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I don't feel like it really gets lavished with that much praise these days. Sure, it gets more credit than it deserves for "inventing" platformers and "resurrecting video games" in North America. But as a game, even among Nintendo fans, it's... well, not outright dismissed, but pretty downplayed, for being old, dated, relatively simple, and somewhat repetitive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief
I guess I'm the first to vote for SMB3. I'm not trying to be edgy. It's a great game but I think it undeservedly gets put on a pedestal in its series too often. I really enjoyed the multiple characters and being able to pick up so many things in SMB2. SMB3 felt like a step backwards in some ways. And despite some filler levels, I felt like SMW improved the SMB3 formula and expanded it into an epic quest.
When compared to SMB2, SMB3 is definitely overrated. SMB2 had 4 rather different characters to play as and pretty much defined the identity of those characters in later games, RPGs and other media. When put in relation to SMB2, yeah I can agree with that. If I can complain about SMW being a step backwards from 3 in some ways, then people are more than correct to call 3 a step backwards in some ways from 2.
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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
I don't know if I'd go so far as to call SMB3 "overrated," but it's often referred to as "The Greatest Platformer on the NES, Possibly of All Time."Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
I've always thought that was overselling it a bit.
And every line-scrolling racing game is a Pole Position clone; every 3D vs. fighting game is a Virtua Fighter clone; every beat'em up is a Double Dragon clone...Quote:
It may have been commercially successful, but it's still a Pac-Land clone.
That doesn't take it way the merits of the people that created and worked on Super Mario Bros.
Having "clones" that improve and tweak with the successful original formula is one of main factors that drives the improvement of a genre.
I'm not seeing it. Outside of a few movable platforms, I see more so a Moon Patrol clone minus the shooting and auto scrolling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
I can't remember it all right now, but Pac-Land was noteworthy for many things that separate Super Mario Bros from Mario Bros.Quote:
Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010
Just being a side scrolling platformer, the way we think of them now. There are endless articles about how SMB was so innovative, because simple things like running and jumping hadn't been done like that before.
Each stage ends at a checkpoint where your remaining time adds to your score. The better you time your jump at the last second, the higher the bonus points you earn.
Being able to jump so high, but also choose the height or your jump, but also to sway towards a direction as you descend. All the major things SMB gets credit for.
Each major stage/trip/world is comprised of several stages.
All the different kinds of physics.
The invincibility powerup and score multiplier for killing enemies in succession. The various powerups that give you different abilities.
The running skidding.
SMB swimming uses Pac-Land running shoes gameplay.
Even the different ways that the traditional enemies from the classic game are used now. Like the ghosts/turtles who fly overhead and drop ghosts/turtles on you.
The kinds of environments they came up with. All the secrets, misc obstacles, projectiles, platform behaviours and variety. Things like the cloud platforms and spring boards.
The castle mazes and their ominous bgm.
Pac-Land was one of the biggest steps forward in video games and doesn't leave much that is original in SMB. So many of the things we take for granted in sidescrolling/platforming games wasn't just a slow evolution. Most of it happened in one major game.
only 1 vote for mario 3, but most of em are for SMW & 64, some of the series' peaks...weird, 3's just as popular (if not moreso) but maybe it happened at the right age for more of y'all?
I don't see many to talk about SMB3 and I think that it's the best looking game on the NES (and Kirby). It's the only Super Mario Bros game I was always interested in playing.
SMB2, well, it's not theoretically SMB, so I think that's also the reason why it's left out in this pool.
Or because it's well known that it's not overrated, but so isn't SMB3 (imho).
SMW, on the other hand, is SMB1 all over again, but with more blind followers.
Plus also us Brits were playing pixel perfect platforming way back in 1983/4 with Manic Minner, long before Mario Bros.Quote:
Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010
All that talk about Pac-Land tends to ignore that Super Mario Bros is basically Donkey Kong with scrolling and without death if you fall too much, and that game came earlier.
Also all videogames ultimately will trace their roots to Pong. And actually not even that, since arcade machines trace their roots to electromechanical ones, which trace their roots to purely mechanical ones (like early pinball tables or shooting ranges with targets scrolling by), etc. Besides, genres never come out of nowhere, they start as a deviation of something that already existed and as several games try to copy each other's conventions they end up becoming a new genre.
To dismiss Super Mario Bros as "just a Pac-Land clone" is ridiculous. Especially since that one is still far from being the first platformer.
Mario Bros. is from 1983 but you probably meant Super Mario Bros. Still, it's not like North America didn't have its own great platformers in the Manic Miner era (Montezuma's Revenge, Pharaoh's Curse, Pitfall II, Bruce Lee, etc.). The 'crash' didn't affect the quality and quantity of computer games here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Yeah, I think the word clone should only be used for direct rip-offs or else everything could be labeled a clone. Black_Tiger is right to point out how underrated Pac-Land is, and how it influenced SMB, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
I also find it neat that Super Mario Bros. and Ghosts 'n Goblins came out only six days apart in Japan (if release dates on the internet are correct). Two epic platformers in one week.
Meant Super, which many Mags and Nintendo fans bang on about introducing the age of pixel perfect jumping. When we had that on the ZX Spectrum long before.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
Hmm... maybe that's why its my favorite in the series.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peeteris
From what people I know talk about, the only Mario game they seem to really like and talk about is Super Mario Galaxy 2, but it's not like they're saying it's the best game ever or anything. Also, I haven't played it yet, so I can't really say if they're overrating it either.
Mario 2 USA falls into that underrated area now these days. That's my reason for it not being on this poll unless you vote other.Quote:
Originally Posted by Peeteris