Super Mario Bros.

Did You Know?

• The game's soundtrack by Koji Kondo is one of the earliest in video games to make music a centerpiece of the design.
• In the plot, Mario and Luigi arrived in the Mushroom Kingdom through a clay pipe from New York City.

Development

Super Mario Bros. was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka of the Nintendo Creative Department, and largely programmed by Toshihiko Nakago of SRD. Miyamoto wanted to create a more colorful platform game with a scrolling screen and larger characters, using the term "athletic games" for what would later be known as platform games. Development was a culmination of the team's technical knowledge from working on Devil World, Excitebike, and Kung Fu, and their desire to advance the platforming genre.

The side-scrolling gameplay of Excitebike and the beat 'em up Kung-Fu Master were key steps toward Miyamoto's vision. Super Mario Bros. used the fast scrolling engine originally developed for Excitebike, allowing Mario to smoothly accelerate from a walk to a run. Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani stated that Miyamoto told him Pac-Land was an influence. Miyamoto also wanted the game to be the "final exclamation point" for the ROM cartridge format before the Famicom Disk System.

Development began in fall 1984 alongside The Legend of Zelda, and the games shared some elements, such as fire bars that first appeared in Zelda.

Release

Super Mario Bros. launched in Japan on September 13, 1985, for the Family Computer. When it reached North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System later that year, the exact release date remains unclear; most accounts point to October 1985 as part of the NES’s limited US launch, though some place it between November 1985 and early 1986. The arcade version, running on the Nintendo VS. System, first appeared in London in January 1986 and expanded to other countries the following month, marking the game’s first broad international release.

The NES version got a wider North American rollout later in 1986, then reached Europe on May 15, 1987. In 1988, a multicart pairing Super Mario Bros. with Duck Hunt was bundled with the NES Action Set, selling millions in the US. A 1990 North American bundle, the NES Power Set, added World Class Track Meet to those two games. Japan received a Famicom Disk System port on February 21, 1986.

The 1986 arcade adaptation, VS. Super Mario Bros., ramped up difficulty with narrower platforms, tougher enemies, fewer hidden power-ups, and a higher coin requirement for extra lives; several of its redesigned levels later appeared in the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2.

Reception

Super Mario Bros. was immensely successful commercially and critically, helping popularize the side-scrolling platform genre and serving as a killer app for the NES. In Japan, 1.2 million copies sold during its September 1985 release month, and about 3 million within four months. By 1987, 5 million copies had sold for the Famicom. The arcade version became the bestselling Nintendo VS.

System release with 20,000 units sold within months in early 1986. In the US, more than 1 million NES copies sold in 1986, over 4 million by 1988, 9.1 million by mid-1989, and more than 20 million by 1991. Worldwide, over 40 million copies of the original NES version had sold by 1994, and 40.23 million by April 2000, earning a Guinness World Record for best-selling video game of all time. Including ports and re-releases, more than 58 million units have sold worldwide.

The game remained the all-time bestseller for over 20 years until surpassed by Wii Sports. In August 2021, an unopened copy sold for $2 million, surpassing the record set by Super Mario 64.