OrangeRKN wrote:You're right that SMB is more iconic than it is actually good looking from a pure aesthetic standpoint, especially with the almost proto-pixel art character and enemy sprites, but SMB's great visual strength is in it's simplicity. The odd cloud and bush aside (and it's the same sprite anyway!), there are no non-course elements causing any visual distraction in the game. The game is one obstacle course after another, and that's exactly what it looks like it is. You can see a screen of SMB and know within milliseconds exactly where to go and what to do which makes it superbly reactable and playable as a platformer. Every element is well defined and recognisable. I could find you examples of games with busy screens and background elements that obscure the playable and distract the player, and all of these I would probably say look worse because the visuals end up detracting from the gameplay. Of course there are many games that are well designed and do complex visuals well so they don't suffer that problem (or even use visual "confusion" to their advantage!) but that's not what SMB does - SMB doesn't run into those problems by virtue of avoiding them almost entirely. The all-stars version I think compromises itself for introducing a business to the screens with no discernible advantage to doing so, and that's partly why the original still remains as iconic as it. You can put that opening 1-1 block layout in any game with any variety of art style and superfluous background elements and it will still recognisably be 1-1, because the visuals and the level design of SMB are one and the same.
Oh for sure. I’ve been dipping a woolly toe into Unravel 2 recently and its busy backgrounds, while objectively attractive (or as objective as you can get when talking about visuals anyway - I don’t actually like them because they have no art style), make the platforming harder. They get in the way of the gameplay where SMB1’s enhances it. That just means that Unravel 2 should come in for criticism, not that SMB1 in this day and age should be let off. As you say, both are possible, and we both know a great platformer that pulls that off.
As for the All-Stars remake of SMB1, maybe it does sacrifice some of that visual immediacy, but from what I’ve seen it also doesn’t look like hot garbage these days - or not as much. And at least it feels like Nintendo were trying to do something interesting with it, like some effort went in rather than taking the ‘history piece’ route; or, if one were feeling less kind, the ‘quick buck’ route.