bros. line of games.  Yes, I know I stated I wouldn't let a game's legacy influence score, but my point is to illustrate the infinite replayability of this game; I can think of few games that have been replayed more.

Total: 18 (Excellent)