By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - IGN - Why Super Mario Bros. is the GREATEST AND MOST IMPORTANT GAME OF ALL TIME

DivinePaladin on 25 July 2015
pokoko said:
Wyrdness said:


You're arguing a point that's irrelevant to SMB's importance because when SMB launched gaming was dead for a second time this is why Pacman and SI aren't held as high up as SMB because the era the latter created is still running today, Pacman and Space Invaders were great games for their times but only inspired clones of themselves instead of inspiring new approaches. They're legendary games yes but the are aspects both technical and commercial that SMB did that only Pong can match, SMB inspired multiple genres, development approaches, games and so on that has built modern gaming to what it is today and the era is still going today, the hasn't been a crash since SMB. People like Carmack have come out and said how it inspired them to take a new approach, the fact that SMB can inspire Metroid, Zelda and Wolfenstein to name a few which themselves became templates for entire genres highlights importance.

Revenue doesn't indicate importance to the industry, Pacman and SI are iconic but what else did they inspire in the same regard and that's what it comes down to when looking at influence on the industry.

Gaming was not dead.  I have no idea what you're talking about there.  Arcades did not die and, quite honestly, the popularity of arcades in Japan is why the home console industry rose again and would have done so even without Nintendo.

Also, if you're saying that nothing that came later in the industry was inspired by Space Invaders or Pac-man ... well, there really isn't anything else to say to that, because that's ridiculous.

I don't think the home console industry would've bounced back in North America without Nintendo's strategy. No parent, period, was willing to buy another console after the crash. Without ROB and the toy approach we're talking at least five to ten years before consoles might resume their path. No other company even seemed to have the idea of using the toy approach, because every other game company was chiefly interested in games at the time. 

 

I can agree that if not Mario it could be Space Invaders as the most important game, but to say Pac-Man is to twist history. Pac-Man was popular as all hell but it was NOTHING compared to Mrs. Pac-Man. That's the game that kept the series relevant, and technically it was illegally made by Midway. Namco had no idea how to manage the franchise at the time, as all of the garbage sequels showed; that fact alone doesn't necessarily mean Pac-Man doesn't deserve to be considered but the lack of a clear branding approach hurt the lasting appeal of the franchise. Mrs. Pac-Man as a game had more of an effect on the industry both in terms of money and appeal - the first female protagonist helped make the entire industry marketable to women. But again, Mario has the distinct feature of being THE game that led to developed, well-thought out genres and unique approaches to development. Pitfall was the first platformer, but Mario was the Rome to Pitfall's Greece.  



You should check out my YouTube channel, The Golden Bolt!  I review all types of video games, both classic and modern, and I also give short flyover reviews of the free games each month on PlayStation Plus to tell you if they're worth downloading.  After all, the games may be free, but your time is valuable!

Around the Network
gabzjmm23 on 25 July 2015

I think greatest of all time definition from IGN is really different from what we perceived. Super Mario Bros isn't the greatest but really the one the moved the gaming industry back into the map.



-Ack!- on 26 July 2015

Actually it is Donkey Kong, not Super Mario Bros.



The_Sony_Girl1 on 26 July 2015

I agree. If it weren't for Mario, id Software wouldn't have been started up. No Wolfenstein, no FPS, no Halo.



Bet with Xander XT: 

I can beat more games on his 3DS than he can on my PSVita in a month. Loser has to buy the winner a game on his/her handheld Guess who won? http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=193531

Me!

POE on 26 July 2015

It is the most important game of all time. And i hope to god you are joking about wii sports or minecraft.



Around the Network
ARamdomGamer on 26 July 2015

It is the most important game of all time, thanks to that plumber we got all these years of gaming.

Also holds an important place in my heart, that was my first videogame ever and one that I promise myself to beat at least once every year :)



sethnintendo on 26 July 2015

It is great but I consider myself in love with this masterpiece.  2 player action that is golden.

 



the_dark_lewd on 27 July 2015

Definitely not Mario. They should separate influential from greatest. I guess "important" is different from greatest. It was perhaps quite important because it could be said to have been pivotal in starting the console industry. They needed that killer app to get people buying consoles.



AlfredoTurkey on 27 July 2015

People, you need to understand something. Originality and innovation are the hardest things in all of art to pull off. They are worth more than any other single quality. So, when you're assessing "greatness"... a game like this is at the top because really, look at what it did?

Any game that can spark a revolution and change what we think about gaming, belongs at the top.



Conina on 27 July 2015
AlfredoTurkey said:
People, you need to understand something. Originality and innovation are the hardest things in all of art to pull off. They are worth more than any other single quality. So, when you're assessing "greatness"... a game like this is at the top because really, look at what it did?

What exactly was the originality and innovation of Super Mario Bros?

It can't be the scenario... killing monsters and saving a princess / damsel in distress was the most common goal in most games these days. Mario as a hero wasn't new either (Donkey Kong games, Mario Bros.) 

There have also been lots of platformers before it, many of them from Nintendo itself. But most of them didn't have sidescrolling due to hardware limitations.

Nevertheless there were also lot of vertical scrolling games and a few side-scrolling games before Super Mario Bros, many of them were shoot'em ups.

So was Super Mario Bros. the first combination of platforming and side-scrolling? It beat Wonder Boy by a year, so that was the innovation for sure, wasn't it? Er... no! Games like Jump Bug (1981) and Quest for Tires (1983) already had that combination, but they were more like the endless runners on smartphones today: you had no influence over the scrolling speed.

So was Super Mario Bros. the first combination of platforming and side-scrolling and controlling the speed of the scrolling (even stopping it)? Again: no. Pac-Man did it a whole year earlier (and a few other minor releases did it, too), it had even multi-layered parallax-scrolling in some areas:


View on YouTube

What Super Mario Bros. did was perfecting/polishing that formula, not innovating it.