Super Mario Bros. takes a warp pipe to the decades-old Intellivision

YouTube personality John Hancock takes a detailed look at the classic action game Super Mario Bros. This ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal, except the game is running on an unexpected console... the Intellivision, released in the late 1970s.

Even more surprising is that while the Intellivision port of Super Mario Bros. is technically a demake, with chunkier, less colorful graphics, much of the innovative gameplay remains intact. You want smooth scrolling playfields? They're here. You want the warp zones? They're also here. You want a million lives by bouncing a turtle against the steps of a staircase? That's here, too. (Also, poor turtle.) You want a fireworks display by grabbing the flag at the end of the stage with the last digit of the timer reading six? The designer's got you covered.

Super Mario Bros. is a surprisingly full-featured conversion on a pre-crash game console, suggesting that the Intellivision could have been pushed even harder than it was during its late 1980s renaissance. The only problem, of course, is trying to play the game with the Intellivision's uncomfortable hard-wired dial controller...