Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

Game Boy Color - USA - 1st edition

Developer Nintendo Publisher Nintendo Published 1999-05-01 Platforms Game Boy Color Genres Compilation Series Mario, Super Mario Bros. Multiplayer Simultaneous versus Distribution Commercial

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is remastered compilation video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Color on 1999-05-01 which includes Super Mario Bros. and the first 8 worlds of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, both from the Mario series. It also includes several new features including an 8-level Vs. Game which features new mechanics and can be played with an opponent via the link cable or against a steadily-moving Boo Buddy. There is also a Challenge Mode where you try to find five red coins and a hidden Yoshi egg in every levels from the original Super Mario Bros., as well as surpass a high score. There are a bunch of graphics to view or print on the Game Boy Printer, many of which must be unlocked by beating challenges in the game. Finally, there are a couple other minor features like a calendar view.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. No warps in the original, all 8 vs Boo levels.
Finished	2020‎-02-16

I never owned a Game Boy Color and didn't even know this game existed until the 2010s when I started playing through the system's back catalog and saw this game featuring prominently on people's lists of favorites. When I first played it, I just assumed it was just another reproduction of Super Mario Bros., but the smaller display window annoyed me and I passed on it. However, after seeing it over and over again in favorite lists, I thought there had to be something else to it, so I decided to try and explore it more thoroughly. That was when I found it included The Lost Levels and all the other features. As a personal challenge for myself, I set about beating all the first Mario levels again, this time limited by the game's tiny display window, and followed that up with the 8 Vs. Game levels. I started playing The Lost Levels, but, after learning they're incomplete, I stopped. My achievements unlocked a lot of the game's pictures, which gave me a bit more respect for the title over all, but still see it as little more than a compilation title.

Review

5	6	4	5	9

Best Version: Game Boy Color

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game gives you pretty nice bang for your buck. You get a portable version of Super Mario Bros. with save feature, the first half of The Lost Levels, and a couple new challenges as well.
• There are several graphical perks to the game including a new over world screen which adds cohesion to the game, animated water and lava, and cute animated stage endings. I also like the larger graphics you can unlock as you progress through the game.
• The Vs. Game and Challenge Mode adds some much-needed new content to an otherwise tired game.

Bad

• The limited screen size prevents you from seeing a decent portion of the screen compared to the original games. This makes the entire game quite a bit harder, and a little frustrating when you know there is a hazard just off-screen, but you can't see it. The programmers compensated for this by allowing you to manually move the camera with the D-pad, but I found myself moving it accidentally in unwanted ways. The designers also slowed down the Bullet Bills and flying Cheep Cheeps, and forced Lakitu to be drawn lower on the screen even when he would otherwise be off-screen. However, there are still several areas where death becomes more frequent. This also makes the red coin challenge take a lot longer because you have to constantly pan the camera around to see all of the stage.
• Worlds 9 through D of The Lost Levels are in the game ROM, and mostly complete, but the developers still excluded them from the game for some reason.
• Some of the colors, palette swaps, and animation speeds are different from the original. It's nothing too bad, but I noticed.
• The toys aren't that great. A calendar and printable Nintendo logos don't do much for me.
• The Yoshi egg challenge is terrible. You either have to jump in the air all over every level until you find the hidden block, which is painfully tedious, or you have to use a walk-through to give you all the answers, which makes the challenge trivial.

Ugly

• Ultimately, this is little more than dressed up shovelware. Even with the graphic advancements, the remakes of Mario 1 and 2 are inferior to play, the challenge mode isn't very enjoyable, and there aren't enough unique levels in the vs. game. I don't understand why people rank this game so highly, unless they're applying the same rank that they gave the NES title, but this game was released 14 years later, so I expect more.

Media

Box Art

All regions use this art. Mario and Luigi are competing in a foot race while Toad and Peach spectate. They're all flanked by various enemies from the game. In reality, Luigi is just green Mario in this game, as the special jump physics pioneered in The Lost Levels are not implemented. The art and layout are good, and I like how the colorful logo fits the the branding of the Game Boy Color.

• 

  All regions.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - USA.

Videos

Longplay - Normal/hard mode, Lost Levels, all challenges, all vs games.

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	The only woman is a damsel in distress.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There is only one woman.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Everyone is white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Links