Jim Squires at The Bits Bytes Pixels and Sprites has reviewed Wrecking Crew, one of Mario and Luigi’s earliest outings. He makes a nice analysis of why Wrecking Crew was a significant game for its time, even if it doesn’t really match the quality of many of the ‘action puzzlers’ that came after it. My feelings playing it were similar to Jim’s … it doesn’t really play all that well, but it is clear that it sowed the seed for better games like Lode Runner to spring forth.

You can test out Wrecking Crew online at vNES to get some idea of what I mean.