They say age is but a number, but I do believe that our age can come to define us in many respects.
For instance, age can be an important point of common ground. An indication of shared experiences. A garden for bonding.
This reservoir of a common language, both figurative and literal, which arises from those shared experiences represents an easier connection point. It facilitates communication and understanding.
Whether I yell out “Norm!” in a bar or start humming the theme song to “Mission Impossible,” my actions can elicit an emotional response in the people around me. That emotion triggers a willingness or eagerness to connect. And off we go.
Those things that we have watched, heard, read, and experienced differ from generation to generation. And while me aping “Star Wars” for my immediate family is going to yield positive results, the communication will inevitably be lost for folks who have yet to see it. And that – whether they’ve experienced a thing – is determined, at least in part, by age.
Super Mario Bros., the definitive pack-in title for the Nintendo Entertainment System, stands tall as an incredibly important title historically. We’ll get into some of the reasons for that shortly, but it is enough to know at the outset that this game helped define an entire industry, saved a company from near-death while vaulting it to the head of that video gaming industry, and launched a mascot into the sort of fame generally reserved for the likes of Mickey Mouse.
A lot of people know this.
I mean, when I wear a Zelda shirt in public, I get the occasional question: “What is Zelda?”
Maybe this is a meme I am unaware of, but mostly I take it at face value: people who don’t game very often don’t know what Zelda is.
Yet people who don’t game still know who Mario is. And that often cuts across generational divides. Most people can grasp the significance:
- Mario and by extension Nintendo are super important/popular in video games.
- This was Mario’s first big starring adventure.
That second point is of course muddier than it needs to be, as Mario had previously appeared in a number of other titles, but the modifier of “first big starring” hopefully adds some clarity. This game was a gigantic hit, and the game was about him, Mario.
And people can accept this thing, because they’re at least vaguely aware of the other games that have come along since.
Super Mario Bros. 1.
One.
It was the first.
Okay, I can understand that.
Even a non-gamer in their teens can probably accept these basic truths and connect with an aging gamer in his 50s and carry on a brief conversation about the topic, just through general historical pop culture knowledge and logic.
Where the age gap enters the discussion is when the “other” pack-in game for the Nintendo Entertainment System is brought up.
“What about Duck Hunt?”
And this is why I “cheated” by listing both games here. Yes, they’re technically both included in a single cart. They’re both included as pack-in games for the NES. And each game is provided its own optimal control device in the form of a standard d-pad for Mario and the light-gun zapper for Duck Hunt. But let’s acknowledge: these are two separate games.
So why list them both?
It’s really pretty simple.
I don’t think either game is as good on its own. And I further don’t think that I can ever truly think of one without thinking of the other.
For a certain number of people who lived through that time period in the 1980s, these two games are unfailingly joined at the hip.
And for those people, who lived the experience in real time, that is as it should be.
Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer / Shooter
Released: 1985 / 1984
Platform: NES
GameSpot community rated 9.1 out of 10
The NES launched across America in 1986 (after a limited release in the fall of 1985), but that launch did NOT include the famous Mario/Duck Hunt combo cart.
A fancy “Deluxe” set debuted with two standard D-pad controllers, the Zapper light gun peripheral (which let kids take out their frustrations by shooting at the TV … very nice), the “very much from another era” R.O.B. robot assistant (who could do exciting things like … stack blocks), and two games, Gyromite and Duck Hunt … all for the low, low cost of $179.99 (about $600 in today’s dollars).
A couple of other more stripped down sets came along – one of which including Super Mario Bros. as a pack-in title by its lonesome – before the sweet spot was found with the two controllers, the Zapper, and the Mario/Duck Hunt combo cart. This was dubbed the “Action Set,” and retailed for $109.99 when it debuted in 1988.
I say that was the sweet spot because Nintendo sold a gagillion of these, give or take, over the course of 1988 and 1989, helping them to take over the industry.
Now, Duck Hunt only worked with the plastic gun, meaning, yes, once again, we were encouraging kids to use guns. I think this is noteworthy because Nintendo very famously worked extremely hard to market their system as being family friendly in North America, going to such lengths as censoring games of any hint of religion or coarse language.
But yeah, let’s shoot everything we can. That’s perfectly okay.
The game wouldn’t work without the kid gun, so it made sense to package the two together, and they certainly did make an impression. I can recall going over to friends’ houses and lighting up some ducks for fun and thinking, “This is definitely different.”
And it was. Most of us were accustomed to joysticks, maybe the occasional trackball. Not fricking robots and guns.
The gun itself, “The Zapper,” functioned with standard tube television sets. This wasn’t particularly notable until flatscreen technology took off some years later and we all discovered, to the sound of “The Price is Right” losing horn, that modern TVs wouldn’t work with said zapping, making a major chunk of our childhoods, the esteemable Duck Hunt, obsolete.
With the game virtually unplayable by the earlier 2000s, it’s perhaps understandable why Nintendo mostly moved away from trying to port the thing to newer systems. It’s only logical. But this is why I think it’s important to talk about the game today.
What I liked about Duck Hunt is how precise it was. Not in the actual shooting, mind you. That always felt alarmingly inaccurate, as though, were it applied to real life, I’d be shooting grandmas and kittens if I were to take on my local bank robber.
“Sorry, grandma, I’ll buy you a new elbow when we’re done here.”
No, by precise, I mean it was specific about its intent and effective about reaching it. “We’re here to shoot ducks.” And that’s pretty much what it delivered, without frills or additional delights (like say, oh I don’t know, maybe an actual ending or something?).
Nope, just more ducks to kill … until the game craps out on you in Round 100 … I’m told. Ain’t no way I played the thing for 100 rounds to find out (remember what I said about the shooting feeling imprecise?). But yes, a bunch of dead ducks, and not even an ending, just, full stop. It didn’t promise anything else, and it also didn’t deliver anything else. Merc some ducks. Quit when you get bored. The end.
The only window dressing to the affair was a hunting dog who would leap into the grass, shoo the ducks upward, and then lie in wait for your inevitable failure, at which point he would emerge from the grass laughing at you.
The dog did this, laughing at you, over and over and over AND OVER again.
As you experienced this, gun in hand, certain thoughts began to occur.
But no, you couldn’t shoot the dog. Every kid wanted to shoot the dog, but you weren’t allowed to shoot the dog. That decision alone probably prevented the advent of literally an entire generation of fresh serial killers, making it very much a good call on Nintendo’s part.
But still.
You wanted to shoot that dang dog.
Another cool thing, in addition to all of the duck slaughter and dog mockery, was that a second player could control the ducks via one of the standard controllers.
This breaks some people’s brains to this day, finding this out. I can’t recall whether a friend clued me in at the time, or if I found it out just by goofing with a plugged-in controller while waiting around for my turn at doing some duck murder, but there you go. I can personally confirm that it was in fact a thing.
Independent of Duck Hunt, however, this version of the NES also included the first Super Mario Bros. game, which for as basic and rudimentary as it looks nowadays, still has it where it counts.
Yes, it’s the Millenium Falcon of Mario games.
As one of the very first side-scrolling platformers, Super Mario Bros. is of course vitally important in a historical context regardless, and the genesis of the series’ iconic story and music are worth the price of admission alone. But what made it more popular than Taylor Swift at a Swiftie convention, and the thing that inspired a googleplex of clones to come along afterward, was how it played.
In short, it was a masterclass in intelligent design.
Mario’s physics – the way he interacted with his environment and dealt with momentum – have evolved over time, but what’s fascinating is doing a deep dive on their evolution here.
Super Mario Bros. 1 was designed around accommodating Mario’s newfound ability to run, from how the game scrolled, to the course layouts, to enemy placement, it all showed a commitment to this ability. As a result, the game played faster than previous Nintendo efforts like the original “Mario Bros.” (no “super” in there). That game, by contrast, was slow and sloggy. It also lacked any sense of variety or color and was incapable of scrolling, but that’s beside the point. The big problem was pace. Super Mario Bros. upped the sense of chaos and urgency by a considerable amount.
In a similar way, Super Mario Bros. was tailored around Mario’s new power-ups.
The super mushroom made Mario bigger, in a course designed to take advantage of his additional size, with breakable blocks strewn nearby, some of which netted better rewards than others.
Fire flowers could dispose of certain types of enemies … and those enemies were often placed near said power-up, conveniently enough.
The same could be said of the super star, which granted Mario invulnerability for a short time. That invulnerability was all well and good, but what the masterminds behind this game understood was that it was more impactful and enjoyable if it netted tangible results. Ergo, lots of enemies placed in your direct path immediately after you acquire one to mow through like a lawnmower.
Another way this game differentiated itself from lesser games was in its commitment to introducing a player to the mechanics of the game through the design of the early stages themselves. Easier/weaker enemies populate the beginning of the first world, as do easier to find/acquire power-ups. Jumping requirements get steadily more difficult as you progress, as do the toughness and number of enemies. Heck, even the first warp zone, itself a hidden secret at the end of stage 1-2, is arguably easier to find than all subsequent shortcuts.
“Hmm, I wonder where this elevator might take me if I keep riding it.”
Mario controls consistently and there’s a logic to how his character behaves, and so, even though certain leaps and slides might seem glitchy, ugly or weird, they at least do what they are supposed to. And that’s what gives the game its staying power. It’s easy to get into, and it’s FAIR throughout.
What more do you want in a platformer?
I got an “Action Set” Nintendo Entertainment System for my birthday in the summer of 1990, a bit late to the whole phenomenon because my dad didn’t believe in my happiness, er, something about a gaming system not being superior to a PC or something like that, but mostly, I think he just wanted to watch me slowly immolate in anticipation of acquiring an NES over the course of several years.
He got his wish, as I think that decision sort of drove me insane in retrospect, to the point where now I can’t allow myself to enjoy much of anything at launch.
“Nope, gotta delay that gratification at least a few months/years like a true psychopath!”
Cheers, Dad.
What I do remember was that the promise imbued in owning my very own NES was off the charts. I received Mario 1 and Duck Hunt as part of that initial concession from my parents that birthday, realized in real time that I had no money to purchase additional assets, and then simply rolled with just those two games for five months until Christmas delivered new goodies to devour.*
* The goodies from that first Christmas, spread among my brother and me, were Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 3, Castlevanio III, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. I know this as surely as I know my own name, because that quartet represented an oasis in the desert.
Those first five months were spent trying to devise ways to play other games, but also mostly just playing those two. And I put them through their paces, to the point where my Mario 1 skills began to rival those of people who had owned the game for half a decade.
I never got especially good at Duck Hunt. (I blame the dog.) But it was a critical palette cleanser, all the same.
And I think that’s a lot of why I adore that time period and adore these two games so much: it’s the concept. We need variety in our gaming. The NES promised all the video games one could afford, and because of rental stores and friendships, more games than that even. But this double-pack, right out of the shoot, gave you that right away. While the industry was still in its relative infancy, Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt showed us that Nintendo understood that variety matters.
Variety is indeed the spice of life, people.
And while this game was neither the first to load multiple games onto one cartridge nor the last, it was certainly one of the most impactful.
I can relay one last personal anecdote to underscore this point.
When I first fired up Super Mario All-Stars – another important game anthology, that one packaging all of the Super Mario games that had been released to date on one cart – on my Super Nintendo some years later, I recall scrolling through my options and coming away … disappointed.
The game didn’t include Duck Hunt.
Therefore, Super Mario Bros. 1, even with its fancy new graphics, felt incomplete.
Such was the power of this first cart, and the impression that it made.
So what makes it worth playing today?
We’re at 35 games in this series, and by my count, this is the EIGHTH game that has featured Mario in either a starring, ensemble, or cameo role.
Yes, that’s a lot.
And what’s worse for Mario haters is I can assure you that this won’t be his last appearance on the list (you can probably guess at least a couple of the upcoming inclusions).
Still, while it might seem absurd on the face of it to dedicate nearly a quarter of this feature to one character, it’s also worth noting: he’s really, REALLY popular for good reason.
These games are excellent.
Super Mario Bros. 1 is just an absurdly well designed game, a game that spawned an endless array of knockoffs and sequels, and it was also most directly responsible for launching Nintendo’s empire. It’s a consequential game. An important game. An essential game. And the darn thing is still fun to play.
But hopefully, I’ve also made the case that Duck Hunt gets unfairly shoved to the margins in the story of Nintendo’s rise to power.
Let’s position this appropriately: At the time, Duck Hunt indeed felt like the secondary attraction (it was listed second on the menu/box art, after all), BUT it was still an essential piece of the overall package. That game, and the light gun peripheral, were marvelous fun, eating away a significant number of gaming hours from people all over the globe.
Mario 1, on its own, would merit inclusion on this list. Duck Hunt … is more debatable. But for me, when thinking back to my own experience: the double feature of both excellent games, paired with the promise of the excitement engendered by the existence of the NES itself (so many more games on the horizon!) was a potent drug indeed, and when I try to place this experience in context for anyone reading this now, I think it deserves recognition over some of the other games to come.
Nostalgia is a part of it, yes, but isn’t that somewhat the point? The nostalgia isn’t developed if a worthwhile, engaging experience doesn’t happen in the first place. And for an entire generation of gamers, THIS was the experience.
Mario + Duck Hunt + the promise of even more.
Super Mario Bros. 1 is ubiquitous. You can play the thing on your original hardware, in one of its many ports, reskins, or reimaginings, emulated on virtually any device you can think of, or even via a variety of novelty products. It’s EVERYWHERE.
We know why Duck Hunt isn’t quite so readily available. And while modern developers are coming up with ingenious ways to try making light gun games work on modern displays, those solutions still represent significant hoops to jump through. The game briefly appeared on the WiiU virtual console, but that option is now defunct. Heck, even playing the original game nowadays is tricky, as you need an old NES, a copy of the game, a light gun, AND an older tube television. A flatscreen just won’t cut it.
And so we sit here, with very few options available to make this entire experience feasible for younger audiences, yet still making the recommendation that it’s the proper way to go about it. I think it’s partly the preservationist in me. But even more than that, I cannot abide a rewriting of history. Duck Hunt erasure is not tolerable. It would be like saying Benjamin Franklin wasn’t one of our nation’s forefathers. Dude was there, people.
Same as that laughing dog being there at the beginning of the NES.
I get it if you don’t have the means to play both. And working out warp zones and speed runs and impossible jumps in Super Mario Bros. is its own special brand of gaming Zen. It can truly transport you.
But please understand, there is no greater mix of joy and frustration than that dang dog laughing at you.
Future generations should know that feeling too.
Dave’s Score: 9/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
- Original hardware (NES)
- That’s basically it for Duck Hunt.
- (Probably about 100 additional ways to play Super Mario Bros.)