Mario Bros. VS Demo

Since there were so many different official Mario games, it’s no wonder that there are countless remakes and fan-made versions out there, especially now when game development has been made considerably easier by a plethora simplified game engines. Hence, you can enjoy the classics once more, without having to recur to clunky emulators or similar software that can be rather difficult to operate by beginners.

Mario Bros. VS is a tad simpler than most Mario remakes, but that’s only because it looks simple at a first glance. After a few minutes of gameplay, it becomes clear that appearances can be deceiving and the game is just as complicated as the usual platformers, or even more so. Thankfully, there are little to no bugs to render your efforts useless, which is always a nice thing to see in an indie production.

In case you are not familiar with this kind of Mario version, the goal here is not to get to the end of the level by avoiding the obstacles along the way. Instead, you have to kill a certain number of enemies that constantly spawn and descend from top to bottom. As you get further and further, these enemies get faster and more vicious, while the level itself changes to make it tougher for you to achieve your goal.

Every once in a while, two doors appear after you manage to kill the enemies, one of which leads you to a secret area. Here, you can pick up a few items and keep them for later on, in case you’ll need them to make things easier. Bonus stages are included as well, which are filled with special coins and they can help you receive additional lives for Mario.

From a technical point of view, you probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish this from the original version, which is a good thing, in this case. The visual style is characteristic of the series, and everything is authentic as possible, starting from Mario’s appearance, all the way to the critters you must deal with. The same goes for the soundtrack, which should bring back quite a few pleasant memories.

All things considered, Mario Bros. VS has the right ingredients to make it into quite the successful remake. Hence, if you are feeling a bit nostalgic and you want a quality game to feed the melancholia, this might very well do the trick.