A playthrough of Nintendo's 1995 arcade-action game for the Nintendo Virtual Boy, Mario Clash. This video shows the entire game. The "ending" is shown once your score hits 999,999 points and I hit this during the bonus round between levels 76 and 77 (1:42:03). I then continue on through level 99, after which the game cycles back to level 1. Mario Clash was released just a few months after the launch of the Virtual Boy, and it was the second Mario game for the system following Mario's Tennis ( , the game that came bundled with the system. It's a remake/sequel to Nintendo's 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. and it was originally shown off at Shoshinkai in 1994 as a tech demo labeled "Mario Bros. VB." In the months that followed, Nintendo's R&D1 team worked on expanding the demo into a full-fledged retail release, and the end result was what you see here. Like in Mario Bros., every stage in Mario Clash takes place on a static, single-screen playfield and the object is to clear out all the enemies. This time, however, stages split the foreground and the background into separate layers that are connected by pipes. Koopa Troopas are the only enemies that Mario can jump on, and their shells can be thrown to stun and kill the rest. Shells can be thrown along the ground or between the front and back layers, and they can be powered up for long-distance throws by catching them on a return bounce from the opposite layer. Bonus points are awarded for chain kills (up to 7x), and you'll get a special reward screen whenever your score hits a multiple of 100,000. The gameplay loop is simple, but the difficulty ramps up quickly as new enemies are introduced. Each type requires a specific strategy to defeat, and the ways they're matched up in the later stages make for some frantic, chaotic action. Sometimes a bit too frantic and chaotic. Unfortunately, Mario Clash didn't fare nearly as well critically as the plumber's games typically did. It was praised for its use of 3D, but its repetitive gameplay loop and its sloppy controls drew a lot of criticism - far more than you'd expect for a game worked on by both Gunpei Yokoi and Shigeru Miyamoto. I'd agree with those criticisms, too. The game is fun for awhile, but there's not a lot of substance to it, the lack of a save system makes the road to a million points feel like a bit of a slog, and the controls are loose enough to make precision jumping a total chore. It was worth playing back in 1995 if you had a Virtual Boy, but it was also an uncharacteristically poor showing for a first-party Mario game. The graphics are clean, though, and the sense of depth afforded by the stereoscopic 3D effect is excellent. I much prefer Mario Bros., but that's not to say that I dislike Mario Clash. It's an evolutionary dead-end, but it's also a decent arcade throwback that's worth checking out if you have easy access to the original hardware. ____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete ( punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
