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Well, I was completely and utterly addicted to the arcade version of this, and so when I saw the advertisement for Mario Bros. a few months ago, I couldn't wait for it to arrive.

Well, it has. And I must say I was rather disappointed by it. Don't get me wrong, it is about as close to the original as is possible within the limitations of the machine, but for some inexplicable reason, it just doesn't seem to have the same 'grab-you-by-the-throat' compulsiveness of the arcade original.

Anyway, putting that aside for the moment, here's the plot.

Bonjourmo. My name issa Mario. And dis is ma brother, Luigi. We work in a disk factory, which has a very slippy floors, and issa inhabited by lotse nasty creatures. We also have a very hard heads, which we can use to bend da Platforms, and knock thesea rotten animals onto their backs, where we can boot them to a kingdom come!

Right, you can now read in English. All the features of the original are there: sidestepper, shellcreeper, etc, as is the two player mode, either working together as a team, or against each other. The graphics are fairly close copies of the original, as is the sound, which is why I cannot understand why this isn't even half as much fun as the arcade version. For some reason, the comic style humour isn't there any more, which is probably why some of the magic has been lost.

Overall, it's not a bad game, and it could just be that I was expecting too much of Ocean to capture the spirit of the game I was so addicted to in the arcades. Try before you buy is the rule with this one I'm afraid. It is good, but you might just be a little bit disappointed.