Super Mario

Super Mario (Japanese: スーパーマリオ, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario) is a series of platform video games created by Nintendo featuring their mascot, Mario. Alternatively called the Super Mario Bros. (スーパーマリオブラザーズ, Sūpā Mario Burazāzu) series or simply the Mario (マリオ) series, it is the central series of the greater Mario franchise. At least one Super Mario game has been released for every major Nintendo video game console and handheld.

The Super Mario games follow Mario's adventures in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, usually with Mario as the player character. He is usually joined by his brother, Luigi, and occasionally by other members of the Mario cast. As in platform video games, the player runs and jumps across platforms and atop enemies in themed levels. The games have simple plots, typically with Mario rescuing the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. The first title in the series, Super Mario Bros., released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, established gameplay concepts and elements prevalent in nearly every Super Mario game since. These include a multitude of power-ups and items that give Mario special magic powers such as fireball-throwing and size-changing into giant and miniature sizes.

1985

1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (dominical letter F) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1985th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 985th year of the 2nd millennium, the 85th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1980s decade. The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations.

Events

January

Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros. (Japanese: スーパーマリオブラザーズ, Hepburn: Sūpā Mario Burazāzu) is a 1985 platform video game internally developed by Nintendo R&D4 and published by Nintendo as a pseudo-sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. It was originally released in Japan for the Family Computer on September 13, 1985, and later that year for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe on May 15, 1987, and Australia later in 1987. It is the first of the Super Mario series of games. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario and in a two-player game, a second player controls Mario's brother Luigi as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist Bowser.

In 2005, IGN's poll named the "pioneering" and "highly influential" title as the "greatest game of all time", considering it to have aided in resurrecting the crashed American video game market of the 1980s. The game's mid-1980s release served to further popularize the side-scrolling subgenre of the already popular platform video game genre of the early 1980s. In addition to its definitive features, the game has also sold enormously well, and was the best-selling game of all time for a single platform for approximately three decades at over 40 million units, until Nintendo's Wii Sports took that title. The commercial success of Super Mario Bros. has caused it to be ported to almost every one of Nintendo's major gaming consoles. Nintendo released special red variants of the Wii and Nintendo DSi XL consoles in re-packaged, Mario-themed, limited edition bundles in late 2010 as part of the 25th anniversary of the game's release.

Mario Bros.

Mario Bros. (マリオブラザーズ, Mario Burazāzu) is a platform game published and developed for arcades by Nintendo in 1983. It was created by Shigeru Miyamoto. It has been featured as a minigame in the Super Mario Advance series and numerous other games. Mario Bros. has been re-released for the Wii's, Nintendo 3DS's, and Wii U's Virtual Console services in Japan, North America, Europe and Australia.

In the game, Mario is portrayed as an Italian-American plumber who, along with his younger brother Luigi, has to defeat creatures that have been coming from the sewers below New York City. The gameplay focuses on Mario's extermination of them by flipping them on their backs and kicking them away. The original versions of Mario Bros.—the arcade version and the Family Computer/Nintendo Entertainment System (FC/NES) version—were received positively by critics.

Gameplay

Mario Bros. features two plumbers, Mario and Luigi, having to investigate the sewers of New York after strange creatures have been appearing down there. The objective of the game is to defeat all of the enemies in each phase. The mechanics of Mario Bros. involve only running and jumping. Unlike future Mario games, players cannot jump on enemies and squash them, unless they were already turned on their back. Each phase is a series of platforms with pipes at each corner of the screen, along with an object called a "POW" block in the center. Phases use wraparound, meaning that enemies and players that go off to one side will reappear on the opposite side.

Bowling for Soup

Bowling for Soup (often typeset as ¡Bowling for Soup! and abbreviated as BFS) is an American rock band originally formed in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1994. The band consists of Jaret Reddick (lead vocals, guitar), Chris Burney (guitar, backing vocals), Erik Chandler (bass, backing vocals), and Gary Wiseman (drums, percussion). The band is best known for their singles "Girl All the Bad Guys Want", "1985", "Almost", and "High School Never Ends". On April 8, 2013, Bowling for Soup announced that their last tour of the UK would take place in October of the same year. However, this does not appear to have been the case, as a UK "How About Another Round Tour" has been scheduled for February 2016.

History

Early years (1986–2001)

Bowling for Soup has its origins in Wichita Falls, Texas, where Jaret Reddick (born March 6, 1972) and other members of the band grew up. Reddick and bassist Chris Burney (born May 25, 1969) knew each other in high school (they met in 1986), and as students in the 1980s, they grew up on the commercially successful heavy metal music of bands such as Quiet Riot, RATT, and Mötley Crüe, but were also influenced by the zippier punk rock of the Ramones and later Green Day. Burney owned a Wichita Falls coffeehouse "The Refuge," with a music stage and played there with his first band "The Persecuted", where he and Reddick met guitarist Erik Chandler (born December 22, 1974) and drummer Gary Wiseman (born January 6, 1979) in the early 1990s (although Wiseman did not come into the band until 1997).