Game review:
- Super Mario Bros. Remastered
- Release date: 2025
- Developer: JHDev2006 & Friends
- Version: 1.0.1 (PC)
This year, Super Mario Bros. turns 40 years old. This is a game that needs no introduction, as it has a good shot of being at the very top of the list of most important video games ever created. And, unlike so many games of the 80's, it's a game that has remained culturally relevant to this day - I am sure that, as I write this, there are many people who are playing Super Mario Bros. 1 right now, including in original cartridge form. That is not something that I would feel at ease saying about most 80's games. Mario anniversaries are always the chance to celebrate, and Nintendo is doing their own celebration with a lineup of re-releases and new games. But if there's something that anyone with more than a passing interest in the Mario franchise knows, is that the games enjoy a HUGE following in terms of fan creations: indeed, as a huge fan of the franchise, for me, levelpacks, romhacks, and fan games are important to the point of being my bread-and-butter Mario gameplay experience.
Normally I just stick to Super Mario World romhacks or SMBX fan-games, but this year I was alerted to a new game being developed as a tribute to the very first game, which is one I don't usually go back to, and haven't really played in its original incarnation since the 90's. Nevertheless, the anniversary really put me in the spirit of wanting to go back to the one that started it all, and so I took the plunge and downloaded Super Mario Bros. Remastered, developed by a team of fans led by JHDev2006 and requiring a rom file of the original Super Mario Bros. cartridge in order to play. In a highly competitive environment full of high quality fan-games - not to mention official Nintendo games - could this seemingly humble project stand out?
First off, let's start by explaining what exactly this project does. Super Mario Bros. Remastered is a reimplementation, partial reworking, and amalgamation of no less than FIVE games, all of which are incarnations of the original Super Mario Bros. NES/Famicom game. They are: the original Super Mario Bros. from September 1985; Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (known as Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan); Super Mario Bros. Special, a unique sequel for old Japanese computers made by Hudson Soft; All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros., a rare promotional version of the game featuring edited levels from SMB1 and Lost Levels; and finally, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, the 1999 Game Boy Color remaster of Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels. That is virtually the entirety of all versions of the original game with the exception of VS. Super Mario Bros., which had most of its changes later introduced in The Lost Levels anyways. As far as the included games go, the first four are available as stand-alone campaigns, whereas Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is included in the form of optional red coin/yoshi egg challenges, much like the collectible aspect that Deluxe offered. Additionally, the game physics have been tweaked too and they most closely resemble the physics found in Deluxe, making the platforming more forgiving than the NES original.
Upon starting the game, what you'll notice right away is that Super Mario Bros. Remastered comes with some pretty elaborate options that allow you to tweak the game significantly on an audio-visual and gameplay level. You can, for example, enable new graphics for some of the later worlds to give them a forest or desert themes; you can enable scrolling back to the left like in SMB2 onwards; you can disable the in-game timer or give yourself infinite lives, and also change some of the enemy and level behaviors to be more forgiving if you want. Personally, I was never a fan of the timer in Mario games, so I turned that off, but I kept most of the rest the same as the original, including the limited lives. Four playable characters are included, though I only played as Mario throughout my time with the game. The game also automatically saves your progress at the start of each level so you can shut it off and come back at any time (though the amount of lives will be reset to 3), making it a breeze to play if you get interrupted for any reason - which happens quite often for me. The game can be played in the original 4:3 aspect ratio or in widescreen, and support for multiple languages is provided - including, amazingly enough, the Standard Galactic Alphabet. That tells you that the people who made this game are huge fans of not just Mario but classic 2D platformers as a whole!
Let's talk for a moment about the four campaigns themselves. Super Mario Bros. is the original game you know and love, but as much as I respect the original game and its influence, I must admit I was never a fan of the overly stiff physics of the original. I thought Deluxe's physics, more in line with the later Mario games, are much better, but that game suffered from a very limited resolution, so I'm pleased to say Remastered finally offers the best of both worlds. Revisiting these levels truly made me appreciate just how fun they are and how ahead of their time Nintendo was when designing them. The only negative points is that some areas are repeated between levels, and I was never a huge fan of the castle maze mechanics either. The Lost Levels is the somewhat infamous and MUCH harder follow-up, but it's definitely a worthy challenge for those who have mastered the original. One thing that some people don't know is that Lost Levels actually has a whole extra five worlds accessible by beating the game under certain conditions (iirc not using warp zones) in the original version, and in this version they employ some unique mechanics such as low-gravity or upside-down gravity for even greater variety. Super Mario Bros. Special is the least known because it was never released in the west: it has a set of all new 8 worlds, and it was infamous in its home region due to lack of scrolling, making it incredibly difficult, but here it works like the NES version, meaning it is still harder than the original but substantially easier than The Lost Levels. Additionally, Hudson Soft added some new powerups and enemies to this version (mainly from the Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong arcade games), adding even more variety. The oddball of the bunch is All Night Nippon: it's more or less the same levels as SMB1 and partially Lost Levels, but it has edited graphics based on that old Japanese TV series, and it features a combo and scoring system that will make you approach them quite differently. All told, for being a remaster of just the first Mario title, there's so, so, so much game here!
But that's not all! The game includes even more, in the form of new gameplay modes and modding capabilities. As far as the new modes go, there's a race against several increasingly harder ties of Boos on new levels: these include ghost switches that will alter the layout of the stage somewhat that will either help or hinder you. There's also a collection mode, which is essentially the reworked version of Deluxe, tasking you to locate red coins within the stage, find a hidden Yoshi egg, and also beat the level's high score. Another mode is Marathon mode, which is essentially a speedrun mode that can be played either for a whole game or individual levels: given SMB1's high popularity as a speedrun game, this makes perfect sense to include. Last but most definitely not least, this game has a whole level editor that you can use to create your maps, and even allows you to edit the game's fundamentals in order to create brand new playable characters, add new enemies to the mix or replace all of the graphics to whatever you might like. Mods may be found on Discord or Game Banana. I certainly look forward to trying some of the new level packs that people have already made. Finally, for the mad completionists out there, there's also achievements.
I went into this package with low expectations. After all, how can you re-iterate on a game that has seen so many better versions already and which people know so well? But I was totally impressed with the quality on display here. The developers made sure to include every version of SMB1 from "back in the day", and thanks to the added polish and customization, this is now for my money the definitive version of playing this beloved classic. In 2026, a reskin of this game based on the All Stars version is planned, and I'll be sure to give that a spin once it's released. I only have a few very minor issues with this package: it's a bit weird how whenever you start a new game you automatically continue on your last save point instead of the game giving you the option to start fresh, as in order to do that you need to go to the settings and erase your campaign data. Also, I didn't find the ability to jump into any level you want outside of Marathon mode, and that would have been nice to see. But these are extremely minor complaints in the grand scheme of things. Super Mario Bros. Remastered manages to be every bit as good as an official release while standing head and shoulder among some of the best mods/fangames for this prolific series, and I don't think SMB1 could have asked for a better celebration than this. Cheers!
Check out the trailer here
Check out the game here (original copy of Super Mario Bros 1 rom file required to play)
Final grade: A
