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For a brief moment there, it felt like I was back in the 3rd grade, explaining to my teacher in front of the class the finer nuances of jumping on blocks, eating strange mushrooms and rescuing damsels in distress.
Then I was back in 4th grade, slamming controllers down in rage as Wart's magical musical vegetable-spewing machine launched a bubble that my last-life Princess could not float away from. This is when my mother first suspected I had a videogame "problem."

Then I was back in 6th grade, watching Fred Savage guide his little brother to the warp whistle at the dramatic climax of The Wizard, and immediately realizing that there was no possible way Fred Savage could have known to kneel down on the white block for three seconds in a game he just found out existed.

As I was playing New Super Mario Bros. at this year's Game Developers Conference, all of these memories came flooding back. Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 and 3 were the reasons for my adolescent videogame obssession, and even though it's been fourteen-odd years since the last proper side-scrolling Mario game, it's easy to see elements of the old in the new.

The game begins in World 1-1, which is essentially the same in layout and style to 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. -- very simple running and jumping, with a smattering of enemies that are easily dispatched via the Fire Flower (who's return we celebrate with great enthusiasm). It doesn't take long to discover the effectiveness of NSMB's...ahem, biggest new addition: chomping on a certain mushroom makes Mario the size of the entire screen, and thusly, an unstoppable killing machine. Charging through enemies and environments builds up a meter at the top of the screen, and the more damage you do the more green 1UP mushrooms you get. At first it seemed like this form might be a little too powerful a feature, but if you think about it, it's essentially the same as getting a star and running invincible through the level...only now you're literally running through the level.

The next level goes underground, similar to SMB's World 1-2 in aesthetic style, but especially in layout -- it's here that you first notice that even though the level design is spatially different, the technical platforming aspects of jump distance, ceiling height, and enemy placement are definitely true to the series' heritage.

Remember the warp zone in Super Mario Bros. World 4-2? The one with the funky orange mushrooms? The next course conjures up the same imagery, but with a distinct Super Mario World flavor of level design. Large orange mushroom platforms sway back and forth, creating odd angles over large gaps, and measured movement is required to successfully pass.

1-4 is a traditional mini-castle inhabited by Baby Bowser, and this is where Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World influences can be clearly seen. This is mostly a vertical climb up platforms and pipes, and through several areas of closing walls that have to be timed just right to avoid. It is here that the Blue Shell makes its non-kart racer debut: similar to SMB3's Tanooki suit, Mario hops into the blue shell and can slide left and right through the level with limited invincibility. The fight with Baby Bowser at the end is a typical "hop on his head three times" battle.

After playing that battle, the female booth attendant at GDC kindly roadblocked my trip down memory lane -- apparently Nintendo didn't want show-goers to see beyond this point. Because of the recent delay, my next taste of New Super Mario Bros. will have to come at E3. But it's funny how more effective NSMB seemed to be at conjuring up pleasant thoughts of days gone by than the countless remakes and reissues of the games I played in the first place. (Even if it doesn't have fireworks at 1, 3 and 6.)

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