Manufacturer: Nintendo
Released: 1983
Designer: Shigeru Miyamoto
Added to my collection: October, 2003 (initial cabinet purchase)
Cost to date : $273.88
Current Condition : Ailing (game works; no sound; monitor troubles--rolling and clicking)

Description:

To be perfectly honest, there was only one classic Nintendo arcade game I was ever fanatical about back in the day, and Mario Bros. was it. I don't know what it is that makes this game so compelling--far more so than Donkey Kong, in my opinion--but this is definitely one of my personal favorites.

By the time Nintendo released this game, Mario had his official name, a brother named Luigi, and a new profession. He was a carpenter back when he was battling the big monkey, but in Mario Bros. he's a plumber. Good thing, too--the pipes are full of nasty turtles, crabs, and flying things, and it's up to Mario and Luigi to clean them out. This game was one of the best cooperative two player classic arcade games (right up there with Wizard of Wor and Joust), and it's definitely the most fun when played in two-player mode. The object of the game is to flip the offending pipe-dwelling creatures onto their backs (by jumping against the floor under their feet) and then kick them off the platform. Simple, but really, really, fun.

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My Machine

Like my Donkey Kong machine, Mario Bros. is a fixer-upper began its life (at least it's life under my care) as something else. In this case, it was a Super Mario Bros. machine in a Nintendo VS. cabinet that I acquired from Cassidy Nolen, a friend I met last year at the Classic Gaming Expo (CGE) in Las Vegas. Cassidy repairs and sells arcade machines and home console systems. (Visit Cassidy's site, AtariOnline. If you're looking for classic game collectibles, he might be able to hook you up!) Cassidy had an old Super Mario Bros. sitting out in his pool shed, and sold it to me for $25 just to get it out of the way. It needed some monitor work, but was otherwise solid and functional. That the board works didn't much matter to me, though, because I had other plans for the game from the get-go.

The cosmetic transformation from Super to non-Super Mario Bros. is mostly complete at this point, although the control panel overlay needs replacing eventually. I have acquired a Mario Bros. board, but I have yet to have the monitor repaired. I also need to acquire a wiring harness adapter. I didn't know that the newer (post-1983) Nintendo games use a different set of connectors than the classic games like Mario Bros.

Check out my restoration log for a complete account of the entire conversion and restoration process.

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Mario Bros. Technical Info:

DIP switch settings:

Mario Bros. has two banks of DIP switches, but only the second bank (an 8-switch bank) is used. The asterisks (*) indicate the factory default settings. (Note that the factory defaults are to the best of my knowledge--the manual doesn't indicate the default settings for this board.)

More Mario Bros. Info:

• The Killer List of Video Games has information on Mario Bros. and pretty much every other game ever made.

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