Before I get to my recap of games I played last year, I did manage to squeeze in one more game right before the end of the year. I'd played through the original Mario Bros. game on the original NES almost three years ago, but this time around I played the Nintendo Switch Online version with a buddy in co-op mode. We used save states to play all 100 levels of Game A (the easier version), although as mentioned in my previous post there are only 12 unique stages. Co-op mode definitely makes the game more fun as you have to work to efficiently clear out all the enemies while not getting in each other's way. A "one quarter" run (i.e. no save states) is also a fun challenge since the game doesn't give you any continues and only one bonus life after a certain number of points.
I don't have much to say beyond this and what I've already said in my previous post abou it, but for fans of arcade-y games, this one absolutely holds up. The elegance of Miyamoto's original game design really shines through almost thirty years later, and the co-op mode just adds an extra layer of fun, so much so that I had to bump this up on my ranking of all the video games I've played. It doesn't reach the epic scope of the games in the Super Mario Bros. series, but this is a pure arcade experience that is still very enjoyable today.