Super Mario Bros
What is Super Mario Bros.?
Who directed and designed Super Mario Bros.?
What is significant about the Super Mario Bros. theme?
What adaptations and sequels has Super Mario Bros. inspired?
Super Mario Bros., console game created by the Japanese electronic game manufacturer Nintendo Company, Ltd., in 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is a platform game, a genre in which players guide a character through environments by jumping between platforms and avoiding gaps, obstacles, and enemies. The game, which was based on the arcade game Mario Bros., helped launch one of gaming’s most popular franchises. It stars Mario and his brother Luigi, two Italian plumbers who find themselves in the Mushroom Kingdom trying to rescue Princess Peach Toadstool from the evil King Bowser. It is one of the best-selling console games of the third generation (the era of video game consoles that emerged in the 1980s), with more than 40 million copies sold as of 2013.
Development and release
Super Mario Bros. was directed and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who had created Mario in 1981 for the arcade game Donkey Kong, where the character was known as Jumpman. In Mario Bros. (1983) Jumpman was recast as Mario, a plumber, and Luigi made his first appearance as Mario’s brother and fellow plumber. Miyamoto developed the game with fellow designer Takashi Tezuka, while composer Koji Kondo wrote its score. Mario and Luigi move between surface levels and subterranean passages by way of green pipes. Hidden Warp Zones allow players to use pipes to skip ahead to other worlds within the game. Super Mario Bros. borrowed the side-scrolling gameplay mechanics of other Nintendo titles such as Kung-Fu (originally Irem’s Kung-Fu Master). In such games the action unfolds sideways as the player character moves through the game world rather than taking place on a fixed screen display.
In 2023 the Super Mario Bros. theme became the first video game music inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, which preserves recordings of cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance. Composed by Koji Kondo, the instantly recognizable “Ground Theme” was created within the technical limits of the NES’s five-channel sound chip. Its inventive use of those constraints helped inspire chiptune, a style of electronic music that uses or imitates the sounds of early computers and video game consoles.
The game was released in Japan on September 13, 1985, reaching North America later the same year and Europe in about 1987. Its arrival in North America coincided with the video game industry’s recovery from a severe crash that had seen annual U.S. revenues fall from roughly $3.2 billion in 1983 to about $100 million by 1985. Aware that the crash had damaged consumer and retailer confidence in video game systems, Nintendo marketed the NES more as a toy than as a conventional video game console and redesigned the system to set it apart from its rival consoles such as those of Atari. Nintendo began packaging Super Mario Bros. together with the NES console, and the pairing helped establish the system in American homes.
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Gameplay
In the original Super Mario Bros., solo players pilot Mario, and an additional player can play as Luigi. The game is based on a series of side-scrolling levels, each filled with enemies ranging from mushroomlike Goombas to evil turtles known as Koopa Troopas. The levels take place in different settings, some in dungeons and some aboveground, with fights against Bowser impersonators at the end of castle levels. Once the impostor is defeated, a Mushroom Kingdom resident informs Mario or Luigi that the princess is in another castle. The game is completed with the defeat of the true Bowser and the rescue of Princess Peach Toadstool.
Adaptations and legacy
In 2026 a remarkable cache of 97 Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt (1988) cartridges held by a Wisconsin store came to public attention. They belonged to a previously unknown 1993 production run, years after the game had stopped being bundled with the NES. Five of the cartridges earned a perfect PSA 10, the highest condition grade awarded by Professional Sports Authenticator. This was the first time any NES cartridge had received this grade. Three of the top-graded copies were put up for auction.
Super Mario Bros. helped the NES become a resounding success. The game inspired more than 10 direct game sequels; a television cartoon, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! (1989); and a live-action film, Super Mario Bros. (1993). It was also adapted into the animated blockbuster The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), which featured voice-overs by actors such as Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Jack Black. Its sequel, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026), cast Benny Safdie and Brie Larson in voice roles.