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| Image: eBay |
Seen in FBDO
The arcade game Mario Bros. is best (and barely) seen at around 00:48:50 in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as Mr. Rooney has just mistaken a female patron at the pizza joint for Ferris. Mario Bros. can be seen behind the girl next to the more visible Karate Champ game.
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| Image: Paramount Pictures |
Description
Mario Bros. is an arcade game by Nintendo where Mario (and his brother Luigi, in two-player mode) work in a sewer. Enemies crawl out of pipes and players must hit them from below to flip them over. Once flipped, the enemies must then be kicked from their location to be removed from the level. This game, of course, laid the groundwork for the later Super Mario series.
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| Image: eBay |
Finding This Item
Only a small portion of the game cabinet’s front can be seen in FBDO, and even what is visible is blurry and nearly impossible to recognize without some familiarity or a lucky guess. At first glance, I thought the left side of the marquee resembled a cartoonish nose and a moustache so I naturally started with a look at the few Mario games of the day.
Apparently both familiarity and luck were on my side.
With the background of the marquee being some shade of blue, I assumed I was on the right track since the marquee seen in the film appeared to be a similar color. Cropping a screenshot down to just what is seen of this game cabinet, I stretched the cropped image to the approximate dimensions one might see looking at the game straight on.
From there, the other blurred colors seen in the film lined up perfectly.
Also of note, a slight variation of Mario Bros. existed around this time, as well, with Mario plugging the game’s 2-player feature. Even with the blurry image, it appears that Mario’s nose goes quite close to the red tint of the “Mario Bros.” text with nothing in between. I’m confident that the version without the speech bubble is the one seen in FBDO.
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| Image: gztomy.com |
Find Your Own
- Check eBay for a Mario Bros. arcade cabinet of your own!
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Learn More
- Pick up a copy of the Super Mario Encyclopedia: The Official Guide to the First 30 Years on Amazon.