Super Mario Bros. - Revolutionary design or not?

[YellerDog]

That is because Mario is better than Pac Land and Legend of Kage. Soooo much better.

I stand by the "complete game" statement.

[Frogacuda]

That is because Mario is better than Pac Land and Legend of Kage. Soooo much better.

I agree, but Mario probably wouldn't have existed if not for Pac Land, and a lot of other games owe to Kage.

Some of these early games are curiosities. Jump Bug may have invented the side scrolling platformer, but not many people played it and no one really copied it directly. Jump Bug was like the Vikings that discovered America, looked around and then left, centuries before Columbus.

Pac Land, on the other hand, is basically a prototype for Mario and Wonderboy. Dragon Buster was pretty innovative, too. It had that overworld map like the one in Mario 3, it was probably the first to use a double jump... That shouldn't be overlooked, either.

[YellerDog]

And the Model-T wasn't the first auto-mobile either. The Columbus analogy works pretty good there too.

[Frogacuda]

Right, so we should forget about the early cars that paved the way for the Model T as well, then? I just said Mario overshadows a lot of important stuff not that Mario wasn't one of the key games that popularized the genre.

[Dyne]

i somtimes find myself walking around blurting out "BLUKIT BLUKIT BLUKIT!"



that makes it awesome.

[Frogacuda]

I wrote a long wiki entry covering this stuff and a lot of the games that shaped the genre, if anyone has the time or interest to read it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_game

[NeoZeedeater]

I think Pac Land and Legend of Kage are both very important titles that don't get as much of their due as they should because Mario tends to outshine them.

Kage also gets overshadowed because of the explosion of martial arts-themed action games that appeared shortly after it like Kung Fu Master.

On that note, I feel Datasoft's Bruce Lee (1983 copyright, possibly a 1984 release) is up there with it in terms of significance for action-platformers. I can't think of another punch and kick platformer with a variety of areas from that period, certainly not one with speed, two-player and gameplay that good. It sold pretty well but it's getting forgotten by the younger generation of gamers.

This might be an SMB thread but any excuse to talk about underrated games is always good.

[Dyne]

I wrote a long wiki entry covering this stuff and a lot of the games that shaped the genre, if anyone has the time or interest to read it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_game

my god. most people only put effort into something that detailed for a grade.

[Frogacuda]

my god. most people only put effort into something that detailed for a grade.

Yeah, in hindsight I kind of wished that I did it on my own so that I could A) put my name on it, and B) Not have to stick to wiki's standards that call for a really dry tone and utter lack of style. It was such a huge undertaking, I kind of just needed a format where I could pick at it gradually and wiki offered that.

[Korly]

SMB was the first game I remember playing that had so many "secrets". Everything from warp zones, to figuring out how to get fireworks, to knowing where to jump to find invisible bricks with invincibility stars. Even the minus world, even though I know now that it was just a glitch. Or even just knowing that one out of every like 50 bricks might have coins hidden in them. Was there a game before SMB that had such an emphasis on that stuff?