PixlBit

Donkey Kong made me a fan of Nintendo very early on. To this day, DK is my favorite arcade game of all time. I loved it for being one of the most colorful, expressive games out there. It was probably as close as you could get in the early 80s to having a playable cartoon show. So naturally, when more Nintendo games started showing up at the arcade, my young self was excited. And if any game could tear me away from DK, it was Mario Bros. 

Mario Bros is an important game for many reasons. It was the first game where Mario, rather than DK, was in the spotlight, and it was the foundation for what would become, by far, the most successful video game franchise of all time. 

Mario Bros is a two-player simultaneous game, which by 1983 was rather uncommon. Although Pong had built its success as a competitive two-player game, Space Invaders had begun a trend towards essentially single-player experiences which would persist all throught the 80s and early 90s. Mario Bros' gameplay was inspired in large part by Williams Electronics's Joust, which Nintendo's designers must have absolutely loved given how heavily Joust figured into a few of Nintendo's later games. Mario Bros's playing field is even laid out in a similar fashion to Joust. As Mario Bros was a two-player game, the second player would need to be a palette-swapped version of the first player. He was given a green cap and overalls, and was named Luigi after an Italian restaurant in Redmond, near Nintendo's US HQ. Over time, Luigi would be developed from a simple palette swap of his more famous brother into his own distinct personality. 

Pests are crawling out of the pipes in the New York sewers, and it's up to Mario and Luigi to take care of them. They do this by first jumping and hitting the floors underneath them, flipping them over. Then, while the pests are flipped over, the brothers must jump up to their level and kick them off into the sewer waters at the bottom of the stage. For each pest you kick off, the game rewards you with a gold coin for bonus points, so the Mario Bros' interest in numismatics was established here. Mario Bros is a fun game even playing solo, but its two-player setup is incredibly versatile for the time. The game encourages the brothers to both cooperate and compete. Unlike in Joust, Mario and Luigi can't directly hurt each other, as their ability to commit fratricide is limited to possibly kicking or bumping the other player into the path of a pest. The game doesn't reward you for turning brother against brother, also unlike Joust. In bonus stages, you either try to get all the coins in single player, or get more coins than your brother in two-player mode. Hitting multiple enemies within a certain time frame starts a multiplier for scoring. The screen "wraps around" like in Joust and the escape tunnels in Pac-Man. 

There is a POW Block at the bottom floor. Hitting it from below flips over all enemies which are not currently airborne, and grabs all coins for the player who hit the switch. Keep in mind that enemies already on their back are also flipped over and become mobile and dangerous again. Each POW Block gets three uses, but is restored at every bonus stage. One of the big ways to rack up points is to time POW Block hits so you can wipe out multiple enemies and get extra points from the multiplier. 

Naturally, there are hazards galore, and they get more and more dangerous as time goes on. The enemies are animated with typical Nintendo cartoon flair.

Shellcreepers are the direct precursors to Koopa Troopas in appearance and behavior. They're simply turtles who crawl along the ground. They can be flipped over with one hit from below and kicked off. Unlike in Super Mario Bros, they can't be stomped on (none of the enemies can). When too much time elapses after flipping them over, the arcade version has them popping out of their shells in their boxer shorts and flipping themselves over, an animation convention which appears throughout the Super Mario games. 

Sidesteppers are crabs with big googly eyes on stems. Their base speed is faster than Shellcreepers. They also take two hits from below to flip over, with the second flip making them mad and making them move faster. The last enemy remaining in a phase automatically turns to its fastest color, and if that last enemy is a Sidestepper, they move at lightning speed, making them very dangerous. This enemy would make a subsequent appearance as Clawgrip, one of the bosses in Super Mario Bros. 2. 

Fighterflies are giant insects which hop across the floors. They are slower than Shellcreepers or Sidesteppers, but they can only be flipped over when they are touching the floor, and they also have a tendency for other enemies to bump into them, which causes the enemy to reverse course and can put you in danger. These enemies also appear sporadically in the Super Mario games.

Slipice is an ice monster that pops out of the pipes after all other pests in the stage have made an appearance. It is different from other pests. It can be destroyed simply by hitting it from below, netting you 500 points, but it doesn't count towards completion of a phase, as Slipices keep appearing until you clear the phase. When it settles in certain spots on the floors, it coats them with ice, making the already slippery floors much more treacherous. In later games, such as Super Smash Bros, this enemy is known as a Freezie. 

Fireballs are made of the methane gas in the sewers. There are two types of fireballs. Orange fireballs bounce off the floors and ceilings until they are destroyed. They move fairly slowly. Destroying them is worth 1000 points, but a new, much faster, and much more unpredictable fireball is instantly generated. Only one orange fireball can be on the screen at a time. Green fireballs spawn at the sides of the playing field and fly to the other side in an undulating pattern. When they are at their lowest point, they can be hit from below for 200 points. They dissipate when they reach the opposite side of the screen, and there can be up to two of them on screen at a time.

Icicles are the last danger to appear, appearing at around phase 16. They grow on the top floors and drop down on Mario and Luigi.

It's actually been fairly easy over the years to find versions of Mario Bros. to play, in comparison to many other arcade games. Atari obtained the license to make versions of the game for the 2600, 5200, the 8-bit computers, and the 7800. The 2600 version was a fairly successful game late in the 2600's lifespan. There were actually two different versions made for the Atari 8-bits The earlier version was made by Sculptured Software, which would gain fame some years later through its SNES ports of Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3, and is a version I was familiar with. The 7800 version is notable in that by the time it released, the NES was out with Nintendo's own version of Mario Bros. The NES version is overall a satisfactory version, but its graphics, animation, and gameplay are somewhat downgraded from the arcade version. The "walking" sound, however, was an improvement. Mario Bros is an awesome game, but walking in the arcades is rather loud and squeaky, and Nintendo must have gotten a lot of feedback on that for the NES version. Mario Bros would then make an appearance as the "battle mode" of Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo recognized that Super Mario Bros had accustomed people to being able to stomp on Koopa Troopas, so the Koopa-like Shellcreepers were replaced with Spinies, which gamers understood not to jump on. This battle mode would also be included in the Super Mario Advance games.

In 2017, the arcade version became available on the Switch as an Arcade Archives title, the first Nintendo arcade game released by Hamster Corporation under their deal with Nintendo. It was the first game I got for my new Switch. After years of playing downgraded home ports (excepting for the excellent versions included with the Super Mario games), it was legit exciting to play the original arcade version of one of my favorite arcade games at home.

Mario Bros even helped codify Luigi as being a much more timid hero than Mario, through Atari's advertising for the 2600 and 5200/8-bit versions. This commercial aired on TV in 1983-84. Luigi sounds and acts remarkably like Nintendo's later characterization of his personality.