Created Using Mario NES Builder by: Andrew Kellogg
All Level Design by: Polly

Polly Mario Bros. was created right on the cusp of Super Mario Maker Mania starting to heat up in 2015. I didn't have a Wii U and wanted to get in on the action and by complete chance I ended up finding a Super Mario Bros. creation tool named Mario NES Builder by Andrew Kellogg.

(Unfortunately the tool is no longer available because Nintendo gargles turds, and even though I may have a copy of it squirreled away somewhere, I'd have to really dig for it, so please don't ask me for it.)

It was actually a solid little creation engine that let you quite easily create your own big ol' Super Mario Bros. game (as opposed to individual levels which is all Super Mario Maker was doing at the time.) It did everything the original Mario Bros. game was capable of and even a bit more, and is still by far one of the easiest prefab creation engines I've worked with.

All I really wanted to do was make a Mario game. I never had aspirations of creating any of the twisted and demented nightmare levels you see on Twitch and YouTube streams or in Kaizo ROMhacks. I just wanted to make what I considered to be "a good Mario game." I feel like I *mostly* succeeded.

A lot of the levels in this game are pretty traditional run, hop, and bop fare (though you probably will get more out of it with the run button taped down since that's just how I play Mario games and it ended up being how this game got designed.) I got as creative as I could with the bare minimum Mario 1 gimmicks available, and I think I was able to put together a lot of fun situations or ideas that the original game never really explored. I'm especially happy with how a lot of the final world and last level of the game ended up, and I think the ending is still really fun and cute.

That said, replaying it for this writeup, I think the physics do leave a lot to be desired. It feels close to Super Mario Bros., but isn't quite there, and there are definitely going to be deaths because of them.

If I could, I'd also go back and saw the tallest pipes in the game down by one tile. Again, I designed the game around running all the time, but if you end up not doing that, it doesn't always feel great. Coulda done with some more extra lives scattered about too, but hey, at least there's a stage select right there on the title screen.

This game definitely has some rough spots due to both me designing it a little too much around my own specific play preferences (something that may crop up later...) and the engine's wonky physics, but I still think this one turned out really well. There's a start-to-finish flow the game has that I've always modeled after the tempo of the NES version of Super C. I like it when a game feels more and more "serious time" the further in you get, and I think I nailed that kind of pacing and atmosphere here for the first time.

Even if it's Kinda Wonky Mario, even Kinda Wonky Mario can still be fun.