Andrew Reese: Assignment 7

On September 13, 1985, the first Super Mario Bros. game was released in Japan. This is probably trivial compared to deaths of famous people, wars starting or anything else important from these days, but it means a lot to me, and I have a lot to say about it.
It was absolutely a good event. I don't see how it could be bad, to be honest. Even when a piece of art I don't like is released, I try not to see it unfortunate, because more art is generally a good thing. The exception to this occurs when people's money is wasted on a game full of broken promises. But in the grand scheme of things, art generally adds to lives without taking that much away.
For a lot of people, this event means nothing. But for some others, it was huge. Not only was it fun, but the influence it had on games to come cannot be understated. Before, you would so often buy a game and hate it from the moment you pressed "right" on the d-pad. But here, the titular character responds to player input in an intuitive way that has a lot of momentum, forcing the player to consider their actions carefully so that they don't run into something they don't want to because they couldn't slow down in time to avoid it. In addition, Mario can adjust his movement mid-air. This means that the player almost always has some degree of control, even when they realistically should not. It also lets players perform actions that are fun by themselves, even if they contribute nothing to their progress
I appreciate this event much differently than other game releases. Like many others, I enjoy the game, but mostly, I love what it did to movement in games. Considering how much I play video games, that has to count for something.