Saturday, October 2, 2010

Celebrating Super Mario Bros.' 25th Anniversary

Super Mario Bros. is now 25 years old. I thought of doing something special to celebrate the occasion so I thought I'd learn to do that famous 1up trick on world 3-1.

It involves the flight of steps near the end of the level and a Koopa Troopa. As it descends you jump on it and as you bounce off it it rebounds off the step and you can bounce on it again and again until you start getting 1ups for each bounce.

I tried and tried again but kept failing to actually do it. Then I realised that I was playing the PAL version and that made the difference. Did you know the PAL version of the original NES Super Mario Bros runs faster than the NTSC versions? It's really unusual as PAL versions of games are usually noticeably slower than their NTSC counterparts. That means effort must've been taken to make sure the PAL version was actually faster than it was destined to be.

So then I tried the NTSC version of the game and was able to do it straight away! I was really pleased with myself! That was a good way to celebrate the birthday of this game. Those extra lives really come in handy too when you're trying to do a non-warp playthrough of the entire game.

But I still prefer the PAL version released here!

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