Super Mario Bros. In First Person

Nintendo always managed to stay relevant in the video games industry because their games seem to be timeless, which is especially true for the Super Mario franchise. As such, there have been countless spin-offs and variations on the same theme over the decades, including multiplayer brawlers and even racing games, all of which enjoyed huge success.

Super Mario Bros. In First Person gives away its intentions and practically sums up the entire game in the name, because that’s exactly what you get once the loading screen fades away. Hence, everything is more or less the same it was in the original release, only you get to experience it from a first-person perspective instead, which should provide you with a whole new dimension of fun.

Since the levels are exactly the same as the were in the classic Nintendo bestseller, you would think that it’s quite easy for experienced players to pass them. However, when everything shifts and you are forced to look at the same thing from a different angle, it becomes a tad more difficult to do it from memory. Thankfully, there’s a 2D representation of the level in the corner of the screen which shows you Mario’s position.

Although you have the possibility to use the mouse to look around, you can only do so on the vertical axis because there’s nothing on the sides. While this is helpful in some situations, it also gets disorienting if you happen to be an avid FPS player. This also makes it rather hard to properly approximate distance, which is not ideal in a platformer that requires a lot of jumping and precise movements.

The controls are intuitive and smooth, but you have to give yourself a short accommodation period before they come naturally. In essence, the counterintuitive part is that you cannot walk backward, due to the fact that Mario rotates 180 degrees whenever you want to take a step back. Thankfully, you can easily get used to this after a bit of practice and a lot of game over screens.

In the end, Super Mario Bros. In First Person is definitely a nice project and a pleasant game for the fans of the franchise. Once you get over the control issues and get used to the camera, the experience becomes a lot easier to enjoy and it’s definitely worth a try.