19 Coins : Super Mario Bros. World 1-1
There are 19 coins waiting for you in a secret tunnel. If that sentence was printed by itself it would sound like a line delivered by the quirky old arcade owner in an early 90’s movie. A store-brand John Williams soundtrack would then play as the protagonist rode home through the woods on his bicycle before being saved from the bullies by the tom-boy next-door-neighbor girl who totally has a crush on him. And it would be somewhere during their awkward, pre-puberty, PG-Rated flirting that one of them would see the tunnel that would start the adventure.
The 90s were an odd trip sometimes, but at least they had solid video-games.
Speaking of.
I have never owned a Nintendo Entertainment System(NES), and, technically and legally speaking, I never owned a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) either. My parents owned an SNES. What this means is I never played the original Super Mario Bros. I played Super Mario All Stars, but I’ll address that unique experience in a little bit. What I can and will also say, is that I have only recently played these original games. As of this writing, I have only reached level 3-4 in Super Mario Bros 3, and that’s only becauseI’m playing it on a Nintendo Switch which is technically, and legally speaking mine.
You hear that Mom and Dad? Your little boy grew up to be fiscally responsible enough to be able to buy his own video games. Ain’t ya proud?
I’ve started playing, of all things, the original Super Mario Bros on the Switch’s NES service which is, let’s be honest here, an app that lets you play games that Nintendo decides to rerelease. Given that I got into the Switch several years after it was released there were a number of games available on this platform, several I had spent a fair amount of time playing. On a brief side note I held onto my Playstation 4 until a divorce, Covid-19, and the ever-luring siren call of Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild finally made me buckle. Hopping into the Switch I honestly didn’t touch the NES games; they didn’t interest me. I’ve only recently begun challenging my own thinking about what makes a great game truly great, and since I discovered Boss Fight Books and began reading anything and everything I could find about video games, it felt like the right time to try playing them.
I feel comfortable expressing the following sentiment.
Dude. I missed out.
Playing Super Mario Bros World 1-1 at age 34 was mind-bending. I became aware of how different the version of Super Mario Bros I had played as a kid actually was. I’ll explain how different later in this essay. The short version is the transition from NES to SNES was an opportunity for Nintendo to update their plumber mascot Mario and attach some ornate features to his adventure, meaning they had money to spend.
And spend they did.
World 1-1 on SNES had “better” music, “better” graphics, and “better” controls. I say “better” like that because they weren’t actually better, but the dictum in video-game discourse always seems to be if it’s new it’s “better.” Super Mario Bros got patched up so that the next generation could appreciate Super Mario again but with new graphics and sounds systems most likely so that Nintendo could sell more copies of the same game.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, just give it a new paint-job.
Playing the NES version I became aware of how spoiled I’d been with the “X” and “Y” buttons on my controller as I realized I had to navigate my hands to exclusively use the “A” and “B” button which meant “Y” was no longer running.
“ Y” wasn’t there at all.
“Y” had never been there.
I began to appreciate the early gamers who entered the Mushroom Kingdom with only two buttons and a “D-pad.”
And I also had the rewind function.
The current generation of gamers who may bother to try playing the games on the NES Switch App (that’s what I’m calling it now, don’t fight me on this) may try and challenge themselves by resisting the call of the rewind feature which allows players to rewind in the event of making a mistake.
Death. Death is the mistake.
That’s the lesson that so many of my and the previous generations of gamers were instructed in, often rather painfully in the dark days of Arcade manipulations. The rewind function has erased this. This is probably the part where I’m supposed to squint my eyes and complain about these softie kids not having to learn how important lives were and how in the real world you can’t rewind and undo your mistakes, you have to live with them. That’s what I’m probably supposed to say.
But partner, I’m here to say I’m over that.
Whatever someone might think I don’t possess the conviction to declare myself steadfastly opposed to this rewind function, mostly because I use it, a LOT. I’m playing a lot of old games that I wasn’t good at, or only kind of good at, and this rewind is helping me get to places that only my friends who were talented at games could get to.
Maybe I’ll write an essay about the rewind function. Maybe.
When it comes to World 1-1 for Super Mario Bros however, rewind isn’t the issue, or the topic. What I want to write about is 19 coins.
I’ve played Super Mario games since I was a kid, and I’m still playing them; as of this writing I am slowly working through Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Deluxe. I played Super Mario Sunshine for the Nintendo GameCube and Super Mario 64 on my friend's Nintendo 64. I wanted that last game but I could never find a copy that was cheap enough for my parents to buy it for me. I had their SNEs though, and I played a lot, and I mean a LOT of Super Mario. I won’t say that I could play World 1-1 in my sleep or with my eyes closed, because those are cliches, but I believe I could probably hold a pretty absorbing conversation with a significant other about the layout and structure of the level at least. Or I could write a whole dang essay about it. This familiarity is best expressed simply: when I play World 1-1, it’s like muscle memory.
Much like E1M1 in DOOM, World 1-1 is about familiarizing the player with the controls, with how Mario moves, the general differences between small and large hops, how enemies react to being stomped on, how bricks react to being jumped into, and how pipes work. This last one is where the secret is.
While I was writing this essay, because I don’t know what else to call this thing/writing-project, and “article” sounds way too charitable, I did a little bit of research and I found a really great (actual)article about World 1-1 written by Paul Tamburro called The Perfect Level: How Super Mario Bros and ‘World 1-1’ Changed Everything. You can read the whole essay here and I would definitely recommend it if you have a free moment. And maybe go here to read my last essay about Final Fantasy 16, you know, if you want to, or if you’re not too busy. Tamburro in my opinion does a fantastic job of explaining why World 1-1 is so important from a narrative and technical aspect.
And because I loved his essay so much, I’ll share a quote directly from it. He writes:
The first rule that World 1-1 presents to the player is that progress is only achievable by moving right. Though future 2D Mario games would allow the player to go back on themselves, in Super Mario Bros the boundaries of the screen provides an invisible wall that prevents them from moving left, instantly indicating that there is only one way to go if you want to make it to the end of the game.
In the opening screen, the player is afforded breathing room by way of an empty space to fiddle around with the game’s controls. If they move to the right the screen will follow them, and inquisitive players will inevitably attempt to experiment by going left only to be prevented from doing so by the wall. This informs the player that going back isn’t an option, and anything that they leave behind will be lost as they progress.
Playing World 1-1 as often as I did I never really observed that I was being taught. I was too busy having fun. Tamburro sums up to me perfectly how something as simple as a few visual structures were enough for me to learn that the only way to grow, to discover, and to progress was to simply keep moving. Super Mario Bros was a game about movement and in this way Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka managed to create a new world full of energy and, most importantly for this essay, secrets.
I was playing World 1-1 the other day while my girlfriend was getting ready to go out. We were going to hit up Target, grab something to eat, and then probably wander around the mall for a bit. Going out means that she wanted to put on make-up so I knew that I had a little while. I thought I would just play and see how far I could get. I had recently watched a video on the YouTube Channel Dorkly about a “new secret level discovery” in World 1-1 that was hilarious, and obviously a parody, but the bit was based on a secret level that did exist and so I wanted to see if I could find it.
Sure enough after passing the last two goomba’s and standing on top of the fourth green warp pipe I hit down on the “D-pad.” I entered a room filled with 19 coins and a green pipe ready to take me back to the surface. Once back up I faced two more goombas and then, that’s it.
The level was over.
I had never beaten World 1-1 so quickly.
I was left agog and honestly laughing at how so many years had passed, so many times I had gone through this level and I still managed to miss this secret.
Super Mario Bros came out in 1985, four years before I was born. A game that was released almost 40 years ago is still offering players like me who are open to the experience and not jaded by a sense that higher graphics are an automatic indication of quality, a chance to discover new experiences.
I played World 1-1 around 10 times while writing this essay just to experience the level and study how I was being taught to jump and explore. I even played the remastered version for Super Mario All Stars and was left shook by how dramatically different the visuals and sound were. But like the original, playing this revamped game was a chance to just explore, and when I went down the fourth warp pipe, the reward of 19 coins (I counted them) was waiting every time.
It’s a little thing, but even discovering a secret that’s been known for decades can still alter my perception of a game level that I seemingly know inside and out.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
8.31.2023
Like what you’re reading? Buy me a coffee & support my Patreon. Please and thank you.