YMMV / Super Mario Bros.

• Anti-Climax Boss: The final Bowser is barely changed from the ones before. He tosses hammers and breathes fire, unlike the fake Bowsers in Worlds 6 and 7 which only toss hammers, but that's it. The real challenge is just getting to him, much less with a power up on hand (in World 8, not likely). And getting to Bowser with an extra hit turns him into a complete joke no matter when you fight him. Just take a hit and then run to the other side and grab the axe before your Mercy Invincibility wears off. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the single Hammer Bro fought right beforehand is a greater threat than Bowser is.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Ground theme is the most well-known song of the franchise and in all of gaming. It's even been preserved in the National Recording Registry because of its legacy.
  • The Underwater theme isn't too bad either. It was even used as the title theme in Super Mario Bros. 2 and both sets of 2D Mario remakes (Super Mario All-Stars and the Super Mario Advance series).
• Broken Base:
  • While the game is still regarded to be a classic and continues to be respected for the impact it had on the gaming industry as a whole, since The New '10s, there's been debate amongst the fandom on whether or not the game has aged and if it's still worth playing today. Some argue that, while the game is basic by today's standards, it's still a fun and engaging platformer whose mechanics, gameplay, and level design still mostly hold up well today, while others argue that as groundbreaking as it was, the game's design is too dated and rough to be worth playing compared to later 2D Mario games, often citing its repetitious structure, lack of graphical variety, cryptic level design, clunky controls, and unbalanced difficulty as reasons against the game. The remake featured in Super Mario All-Stars doesn't get quite the same treatment, owing to its upgraded graphics and more polished controls.
  • The game not getting an Super Mario Advance remake on the GBA. While some are happy enough with the GBC Deluxe remake (which served as a precursor to the Advance series), others were upset and complained that Nintendo missed their chance to include brand new Advance-exclusive content, as well as a lack of a 16-bit Super Mario Bros. game outside Super Mario All-Stars and its re-releases^note That said, Super Mario Advance 4 does feature all four World 1 levels and the second level of World 2 as Nostalgia Levels in the e-Reader world, complete with GBA arrangements of the All-Stars remixes, likely to act as an apology for SMB1 not getting an Advance remake
• Common Knowledge:
  • Many believe the manual states all the blocks are Mushroom Kingdom citizens transformed into blocks and thus whenever Mario breaks a block, he's killing a citizen. The original manual actually says only the Power-Up Blocks are transformed citizens and they are noticeably completely indestructible within the game; in fact, they actually help him by giving out the various items they hide.
  • The crown that appears after getting more than nine lives is commonly assumed to be a glitch, caused by the game not being able to display more lives. In fact, this crown was intentional; the team wanted to reward players who had accumulated more than 10 lives.
• Demonic Spiders: Two main ones:
  • Hammer Bros. They throw hammers at an absurd rate that makes it hard to dodge and attack them, especially since touching the hammers at all counts as a hit, and jump a lot making it hard to hit them. Their jumping can often make jumping on them a risk, because unless you hit the top of them, then you get hit instead. They can also jump downward from platforms, meaning if they're on a set of blocks, trying to hit them from below can easily result in them killing you. Also, all of their movement and hammer throwing is controlled by the RNG, so there is no safe opportunity to just jump on them; they might decide to throw a hammer just before you land the attack. It's quite telling that their attack speed has been decreased in most succeeding games in the series, yet they're still very tricky to deal with.
  • Lakitus are on clouds at the top of the screen, and it's extremely rare to come across a point that lets you get high enough to hit them. Even then, if you manage to kill one, another one will take its place shortly afterwards. For attacks, they drop Spinys, which you can't jump on. So to recap, you, for the most part, can't hit them, and they drop a constant supply of enemies you can't kill unless you have a Fire Flower.
• Everyone Is Satan in Hell: Basically, as some players noted, Mario's design resembles Soviet leader Josef Stalin, Mario is the hero of the game, and the ending of a level basically depicts Mario putting down a flag that slightly resembles the peace sign and hoisting a flag that has the Red Star of the Soviet Union. In one Nintendo Power issue, this subject was discussed in the mailbag section, although the staff denied the resemblance, noting that Mario collects coins and is saving a monarch, even trying to put Mario's moustache on the Russian boxer/soldier from Rocky IV. It's much clearer in later games with more advanced graphics: the symbol of the flag that Mario pulls down is supposed to be Bowser's silhouette. In its 8-bit form, it resembles a human skull or a Koopa shell.
• First Installment Wins: Sort of. While future games in the Super Mario series are just as, if not even more beloved in the fandom, this first one is undoubtedly the most famous.
• Genre Turning Point: The game (and by extension, the console it came packed with) made an immeasurable impact for console video games. It is regarded as a major factor in spurring the North American industry to recover from The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 and popularizing complex physics-based side-scrolling platformers in the medium for decades to come. In terms of gameplay and controls, Super Mario Bros. represented a quantum leap in the genre of Platform Games, making most previous entries in the genre, including Nintendo's own Ice Climber, look rigid, slow and clunky in comparison, thereby setting itself up as the genre's gold standard going forward. In addition, the game represented the medium of video games moving away from trying to capture the coin-op experience at home with games that were ports of or inspired by arcade games to creating wholly new experiences custom-made for home gaming.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The famous Minus World glitch was analyzed in 2022. What happens is that during World 1-2 the game is supposed to lock the screen on the normal exit pipe should the player approach it head-on, to better hide the warp room behind it. Because of a programming error, not only it fails to do this but also sets an invalid value on the variable meant to determine which level the warp pipes will send Mario to.
  • In Super Mario All-Stars, the Hammer Bros. hammers can't hurt you if you're on the left edge of the screen. This carries over to Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.
  • Spiny eggs falling straight down when thrown by Lakitu is actually the result of a bug; as demonstrated here, they were intended to be thrown at an angle and bounce off walls and objects on their way down. Needless to say, this would have made the already-frustrating Lakitus even more of a menace.
  • In World 8-4, when you approach the correct pipe, any Piranha Plant will instantly vanish and no others will respawn, making it easier to determine which one you should use to progress.
  • The Wrong Warp glitch in World 4-2 relies on the fact that the game can only have one bonus room loaded at one time. Speedrunners exploit this by first activating the vine leading up to the Warp Zone to World 8, then entering a pipe slightly to the right of the vine to skip the rather slow vine climbing.
• Growing the Beard: While there were a few successes beforehand, this game was where the Mario franchise started to hit its stride. Many of its famous themes, characters, and traditions were born here, and would influence all future sequels.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: While it predated the genre by a few decades, this game's box description in Japan has a decent amount in common with Isekai anime, light novels, etc. Some specific points:
  • Bowser is a Demon King
  • Mario, especially when given power-ups, is an OP Protagonist from another world.
  • Peach is from a European-style monarchy.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Due to it being part of the Classic NES series instead of the Super Mario Advance series, the Game Boy Advance version, unlike Super Mario Bros. 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3, is simply an emulated version of the NES original, instead of being an Updated Re Release of the All-Stars version, much to the disappointment of fans.
• Memetic Badass: The first Goomba in World 1-1. Admit it, he killed you too when you first played!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "...but our princess is in another castle!" We even have a trope named after it.
  • Mario's "death" music cue, or the "Game Over" music cue often get used in videos to accompany an Epic Fail moment. For example, the Angry Video Game Nerd uses one of the cues at the end of his "Atari 5200" review, when he can't get the replacement plug to fit. It's the video game equivalent of Losing Horns.
  • Toad's in-game sprite looking like he's Flipping the Bird.
  • "Imagine there's a bus": A meme common in the speedrunning community for explaining the concept of framerules, coined by an explanation from SMB speedrunner Darbian. The game only checks to see whether a player has completed a level once every 21 frames (slightly less often than three times a second), so Darbian used the metaphor of a bus that runs once every 21 frames. At this point, any explanation of framerules will inevitably result in at least one reference to buses, either in the video/stream itself or in comments/chat.
• Nightmare Retardant: Bowser looks like an intimidating dragon creature at first, but his fearsome reputation is instantly sunk by his Boss-Arena Idiocy: all it takes is an axe that he inexplicably keeps nearby to drop him into the fiery pit. Notably, Bowser ended up being portrayed more comically in most subsequent appearances.
• Older Than They Think: A common misconception is that this game was the Trope Maker for 2D sidescrolling platformer, when it was more of a Trope Codifier for the genre than anything, with Pac-Land featuring a similar style of gameplay just a year prior to the release of Super Mario Bros..
• Once Original, Now Common: The first level of Super Mario Bros. had to be consciously designed to teach its audience how to navigate a 2D platformer... but nowadays you can put it in front of anyone who's played a video game before and 99% of them will understand what to do before they even pick up the controller. This game is one of the most influential of all time, kickstarting the entire genre of side-scrolling platformers^note alongside Pac-Land and was the codifier of the core gameplay of all future Super Mario Bros. games; including jumping on enemies, hitting blocks, collecting coins, reaching a goal pole, defeating a boss, and an actual ending instead of a Kill Screen or A Winner Is You. All features and mechanics which are now ubiquitous and frequently taken for granted.
• Polished Port:
  • Super Mario Bros. Deluxe on Game Boy Color has a number of features that make it worth keeping: being able to save your progress and select any stage you've completed so far (even in its Unlockable remake of The Lost Levels, which is necessary given how difficult it is) a Challenge Mode for each level, a 1 and 2-player race mode, and the ability for a single player to choose between Mario or Luigi. Unfortunately, the screen resolution was significantly cropped to fit the handheld's small screen (and to keep from squishing the sprites down), which can make gameplay more frustrating than the original. The remake does have some tweaks to make up for this, such as allowing you to reorient the screen to look above or keep the view locked ahead of Mario, in addition to tweaking the Ratchet Scrolling so you can slightly backtrack to an out of view area, but it only helps so much.
  • The Super Mario All-Stars version is a faithful recreation with improved graphics and sound. The only negative change is the altered physics when breaking blocks. Fortunately, there's a simple patch that fixes this.
• Sacred Cow: A mild case of this, as while while there are many games that expand and improve upon what this game does, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single person who would outright call Super Mario Bros. a bad game. The fact that it was so influential as well as the start of a massive franchise contributes to this.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • For newcomers coming off of newer games, the fact that Fire Mario goes straight to Small Mario after being hit instead of Super Mario is this. Also, collecting the Fire Flower as Small Mario only turns him into Super Mario. Some veterans, however, appreciate the added challenge. Unlike Japanese Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, there is no official Video Game Remake that changes this^note Unless you count Super Mario Bros. 35., as both All-Stars and Deluxe keep it in.
  • Not being able to Goomba Springboard led many a newer fan to call Damn You, Muscle Memory!.
  • For Super Mario Bros. Deluxe:
    • Saving resets the game's score when opening the file again. This wouldn't be that big a deal, if score wasn't so stressed in this version of the game, what with there being a score attack Challenge Mode, a tradeable high score table, and Unlockable Content gotten by getting a high enough score. Also, the Japanese version unlocks the rewards once the player hits the appropriate score milestone, while in the international versions the player has to get a Game Over or win in order for the unlock to work.
    • A photo is rewarded for defeating each Bowser with fireballs, so it would have been easy to get a Fire Flower from an early stage and then warp directly to the castle after beating the game. But the game not saving Mario's form forces the player to go through each level of the world, collecting every power-up possible, and KEEPING Fire Mario until Bowser. Coupled with the already annoying Scrappy Mechanic of reverting straight to Small Mario when Fire Mario takes a hit. The Japanese version once again fixes this.
  • The All-Stars version changes the block breaking physics so that Super/Fire Mario continues moving upwards rather than bouncing back down immediately, meaning it's very easy for Mario to suddenly lose all momentum because he got snagged on an adjacent block.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Defeating Bowser in 8-4 with the Fire Flower. The actual task isn't hard, but getting and keeping the power up in World 8, and getting to him with that power-up, is one of the hardest challenges in the game.
  • Beating the game without losing a single life. Worse still, also doing it without getting hit once.
  • Beating the game without killing a single enemy (sans Bowser).
  • Beating the game without grabbing a single coin or power up.
  • The 500 Point Run, which requires you to play the game without doing anything that raises your score (except touching goalposts, which are unavoidable).
  • Beating the game without using the B button. And yes, it's been done.
  • Jumping over the goalpost at the end of 3-3 and 7-1.
• Sequel Displacement: This game is far more famous than the original Mario Bros., and is the game that would define the franchise.
• Signature Scene:
  • World 1-1. Thanks to its brilliant design, it has become gaming's most famous level.
  • Toad's infamous "THANK YOU MARIO, BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE!"
  • The Boss Battle with Bowser.
  • Saving Princess Peach at the end of the game.
• Special Effect Failure: Sprites for Classic NES Series version were scaled down so that the entire game would fit inside the GBA's smaller resolution. Unfortunately, the edits made all of the characters look silly as a result, specifically Small Mario's lack of neck and Super Mario's disappearing mustache. The sprites in the GBA version of The Lost Levels were reedited to make them all more appealing to look at.
• That One Level: Has its own section on the That One Level page for the franchise.

---

THANK YOU MARIO!
BUT OUR MAIN PAGE IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE!