Pro Tip of the Day - super mario bros

Pro tip: doing the Mario Slide

Will — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:05:06 +0000

In the original Super Mario Bros. game, once Mario gets Fire Power, all kinds of weird things become possible.

For instance, find a pipe or the beginning of a stage that isn't a water stage or underground, and before the stage starts or you come out of the pipe, hold a direction (either one will work) + Fire + Jump. Done right, you'll jump up and then hit the ground sliding on one foot.

This will wear off after a few seconds, or if you shoot another fireball. And I haven't really been able to find much of a use for it, other than making Mario look foolish for a few seconds. But maybe you can.

Pro tip: Using the gaps in the walls to your advantage in Super Mario Bros.

Will — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:20:36 +0000

In the Underground portions of Super Mario Bros. it's real tempting to try and get up to the ceiling, that way you can just kind of run to the right as fast as you can without worrying about trying to avoid the obstacles in front of you. But usually it's kind of hard to get up there.

Unless...

I alluded to this earlier, but if you scroll the screen so that one column of bricks is halfway scrolled off the screen and then start breaking them

You'll notice that Mario (or Luigi) can fit in the gap, and he'll kinda get stuck

Keep on jumping until you're at the top of the screen!

Making it much easier to pass these stages.

Pro tip: Warping to World 6, 7, or 8 without using the vine in Super Mario Bros.

Will — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:22:31 +0000

It's pretty well known that in the original Super Mario Bros. game that you can warp from World 4-2 to either 6, 7, or 8 by using a hidden Vine, but what you might not know is that there's another way.

Toward the beginning of the level, you have all these blocks making a path. What you want to do is to scroll one of the columns halfway off the screen so that when you go back to break them, they make a 1/2 block-width column.

If you duck-jump into this column and then stand up, Mario will start to slide toward the right.

If you start walking to the right just as he gets to the edge of the screen, it'll start to scroll. You're going to want to stay as far to the right as possible (which is kind of tough, since you can't really see what's coming). You might want to back up a little bit so you can see stuff like that moving platform across the first pit.

An alternate method would involve making the Vine appear here, scrolling so that the block that sprouted it scrolls halfway off the screen and then trying to jump on it. Done right, you'll be teleported to the far right of the screen. Done wrong, though, and you risk getting Mario stuck until the time runs out.

Make your way to the third pipe and enter it

If you were far enough over, you will be whisked away to the Warp Zone instead of the bonus room you would be expecting!

Amazing!

Pro tip: extra bonus points

Will — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:33:04 +0000

At the end of each stage in Super Mario Bros. you get 50 points for each unit of time that you have left on the clock when you finish a stage.

But, let's say that you go to your favorite X-4 stage (the big castles)

You make your way to Bowser and bide your time a little bit (this works best if you're fiery and can get him out of the way)

And then hit the axe then the timer hits 000 seconds.

The result? When you visit the mushroom retainer the clock starts counting down from 999 time units back down to zero.

Giving you 49950 points instead of whatever amount you would have had, had you just gone for it.

And this trick is arcade only, I'm afraid.

Pro tip: Small fiery Mario

Will — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:03:16 +0000

In the original Super Mario Bros, if you get to Bowser while you're Super or Fiery, and you time it so that you hit the axe and Bowser at the same time, you'll hear the noise like you've gotten hit and shrunk, but you stay Super Sized.

Then, the next powerup block you hit will contain a mushroom, even though you already are Super. Collect it, and Mario turns small.

The next powerup block after that will have a fireflower in it (assuming you didn't get hit).

Collect that and Mario will turn Fiery, even though he's still small.

Shooting a fireball will make Mario's torso briefly turn big, but his feet will stay small if he's moving, which looks kind of silly.

A drawback to this is that you can't break any blocks while in this small-yet-fiery state. You'll have to get hit to revert back to Super Mario to do that. And if you get hit while Super, you lose a life.

But then the glitch resets itself, so you'll have to do it again should you want to.