Vs. Super Mario Bros (Switch)

Also available in arcades

Vs Super Mario Bros is a weird little piece of Mario history.  It was essentially a ROM hack of the original Super Mario Bros made specifically for American arcades with some new levels, some items shuffled around, and an overall higher difficulty.  It's technically the second Super Mario Bros game (I guess third if you count the original arcade Mario Bros as the first) as it released in America one month before Super Mario Bros 2 (what we Westerners call The Lost Levels) released in Japan.

I call Vs Super Mario Bros more of an official ROM hack rather than a truly new game because most of the game is the same as Super Mario Bros as far as levels go.  There are six new levels in the game, but all of them were reused in The Lost Levels.  The other differences are relatively minor and serve to make the game harder, not original; fewer warp zones, fewer items, and more enemies are the biggest difficulty boosters, in my opinion.  Still, though, that does give the game a reason to be played since the average Super Mario Bros enjoyer probably finds The Lost Levels to be a bit too difficult but the original Super Mario Bros to be too easy; this is a really good middle ground between the two.  It's definitely tough, but it's not quite as brutal as The Lost Levels.  If you play via the Arcade Archives version on Switch like I did, then you can endlessly credit feed to make it a little more doable.  That still doesn't make it easy, per se, since you start back at the start of the world if you lose all of your lives, but it's definitely not as brutal as the original quarter-munching arcade cabinet would have been.

Other than that and some minor tweaks to levels throughout the game, this is basically just the original Super Mario Bros but on hard mode.  If you're a casual Mario fan, this probably isn't worth going out of your way for, but if you, like me, are a big fan of the 8-bit Mario platformers, then this is definitely a must for your Switch SD card for the novelty of it if nothing else.  Why this was never brought to the Wii or 3DS Virtual Consoles, I'll never know, but it's on Switch now, so give it a try if you think the original game is too easy.

My Rating - 4 Neps