An artist has recreated the setting where Mario Bros, one of the best-selling videogames of all times, takes place.
Landscape is an interactive room
In 1983, Nintendo developed Mario Bros, a videogame staring the plumbers Luigi and Mario, two brothers who work in and around the sewers of New York. If you’re part of the Tetris generation, that is to say, if you’re in your 30’s, you’ve probably played this game a million times either on one of those huge machines in an arcade or, if you were really lucky, on that oh-so-cool dirty-grey Game Boy.
Mario Bros was a simple yet entertaining game. Its characters were- and they still are- exactly the opposite of what we imagine a videogame hero to be. A couple of plumbers going into some dirty sewers? Maybe that’s why it had so many fans; it made us all feel like we could fight against the bad guys.
If you’re feeling a bit nostalgic, you can pretend to be Mario by entering Landscape, an interactive room created by artist Antoinette J. Citizen that accurately reproduces the first screen of the Mario Bros game: its pixilated clouds, flying coins, brick columns, mountains and deep blue sky... The room is big enough to prance about from side to side, practicing your moves and taking photographs.
Although this room won’t grant you the power of flight, and you won’t be able to disappear by ducking into the green sewers, if you press the question boxes on the walls, you’ll hear some of the game’s classic sound effects. Need your memory jolted? Watch this video, all those sounds are in it.
We don’t know whether this space can be visited or if they only built it to take pictures, but if you’d like to customizes your own room and make it look like an arcade, Nintendo sells stickers you can use to decorate the walls. They feature Super Mario Bros and also, that other classic arcade game, Donkey Kong.
All you’ll need is a pair of denim overalls and a plumber’s utility belt to become a real-life videogame hero.
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Landscape is an interactive room
