New Super Mario Bros.

Did You Know?

• In Japan, over 480,000 units were sold on release day and 900,000 copies in the first four days.
• New Super Mario Bros. was released in China in July 2009, several years after its initial launch.

Development

The concept for a fresh side-scrolling Super Mario game on the Nintendo DS emerged in late 2003, right after Super Mario Advance 4 came out. The development team, headed by series producer Takashi Tezuka and Super Mario Advance director Hiroyuki Kimura, chose to build an entirely new Super Mario title while the DS was still being developed, drawing from the series' history. Kimura took on the producer role, Tezuka acted as general producer, and Shigeru Miyamoto supervised the project.

The game debuted alongside the Nintendo DS at E3 2004, but it wasn't playable; the press only got details from a fact sheet, b-roll footage, and screenshots. At that stage, it was just a tech demo. Initially, the developers planned to skip voice acting to keep the feel of the original Super Mario Bros., but they later changed their minds, deciding it would benefit the game. This made New Super Mario Bros. the first brand-new 2D Mario game to include voice acting, with Charles Martinet returning to voice Mario and Luigi.

The team also focused on making 3D models work more effectively and interactively in a 2D platformer, a shift seen as both natural and a major step forward. Asuka Ohta and Hajime Wakai composed the original music, directed by series composer Koji Kondo, who also wrote the main theme for standard levels. The music drives the gameplay, causing enemies to hop and sway in rhythm, which lets players time their jumps to reach hidden spots.

Legacy

The strong sales and positive reception of New Super Mario Bros. spawned a series of follow-ups known as the New Super Mario Bros. series. The first of these, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, launched worldwide on November 12, 2009, and kept the same style of play while adding cooperative multiplayer for up to four people. A direct sequel, New Super Mario Bros. 2, came out for the Nintendo 3DS on July 28, 2012. New Super Mario Bros. U arrived as a launch title for the Wii U on November 18, 2012, and its expansion, New Super Luigi U, was released as downloadable content on June 20, 2013, before being sold on its own disc.

An upgraded version called New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which included New Super Luigi U and added Toadette as a playable character, hit the Nintendo Switch on January 11, 2019. The subseries gave way to Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023, which its developers described as building a new foundation for future 2D Mario games, much like the original New Super Mario Bros. had done when it introduced 3D visuals to the series.