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Comment on What's an absolutely medium quality game? Not great, incredible or terrible or any single ended extreme. Dead medium quality

southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Well, when it comes to video games, despite being foundational, Mario Bros. At the time, it was mids, but there were a lot less truly great games, and less abysmal ones so it looked better than it was. The series got better, but that first one was kinda meh. It’s all timing jumps, which is fine as far it as it goes, but there were both better and worse options on that console.

Away from video game, Life is about as meh as it gets. No real strategy, no depth. But it’s a good time killer and you can play it with a table full of people drinking and not get bogged down or into arguments because of the game (unlike monopoly lol).

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bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Do you mean Mario Bros:

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Or Super Mario Bros? They are very different games.

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brsrklf@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that’s only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming from pipes, yeah, I’d say that one was hardly a new thing.

Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that’s a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, …)

Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.

Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.

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