SUPER MARIO BROS. RELEASES FOR NINTENDO IN JAPAN

Super Mario Bros.

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. Tomorrow, she starts again her English course with The Stones and she has decided to play a little to relax and take enough forces to this return.

The Stones have been in Hogwarts during this COVID pandemic and now they have returned to Sant Boi de Llobregat to continue their English classes. Tomorrow, the family and The Grandma are going to meet again and it is a wonderful moment that The Grandma has been waiting for a long time.

While The Grandma was waiting for this moment, she decided to relax doing one of her favourite hobbies, playing video games. She chose Super Mario Bros, one of her favourite games that was released by Nintendo on a day like today in 1985.

She has invited her closest friends Claire Fontaine, Tina Picotes, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Tonyi Tamaki and Jordi Santanyí to play together on this day before returning at work.

Super Mario Bros. is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo.

The successor to the 1983 arcade game, Mario Bros., and the first in the Super Mario series of platformers, it was released in Japan in 1985 for the Famicom, and in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 and 1987 respectively.

Players control Mario, or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode, as they travel the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser. They must traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as enemies and pits with the aid of power-ups such as the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Starman.

More information: Nintendo

The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka as a grand culmination" of the Famicom team's three years of game mechanics and programming. The design of the first level, World 1-1, serves as a tutorial for first-time video gamers on the basic mechanics of platform gameplay.

The aggressively size-optimized profile was intended as a farewell to the Famicom's cartridge medium in favor of the forthcoming Famicom Disk System, whose floppy disks temporarily became the dominant distribution medium for a few years.

Super Mario Bros. is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise on its precise controls. It is one of the bestselling games of all time, with more than 40 million physical copies.

Claire & Jordi play with Super Mario Bros.

It is credited alongside the NES as one of the key factors in reviving the video game industry after the 1983 crash, and helped popularize the side-scrolling platform game genre.

Koji Kondo's soundtrack is one of the earliest and most popular in video games, making music into a centerpiece of game design.

The game began a multimedia franchise including a long-running game series, an animated television series, and a feature film. It has been rereleased on most Nintendo systems. Alongside Mario himself, Super Mario Bros. has become prominent in popular culture.

In Super Mario Bros., the player takes on the role of Mario, the protagonist of the series. Mario's younger brother, Luigi, is controlled by the second player in the game's multiplayer mode and assumes the same plot role and functionality as Mario.

The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces, and save Princess Toadstool. The game is a side-scrolling platformer; the player moves from the left side of the screen to the right side in order to reach the flag pole at the end of each level.

More information: Mario Nintendo

The game world features coins scattered around for Mario to collect and special bricks marked with a question mark (?), which when hit from below by Mario may reveal more coins or a special item. Other secret, often invisible, bricks may contain more coins or rare items. If the player gains a Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and gains the ability to break bricks above him. If Mario gets hit in this mode, then instead of dying he turns back to regular Mario.

Players start with a certain number of lives and may gain additional lives by picking up green spotted orange 1-up mushrooms hidden in bricks, or by collecting 100 coins, defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell, or bouncing on enemies successively without touching the ground.

Mario loses a life if he takes damage while small, falls in a bottomless pit, or runs out of time. The game ends when the player runs out of lives, although a button input can be used on the game over screen to continue from the first level of the world in which the player died.

Joseph & The Grandma play with Super Mario Bros.

Mario's primary attack is jumping on top of enemies, though many enemies have differing responses to this. For example, a Goomba will flatten and be defeated, while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile. 

These shells may be deflected off a wall to destroy other enemies, though they can also bounce back against Mario, which will hurt or kill him. Other enemies, such as underwater foes and enemies with spiked tops, cannot be jumped on and damage the player instead. Mario can also defeat enemies above him by jumping to hit the brick that the enemy is standing on.

Mario may also acquire the Fire Flower from certain ? blocks that when picked up changes the color of Super Mario's outfit and allows him to throw fireballs. However, certain enemies such as Buzzy Beetles are immune to fireballs. A less common item is the Starman, which often appears when Mario hits certain concealed or otherwise invisible blocks. This item makes Mario temporarily invincible to most hazards and capable of defeating enemies on contact.

The game consists of eight worlds with four sub-levels called stages in each world. The final stage of each world takes place in a castle where Bowser is fought above a suspension bridge; the first seven of these Bowsers are false Bowsers whom are actually minions disguised as him, whilst the real Bowser is found in the 8th world.

More information: Goomba Stomp

Bowser and his decoys are defeated by jumping over them and reaching the axe on the end of the bridge, although they can also be defeated using a Fire Flower. The game also includes some stages taking place underwater, which contain different enemies. In addition, there are bonuses and secret areas in the game.

Most secret areas contain more coins for Mario to collect, but some contain warp pipes that allow Mario to advance directly to later worlds in the game without completing the intervening stages. After completing the game once, the player is rewarded with the ability to replay the game with changes made to increase its difficulty, such as all Goombas in the game being replaced with Buzzy Beetles.

In the fantasy setting of the Mushroom Kingdom, a tribe of turtle-like creatures known as the Koopa Troopas invade the kingdom and uses the magic of its king, Bowser, to turn its inhabitants, known as the Mushroom People, into inanimate objects such as bricks, stones and horsehair plants.

Tina & Tonyi play with Super Mario Bros.

Bowser and his army also kidnap Princess Toadstool, the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom and the only one with the ability to reverse Bowser's spell. After hearing the news, Mario sets out to save the princess and free the kingdom from Bowser.

After traveling through various parts of the kingdom and fighting Bowser's forces along the way, Mario reaches Bowser's final stronghold, where he is able to defeat him by striking an axe on the bridge suspended over lava he is standing on, breaking the bridge, defeating Bowser, and allowing for the princess to be freed and saving the Mushroom Kingdom.

Super Mario Bros. was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka of the Nintendo Creative Department, and largely programmed by Toshihiko Nakago of SRD Company, Ltd.

The original Mario Bros., released in 1983, is an arcade game that takes place on a single screen with a black background.

For Super Mario Bros., Miyamoto wanted to create a more colorful game with a scrolling screen and larger characters. Development was a culmination of their technical knowledge from working on games such as Excitebike, Devil World, and Kung Fu and their desire to develop the platformer genre they had created with earlier games.

Miyamoto also wanted to create a game that would be the final exclamation point for the ROM cartridge format before the forthcoming Famicom Disk System was released.

More information: CNBC

Super Mario Bros. was made in tandem with The Legend of Zelda, another Famicom game directed and designed by Miyamoto and released in Japan five months later, and the games shared some elements; for instance, the fire bars that appear in the Mario castle levels began as objects in Zelda.

Nintendo sound designer Koji Kondo wrote the six-track score for Super Mario Bros., as well as all of the game's sound effects. At the time he was composing, video game music was mostly meant to attract attention, not necessarily to enhance or conform to the game.

Kondo's work on Super Mario Bros. was one of the major forces in the shift towards music becoming an integral and participatory part of video games.

Takashi Tezuka & Shigeru Miyamoto

Kondo had two specific goals for his music: to convey an unambiguous sonic image of the game world, and to enhance the emotional and physical experience of the gamer.

The music of Super Mario Bros. is coordinated with the onscreen animations of the various sprites, which was one way which Kondo created a sense of greater immersion.

Kondo wasn't the first to do this in a video game; for instance, Space Invaders features a simple song that gets faster and faster as the aliens speed up, eliciting a sense of stress and impending doom which matches the increasing challenge of the game. 

However, Kondo attempted to take the idea further, stating that the primary question determining the use of a game's music was Do the game and music fit one another? Unlike most games at the time, for which composers were hired later in the process to add music to a nearly finished game, Kondo was a part of the development team almost from the beginning of production, working in tandem with the rest of the team to create the game's soundtrack.

Kondo's compositions were largely influenced by the game's gameplay, intending for it to heighten the feeling of how the game controls.

More information: The Ringer

Super Mario Bros. was first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, for the Family Computer.

It was released later that year in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Its exact North American release date is unknown and is frequently debated; though generally being cited as having been released alongside the NES in October 1985 as a launch game, several other sources conflict with this statement, suggesting that the game may have released in other varying time frames ranging from November 1985 to early 1986. The game was released in Europe two years later on May 15, 1987 for the NES.

Super Mario Bros. was immensely successful and helped popularize side-scrolling platform games. 

Altogether, excluding ports and rereleases, the original NES version of the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the bestselling video game in the Mario series and one of the bestselling video games of all time, with 29 million copies sold in North America. The game was the all-time bestselling game for over 20 years until its lifetime sales were ultimately surpassed by Wii Sports.

The success of Super Mario Bros. led to the development of many successors in the Super Mario series of video games, which in turn form the core of the greater Mario franchise. Two of these sequels, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3, were direct sequels to the game and were released for the NES, experiencing similar levels of commercial success.

More information: Life Wire

Press Start to play!

DONKEY KONG, THE GOLDEN AGE OF ARCADE GAMES

Donkey Kong

Today, The Grandma has stayed at home playing one of her favourite arcade games, Donkey Kong that was released by Nintendo on a day like today in 1981.

The Grandma loves Nintendo games and she remembers the first time she bought one of them, in the 80's, when she went to the commercial zone of the Port of Barcelona to buy an amazing console of Donkey Kong.

Some decades later, The Grandma continues loving this wonderful game and she wants to talk about its origins and its history. She has invited Claire Fontaine to play together.

Before talking about Donkey Kong, The Grandma has continued studying her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 6. The Functions (II) (Spanish Version) 
 

Donkey Kong is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1981. An early example of the platform game genre, the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging and jumping over obstacles.

In the game, Mario is originally named Mr. Video and then Jumpman must rescue a damsel in distress named Pauline, originally named Lady, from a giant ape named Donkey Kong.

The hero and ape later became two of Nintendo's most popular and recognizable characters. Donkey Kong is one of the most important games from the golden age of arcade video games as well as one of the most popular arcade games of all time.

More information: Donkey Kong Nintendo

The game was the latest in a series of efforts by Nintendo to break into the North American market. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's president at the time, assigned the project to a first-time video game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto. Drawing from a wide range of inspirations, including Popeye, Beauty and the Beast, and King Kong, Miyamoto developed the scenario and designed the game alongside Nintendo's chief engineer, Gunpei Yokoi. The two men broke new ground by using graphics as a means of characterization, including cutscenes to advance the game's plot, and integrating multiple stages into the gameplay.

The Grandma & Claire ready to play Donkey Kong

Nintendo's American staff was initially apprehensive but Donkey Kong succeeded commercially and critically in North America and Japan. Nintendo licensed the game to Coleco, who developed home console versions for numerous platforms. Other companies cloned Nintendo's hit and avoided royalties altogether.

Miyamoto's characters appeared on cereal boxes, television cartoons, and dozens of other places. A lawsuit brought on by Universal City Studios later Universal Studios, alleging Donkey Kong violated its trademark of King Kong, ultimately failed. The success of Donkey Kong and Nintendo's victory in the courtroom helped to position the company for video game market dominance from its release in 1981 until the late 1990s.

Following 1980's Space Panic, Donkey Kong is one of the earliest examples of the platform game genre even prior to the term being coined; the U.S. gaming press used climbing game for games with platforms and ladders. As the first platform game to feature jumping, Donkey Kong requires the player to jump between gaps and over obstacles or approaching enemies, setting the template for the future of the platform genre. With its four unique stages, Donkey Kong was the most complex arcade game at the time of its release, and one of the first arcade games to feature multiple stages, following 1980's Phoenix and 1981's Gorf and Scramble.

More information: Time

Competitive video gamers and referees stress the game's high level of difficulty compared to other classic arcade games. Winning the game requires patience and the ability to accurately time Mario's ascent. In addition to presenting the goal of saving Pauline, the game also gives the player a score. Points are awarded for the following: leaping over obstacles; destroying objects with a hammer power-up; collecting items such as hats, parasols, and purses presumably belonging to Pauline; removing rivets from platforms; and completing each stage determined by a steadily decreasing bonus counter.

The player typically receives three lives with a bonus awarded for 7,000 points, although this can be modified via the game's built in DIP switches. One life is lost whenever Mario touches Donkey Kong or any enemy object, falls too far through a gap or off the end of a platform, or lets the bonus counter reach zero.

The game is divided into four different single-screen stages. Each represents 25 meters of the structure Donkey Kong has climbed, one stage being 25 meters higher than the previous. The final stage occurs at 100 meters.

More information: Classic Gaming

Stage one involves Mario scaling a construction site made of crooked girders and ladders while jumping over or hammering barrels and oil drums tossed by Donkey Kong. Stage two involves climbing a five-story structure of conveyor belts, each of which transport cement pans. The third stage involves the player riding elevators while avoiding bouncing springs. The fourth and final stage requires Mario to remove eight rivets from the platforms supporting Donkey Kong; removing the final rivet causes Donkey Kong to fall and the hero to be reunited with Pauline. These four stages combine to form a level.

Upon completion of the fourth stage, the level then increments, and the game repeats the stages with progressive difficulty. For example, Donkey Kong begins to hurl barrels faster and sometimes diagonally, and fireballs speed up. The victory music alternates between levels 1 and 2. The fourth level, however, consists of 5 stages with the final stage at 125 meters. The 22nd level is colloquially known as the kill screen, due to an error in the game's programming that kills Mario after a few seconds, effectively ending the game.

Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong is considered to be the earliest video game with a storyline that visually unfolds on screen. The eponymous Donkey Kong character is the game's de facto villain. The hero is a carpenter originally unnamed in the Japanese arcade release, later named Jumpman and then Mario.

Donkey Kong kidnaps Mario's girlfriend, originally known as Lady, but later renamed Pauline. The player must take the role of Mario and rescue her. This is the first occurrence of the damsel in distress scenario that would provide the template for countless video games to come.

The game uses graphics and animation as vehicles of characterization. Donkey Kong smirks upon Mario's demise. Pauline has a pink dress and long hair, and a speech balloon crying "HELP!" appears frequently beside her. Mario, depicted in red overalls and a red cap, is an everyman character, a type common in Japan.

More information: Kotaku

Graphical limitations and the low pixel resolution of the small sprites prompted his design: drawing a mouth with such few pixels is infeasible, so the character was given a mustache; the programmers could not animate hair, so he got a cap; and to make his arm movements visible, he needed colored overalls.

The artwork used for the cabinets and promotional materials make these cartoon-like character designs even more explicit. Pauline, for example, is depicted to be disheveled like King Kong's Fay Wray in a torn dress and stiletto heels.

Donkey Kong is the first example of a complete narrative told in video game form, and like 1980's Pac-Man, it employs cutscenes to advance its plot.

The game opens with the gorilla climbing a pair of ladders to the top of a construction site. He sets Pauline down and stomps his feet, causing the steel beams to change shape. He moves to his final perch and sneers. A melody plays, and the level or stage starts. This brief animation sets the scene and adds background to the gameplay, a first for video games.

More information: Variety

Upon reaching the end of the stage, another cutscene begins. A heart appears between Mario and Pauline, but Donkey Kong grabs her and climbs higher, causing the heart to break. The narrative concludes when Mario reaches the end of the rivet stage. He and Pauline are reunited, and a short intermission plays. The gameplay then loops from the beginning at a higher level of difficulty, without any formal ending.

In his 1982 book Video Invaders, Steve Bloom described Donkey Kong as another bizarre cartoon game, courtesy of Japan. Donkey Kong was, however, extremely popular in the United States and Canada.

Electronic Games speculated in June 1983 that the game's home versions contributed to the arcade version's extended popularity, compared to the four to six months that the average game lasted.

In January 1983, the 1982 Arcade Awards gave it the Best Single-player video game award and the Certificate of Merit as runner-up for Coin-Op Game of the Year.

More information: Daily Dot

How high can you get?

Donkey Kong