Super Mario Bros. is an iconic platformer game. Released around 1985, this game was created for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The game seems fairly straightforward. The player starts as a small Mario and meanders through the world without any instruction. Mario is able to jump, duck, jump and break bricks boxes for coins, and sprint, and does a combination of all of these to dodge obstacles: goombas, turtles, Venus flytraps, fireballs, etc. Only at the end of the first world does the player realize their objective is to save the Princess, who is not in the castle you just defeated. Since the game is built for the NES, a level of simplicity comes from the controller itself.
There are only four buttons total, two red buttons on the right and two thin, black ‘Select’ and ‘Start’ buttons in the center. On the left is the arrow pad that is used to direct where Mario moves. Having only these buttons to use as controls in addition to the simple rectangular design of the controller itself, Super Mario Bros. presents itself as a straightforward and simple game. But that’s not necessarily true.
Like most other games, Super Mario Bros. generates a feeling of frustration. What is unlike most games, however, is the feeling around this frustration. It’s light and to a degree happier; I think of it as positive frustration. Positive frustration is when a person, in this case the player, is frustrated because an expected outcome is not being produced, but it is not a negative experience because there is still more enjoyment derived from the cause of the frustration. So how does Super Mario Bros. achieve this? It’s all in the mechanics of the game.
Dying in a game is expected, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Super Mario Bros. utilizes death as the main instigator of frustration. Mario only has three lives for the entire game; if they are all lost, then the game is over, and the player must restart from World 1-1. This is not much of an issue if you die in World 1-3, but if you die in World 3-3, working back to that place will not be too easy. But there are ways to elongate Mario’s lives, whether you collect 100 coins or get power-ups to make Mario taller and equipped to throw fire or be invincible for a short moment. These mechanics help make to mediate the frustration, but they do not make it positive. I think that comes from the music and graphics specifically.
Music and graphics in Super Mario Bros. make the enjoyment the game outweigh the frustration of dying. While there are different songs throughout Super Mario Bros., all of which entice different atmospheres for each world, I will focus specifically on the song in World 1-1, “Overworld Theme.” This song is generally upbeat, succinct, and full of crisp quarter notes. (Mario Piano) Most importantly, the songs are repetitive and constant, as shown by the ending repeat sign at the end of the music. Repetition helps make the music fade to the back of the player’s attention as they focus on overcoming the obstacles. This being said, the repetition of “Overworld Theme” in World 1-1 works to abate your frustration by keeping a distinctly upbeat song on repeat on the first level you must play after dying. And although the song is repetitive and easy to push out of mind, the upbeat feeling the song generates is not lost on the player. Furthermore, the sound effects add to the general feeling of ease and upbeat energy of the game. When Mario dies, the music stops but the sound effect for his death is a brief musical rift that is similar to “Overworld Theme,” tying dying to an upbeat beat and therefore already reworking the conception of dying with in the game.
The graphics in Super Mario Bros. are also very simple, in part because it was designed for the NES. Despite this, the placement of the clouds, boxes, pipes, and obstacles play a role in mediating frustration. World 1 acts as an introduction on how to play the game when you first go through it. There are not many obstacles initially and they are easy to dispatch of. But once you die past World 1 and return to it, its lack of immediate groups of obstacles makes it easy to move through faster. The ease of surviving to the next level helps enforce that even though Mario is back at World 1, it will go quickly. An apt example is in World 2-1; there are several turtles and goombas after the first staircase that are tricky to get around quickly, but in World 1 the first goomba only waddles towards you once you move towards it and it is the only obstacle until you move well away from that area. Together, both music and graphics try to mediate frustration into a positive frustration.
When compared to Problem Attic, the difference in feelings are more apparent. Problem Attic used mechanics that seemed designed to frustrate the player, namely the shaking screens and floating crosses that followed the avatar and attacked it. The confusion of not knowing the purpose or gist of how to play the game and the blocky, abstract graphics can be particularly frustrating as well. However, these feelings of frustration generated are not mediated throughout the game to soften their intensity and allow the enjoyment of playing the game to surpass it. Super Mario Bros. mediates the frustration from dying and restarting the game through the upbeat music of World 1-1 and using the graphics to show differences in difficulty through the levels.
So, what does this mean? Video games are great forms to express lessons to people of all ages. Within Super Mario Bros., there is an important lesson about frustration: some experiences can be frustrating, but you can still enjoy and make the best of those situations. To an adult, this lesson might seem obvious, but to a child playing this game, it could be the first time the message came across. Staying positive and finding enjoyment in whatever is frustrating is a good way to learn to handle or defuse difficult situations or even mediate stress, an important skill in life. Frustration doesn’t always have to be negative—it could even be constructive—but you have to be willing to notice the positive things around it.
Works Cited
“Mario Piano.” Mario Piano, Joseph Karam, www.mariopiano.com/mario-sheet-music-overworld-main-theme.html.
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