Super Mario Brothers

Objective:

1. Play Super Mario Brothers level 1–1 and write a post on medium.com describing in (excruciating!) detail aspects of the design and controls that you feel positively contribute to the player experience.

Response:

Super Mario Level 1–1 is the first game from the series of Super Mario. This game has a 400 seconds time limit and it starts out from a brick path. Super Mario Bros Level 1–1 could be taken as an example from the hisotry for the best on-boarding. This game was launched in 1985 and is still analyzed by game designers as the best example for on boarding. In this game basically the player learns all the useful and important skills and the mechanics of the game so that he can gradually move to the next levels.

For me it was really fun to play as i have already played this game before and just playing it again for class made it a lot more fun. This game is pretty easy to play as we just need to remeber a few key moves which we need to use throughout the game. Moreover, the introduction of goodies and baddies and how to gain the points for the game (even the envirnoments manipulation so it it is certainlty impossible that we would not be able to learn certain skills). Thus, all the features surely combine and give the users best experience.

Layout of the Game:

Level 1–1 initially starts out with a path formed from bricks. As the player moves ahead, a Goomba appears and starts to move towards the gamer.Next, the player makes toward the block, and after that more blocks appear which are triangular. And, the game moves on…

Enemies in the Game:

1. Goombas
2. Koopa Troopas

The opening screen of the game:

I think that the opening screen holds great importance because it is is devoid of any danger for the player which ultimately allows the player to experiment with the controls basic controls of the game and thus, through hands on experience the player can actually get a feel of the game.

I think as we progress in the game its interesting to see that the creators have made us learn through safety and this trend recurred in several levels of the game. For instance For example, in the first level the player will encouter several pipes of various lengths which would gradually train the player. Thus, the player would relaize that the if he keeps on pressing the button for jump it would make him jump longer.

Moreover, I was pretty excited and fascinated to see one particular thing in this game because i never actually thought that the mushroom can not be esacped that would make you big. This element really touched me because the will of the player is given and also silently its been taken as well. For example, the text pops up on the screen while playing the game and that says,“get the mushroom”. However, it does not present the player with any other option either.

To better understand what i am trying to say this YouTube link can also be viewed

Another lesson from the game which i learnt was that I guess the designers wanted us to differentitation between non-interactive and interactive background (pipes, ground etc). For example, In the very beginning, in the background the hill is green and then when Mario walks further the blue sky appears behind him. I feel like this act was intention. I believe, if the game would have started with a blue background of sky then the player might have just jumped over the hills and shrubs and would not have had thought about the details which are non-interactive.

Summary of the game mechanics:

1. Mario is very small in the beginning and gradually the size of the Mario would increase. Hence, the satisfaction of the players would also increase.
2. The design of the jumps is also very fascinating because as the player would jump and tap the question blocks he would then, find something interesting
3. The third most interesting thing is that the level is designed in such a way that even if the player would try to run away he would eventutally hit it at some point of the game.

Overall, I believe all the game mechanics of SMB definitely makes it the worlds best video game as it could make any person the master of it without the player consulting instructions for playing the game initially. I have played a lot of new games released in this decade but i believe that the modern games lack the art which was initiated by the retro games.

Credits: The source of images is : Wikipedia.