We had to start somewhere.
Although not the first game to feature the Mario character, Super Mario Bros. (SMB) was the first game with most of the features that would become standard in the Mario franchise.
SMB was the flagship release on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the console that reestablished home video gaming in the United States in the mid-1980’s.
It’s also the most over-referenced game in the history of the known world. So we decided to make it the first game featured on The bums rush.
Playing the role of Mario in this video is historian and engineer Nate Lockhart. You’ll hear his commentary on contemporary side-scrollers, inspirations for the SMB soundtrack, and early PC ports of Mario games.
Nate Lockhart is producer and host of The Memory Machine Podcast, a program on culture and technology from the 1890’s to today.
Playing the role of Luigi is A nice nerd, a stay-at-home father and the webmaster and sysadmin of The bums rush.
Technical details
Recorded September 28, 2024
The original NES console used in this video was modified with Tim Worthington’s NESRGB mod (version 4.0) to produce an RGB analog signal.
The RGB signal was sent through the gscart switch v5.3 before being upscaled to 1080p in 60 frames per second with the RetroTINK 5X.
The 1080p signal was captured on the EVGA XR1 lite capture card.
We used individually-shielded RGB SCART cables from Retro Gaming Cables and Retro Access to produce this video.
In the commentary, Nate points out some visual artifacts that show up in the video. We believe these artifacts are a feature of the cartridge, which we opened up and discovered has the “blob chip” design. This was a design used in later-run productions of the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt cartridge.
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