Mario Bros.

Mario Bros. for the Atari 2600 is Atari's 1983 home version of Nintendo's arcade game. Mario and Luigi face a pipe infestation across a single, wraparound set of floors. Rather than jumping directly onto enemies, the brothers strike the floor beneath them to flip them over, then reach their level and knock them into the water below. Remove every pest to begin the next round; the standard game starts with five lives and awards an extra life every 20,000 points.

A joystick moves Mario or Luigi left and right, while the red button jumps. Holding a direction makes a running jump between floors, and pressing the button while still makes a straight-up jump. One player uses the left controller port; another can join through the right port. Mario's score and lives appear at the top of the screen and Luigi's at the bottom, allowing two players to cooperate on setting up and finishing pests or compete for the high score.

Shellcreepers need one hit from below before they can be kicked away. The first hit on a Sidestepper enrages and speeds it up, while the second turns it over. Fighterflies hop from floor section to floor section and can only be flipped while touching a floor. Higher rounds introduce Slipice, which freezes floors into slippery ice, as well as fireballs that must be avoided by jumping or changing levels. Contact with a pest or fireball costs a life.

Kicking a pest off a floor releases a bonus wafer from a pipe, worth 800 points when collected. The game also pauses normal pest-clearing for timed coin phases: the pests disappear, dangling coins fill the screen, and players have 15 seconds to collect as many as possible. Kicking a pest or Slipice and collecting a wafer or coin each earn 800 points; punching Slipice earns 500. The last pest on a screen moves faster, making the finish of a round more dangerous.

The POW switch between the two lowest floors is a limited emergency tool. Hitting it punches every pest on screen, but it works only three times before disappearing; a new POW switch arrives every ten rounds. The cartridge preserves the arcade game's shared-screen knock-up-then-kick rhythm while offering eight home game variations. Players select one or two players, three or five starting lives, and whether fireballs appear.

The 1983 arcade original introduced Luigi and established the brothers as plumbers fighting pipe-borne enemies. Its central objective and under-platform attack are intact here, while the Atari 2600 adapts the rules for home play: the manual sets the action in the brothers' house, calls each enemy-drop pickup a bonus wafer, gives coin play a 15-second timer, and organizes its variations around player count, starting lives, and fireball presence. It is a compact score chase built around quick punches, safe routes to overturned pests, and careful POW timing.