Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

NES, 1985; VC release 25 December 2006; 500 Points.

What is it?

It’s hard to imagine that there are people who haven’t played Super Mario Bros. Not only did it come with just about every Nintendo Entertainment System ever sold, whether sharing a cartridge with Duck Hunt and World Class Track Meet or whatever, but it’s appeared in a couple of other formats as well, such as Super Mario Bros Deluxe for Game Boy Color, and the NES Classic Series port for Game Boy Advance. This marks only the second appearance on a home console, unless you played either of the handheld editions on your Game Boy Player.

Mario’s changed careers from carpenter (Donkey Kong) to plumber and he runs, left to right, through eight four-stage worlds filled with flying turtles, pipe-bogarting plants with huge teeth, and somewhat unassuming but still venomous chestnuts.

How does it play?

The control in Super Mario Bros is very precise. Everything moves, slides and falls exactly right. It’s hard to say whether that’s because we’re so familiar with the source material or because the developer worked hard to get everything working just right. That said, it has (NES) launch title issues, particularly with collision in some cases (for example, in world 8-3 the sliding turtle shells pass right through certain enemies in the stage nearly every time) that artificially impact the difficulty level. Using the Wii Remote to control is comfortable and similar enough to a classic NES pad that your instinctive control works. The only problem I found with control is that you can’t scroll the screen right to left, meaning if you miss something, there’s no going back, something that was changed in later episodes.

How does it look and sound?

It’s one of the earliest (if not the first) NES games, so the graphics are very, very simple, but that’s part of what helps the game survive for more than two decades. The sprites are big and clean, especially on today’s huge HDTVs, and it’s hard to call the game ugly when everything’s so decidedly tidy. Indeed, it looks far better on the Wii than it ever did on the NES. As to sound, everything is intact. I was surprised at how few songs there are in the game. Every overworld area has the same song, so does every underworld area, every underwater stage, and every bowser castle stage. Of course, they’re all the familiar classics, and they all sound fine.

How is the replay value?

Surprisingly good. While Twilight Princess has taken more than 50 hours of my life so far, I boot and play this game more than any other on my Wii. Beating the game lets you access a simple stage select for subsequent plays (and as long as you don’t reset the game you’ll always have that, thanks to the automatic suspend feature when you exit to the Wii Menu). Warp pipes hidden throughout the game let you take differing paths through the game, and all the bugs and quirks found in the original game (including “minus world”) are still here, so there’s plenty to do. Finding another player to alternate turns with you as Luigi is also a bonus.

Is it worth it?

Yes. The only thing that would deter me from getting this would be if I honestly believed Nintendo would ever release Super Mario All-Stars on the system for the standard SNES price of 800 points. I wouldn’t bet on that happening with sales where they are. Five dollars for this game is a good deal, particularly since the Classic NES Series release is more expensive and the Deluxe release is nearly impossible to find.

See also:

Super Mario Bros, at the official site.