Super Mario Bros. 35 has garnered a warm reception from fans, but some players can’t help but notice its glaring flaws. A lot has changed since the release of the original Super Mario Bros., yet this battle royale title seems stuck in the past. At times that is intentional, meant to provide a feeling of nostalgia, but sometimes it lends to a frustrating and outdated experience. Nowadays, whenever a player loads up a new game to play for the first time, there’s an expectation that a tutorial will teach them the basics. Even notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls explain to the player what each button does and the basics of playing, but that’s not the case here.
Super Mario Bros. 35 instead opts to throw players right into the thick of things. There’s no in game explanation about how the 35 player battle royale works, what its special modes are, or even how to control Mario during a game. To be fair, a lot of it is fairly intuitive to experienced gamers, but those without a decent amount of video game literacy will have trouble figuring out what’s going on. It’s strange to see this issue come up in a modern game, but it’s not very surprising given the source material.
The original Super Mario Bros. is undeniably a classic, and 35 years later the franchise is still going strong. Because of how deeply ingrained Mario and the lessons this game taught are in modern gamers, it’s easy to forget that this game didn’t have a tutorial of any sort. It wasn’t difficult to figure out in the first place, as players simply had to figure out how to move and jump, but it was up to the player to figure those controls out for themselves.
A good example of this is the dash button. Most experienced gamers likely try and sprint or dash first thing after picking up a new game, but new players may not think of that. In the case of Super Mario Bros., the only ways a player can figure out how to dash is through experimentation, reading the instruction book that came with the game, or being told by another player that it can be done. This was par for the course in the ’80s, but now players expect games to ease them into how everything works.
The same ideas about controls within the game apply to Super Mario Bros. 35, as players aren’t instructed on how to play unless they look in the controls scheme menu in options, but the bigger issue here is with the game’s unique premise. Unlike a typical Mario game, in which the goal is to simply run from left to right and reach the end as quickly as possible, players have to deal with a timer, enemies sent by other players, managing coins and power ups, and more. None of this is explained by the game itself, and there isn’t even an instruction booklet since Super Mario Bros. 35 is digital only.
For example, making it into the top 10 players causes the clock to count down much faster than normal. That isn’t a feature that anyone would know about without looking it up online or hearing about it first. It’s not entirely clear how sending defeated enemies to other players work either, and once again players are expected to figure it out for themselves. While there’s nothing wrong with players relying on online resources to get better at games, they shouldn’t be required to understand the fundamental ideas within one. This is one classic aspect of Super Mario Bros. 35 that doesn’t add charm, and hopefully it is addressed soon.
Super Mario Bros. 35 is available now on Switch.
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