[jqcoffey]

Principally the thing it did right, having lived through the era, is bring a real video game home with Super Mario Bros.

At the time I had a C64 and an Atari 2600, but would spend every quarter I could dig up at the arcade at the bowling alley next door playing pretty much anything, but especially Super Mario Bros.

The Nintendo was the first console to bring the arcade home and it was absolutely revolutionary.

[furyofantares]

Interesting, it never felt like an arcade game to me. When I'd go to the arcade I avoided Super Mario Bros. It didn't feel like an arcade game like Rampage.

I played it on the NES first (and it was released there before arcades, though I don't think I played until 1989 personally). But I didn't own an NES at the time, so it wasn't that I could play it for free at home.

SMB is a much better game than Rampage. I would also play Excitebike at the arcade, also not nearly as good as SMB.

I guess in an arcade I was looking for simple high score games, I wanted to dream of putting my initials on, but I also wanted to be able to walk away when I died (where in SMB if I got to 8-2 then died I'd wanna go again/continue).

[KerrAvon]

I found Rampage more fun as a concept than SMB, but it doesn’t have the replay value or progression that you really want in a home video game, where SMB does.

I could never get into Excitebike. Controls always felt so awkward.

[johnwalkr]

Rampage is a great game but it’s slow no matter how good you are. With most 2D mario games they nailed the level design such that you can play faster with practice and it’s fun in the same way skiing a familier run faster than last time is fun. The warp zones help replayability too.

[sircastor]

There’s a lot in SMB that we take for granted, but I didn’t understand as a kid. The physics system made the action feel real. The the subtle animation of the coins rotating in the air (actually part of the background, interestingly) gave the levels fullness. It was a really impressive achievement compared to the competition at the time (which of course had been destroyed by the video game crash of 1983)

[HideousKojima]

The coins in SMB don't rotate. They have a glow animation (as do the question mark blocks) but no spinning.

[LocalH]

But the coins in SMB3 did rotate, as they did pretty much in every game since. So it's an easy confusion.

[sircastor]

You’re right! I got them mixed up.

[0xcde4c3db]

You're more right than you realize, because the console version is the original; the arcade version was the port.

[hnlmorg]

NES wasn’t the first home console to bring the arcade home. It wasn’t even the first console in its generation.

What it was, was the most successful console in America in that era but that was largely due to the crash in the console market over there (something that didn’t affect the rest of the world).

[snarfy]

Yep, this is what did it for me. I was playing vs. super mario at the arcade and was amazed it was available at home. yes, it was a bowling alley arcade