Mario's final outing before his first adventure in the Mushroom Kingdom has little to do with any other game he ever starred in, and yet feels very much like an evolutionary step in the character's development.

This cooperative platformer occupies a somewhat unfortunate place in history: It attempted to build on the concepts of the original Mario Bros., but it arrived just before Super Mario Bros. set a new standard for run-and-jump action. It's an amusing and quirky game, but its awkward controls leave it completely overshadowed by the masterpiece that was to come.

The second half of 1990 gets rolling with the handheld debut of world-class developer/publishing combo Tamtex and Irem. Don't expect anything on the level of Metal Storm here, though; Shisenshou was a visually painfully conversion of a softcore arcade game (minus the smut, of course). Not really getting off on the best foot, alas.

Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, this motocross game is anything but your typical racer — with its side-scrolling design and emphasis on physics and jumps, it feels almost like a rough draft for Super Mario Bros. Ah, but there's a dark and terrible secret lurking in Excitebike, hidden just off the main menu... a sign of just how much Nintendo was making up the NES launch as they went along.

Gyromite's companion release constitutes the only other game ever officially designed for R.O.B.... and, frankly, we'd all have been better off if R.O.B.'s library had begun and ended with Gyromite. Seemingly rushed to production (the game evidently hit Japanese store shelves a month after completion), Stack-Up makes poor use of R.O.B, of the NES, and of players' time and money. At least the music is catchy.