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Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario (and in a two-player game, a second player acts as Mario's brother Luigi) as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist Bowser.
For over two decades, Super Mario Bros. was the best-selling video game of all time (before being outsold by Nintendo's own Wii Sports in 2009), and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. It was largely responsible for the initial success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as ending the two-year slump of console game sales in the United States after the video game crash of 1983. As one of Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka's most influential early successes, it has inspired many clones, sequels, and spin-offs. The game's theme music by Koji Kondo is recognized worldwide, even by those who have not played the game, and has been considered a representation for video game music in general.
The success of Super Mario Bros. has caused it to be ported to almost every one of Nintendo's major gaming consoles. In late 2010, as part of the 25th anniversary of the game's release, Nintendo released special red variants of the Wii and Nintendo DSi XL consoles in differently re-packaged, Mario-themed, and limited edition bundles in all regions.
Gameplay
The player takes on the role of the main protagonist of the series, Mario. Mario's younger brother, Luigi, is only playable by the second player in the game's multiplayer mode, and assumes the same plot role as Mario. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces and save Princess Toadstool. The player moves from the left side of the screen to the right side in order to get to the flag pole at the end of each level. A common myth that it is possible to jump over the flag pole was later confirmed by Gametrailers.
The game world has coins scattered around it for Mario to collect, and special bricks marked with a question mark ("?"), which when hit from below by Mario, may reveal more coins or a special item. Other "secret" (often invisible) bricks may contain more coins or rare items. If the player gains a red and yellow Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and can take one extra hit from most enemies and obstacles, in addition to being able to break bricks above him. Players are given a certain number of lives (and may gain additional lives by picking up green and orange '1-Up' mushrooms, collecting 100 coins, or defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell), which are lost when Mario takes too much damage, falls in a pit, or runs out of time; the game ends when all lives are lost. Mario's primary attack is jumping on top of enemies, though many enemies have differing responses to this. For example, a Goomba will flatten and be defeated,while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile. These shells may be deflected off a wall to destroy other enemies, though they can also reflect back against Mario, which will hurt him. An alternate way to damage enemies is with the Fire Flower, an item which, when picked up, changes the color of Mario's outfit (or only increases his size if a red and yellow mushroom had not been used previously) and allows him to shoot fireballs. A less common item is the Starman, which often appears from concealed or otherwise invisible blocks. This makes Mario temporarily invincible to most hazards.
The game consists of eight worlds with four sub-levels called "stages" in each world.The final stage of each world takes place in a castle where Bowser or one of his decoys are fought. The game also includes some stages taking place underwater, which contain different enemies. In addition, there are bonus and secret areas in the game. Most secret areas contain more coins for Mario to collect, but others may contain "warp pipes" which allow Mario to advance to later worlds in the game, skipping over earlier ones.
Development
Super Mario Bros. is the successor to the 1983 arcade title Mario Bros., and was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, both of whom belonged to Nintendo's former Creative Department at the time. The game's development was motivated by a desire to give Famicom (i.e., Nintendo Entertainment System game cartridges) a swan song in light of the forthcoming Famicom Disk System, and to further progress Nintendo's work on "Athletic games". Originally, the game was based around a shooting mechanic with very different controls. This may have made the final product as a special level, but a desire to focus on jumping and the mapping of the mechanic to the A button resulted in its being dropped. Unlike in Mario Bros., where Mario would be hurt by stomping on turtles without first flipping them on their backs, Mario could defeat turtles by stomping on their shells, as the developers decided the previous method had been illogical. The ability to have Mario change size was a result of basing level design around a smaller Mario, then intending to make his size bigger in the final version. They later decided it would be fun to have Mario become bigger as a Power-up. Early level design was focused on teaching players that Mushrooms were distinct from Goombas and would be beneficial to them: In World 1, level 1, the first Mushroom is difficult to avoid if it is released. Using Mushrooms to change size was influenced by folk tales in which people wander into forests and eat magical Mushrooms; this also resulted in the game world getting the name "Mushroom Kingdom". The "Infinite 1-Up" trick was by design, but the developers did not expect players to be able to master it as well as they did. Development was aimed at keeping things simple, in order to have a new game available for the end-of-year shopping season. Originally an idea for a shoot-'em-up stage in which Mario would jump onto a cloud and fire at enemies was to be included; however, this was dropped to maintain the game's focus on jumping action, but the sky-based bonus stages still remained.
Music
Koji Kondo wrote the six song musical score for Super Mario Bros. When the timer reaches 099 seconds, a "hurry up" sound plays and the music tempo increases.
Ports
Super Mario Bros. was ported many times in the years following its original release on the NES. A side-scrolling platform game entitled Super Mario Bros. was released for the Game & Watch range of handheld LCD game systems by Nintendo. The Game & Watch Super Mario Bros. is an entirely new game, featuring none of the stages from the NES original. In Japan, Super Mario Bros. was released for the Family Computer Disk System, Nintendo's proprietary floppy disk drive for the Famicom. This version also had multiple Minus World levels.[25] It was also released for the NES with other games on the same cartridge (Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet).
Reception and Legacy
Super Mario Bros. further popularized the side scrolling genre of video games and led to many sequels in the series that built upon the same basic premise. Altogether, excluding Game Boy Advance and Virtual Console sales, the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game in the Mario series and the second best-selling game in the world. Almost all of the game's aspects have been praised at one time or another, from its large cast of characters to a diverse set of levels. One of the most-praised aspects of the game is the precise controls. The player is able to control how high and far Mario or Luigi jumps, and how fast he can run. Nintendo Power listed it as the fourth best Nintendo Entertainment System video game, describing it as the game that started the modern era of video games as well as "Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece". The game ranked first on Electronic Gaming Monthly's "greatest 200 games of their time" list and was named in IGN's top 100 games of all time list twice (in 2005 and 2007). ScrewAttack declared it the second-best Mario game of all time. In 2009, Game Informer put Super Mario Bros. in 2nd place on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time", behind The Legend of Zelda, saying that it "Remains a monument to brilliant design and fun gameplay".
The game was succeeded by two separate sequels that were produced for different markets: a Japanese sequel which features the same game format as the original and a Western sequel that was localized from an originally unrelated game titled Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. In both cases, the games are titled Super Mario Bros. 2, causing both games to be rereleased in different countries with different titles.
Super Mario Bros. has spawned many sequels: Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (named Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan), Super Mario Bros. 2 (released in Japan as Super Mario USA), Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World (which had the working title of Super Mario Bros. 4) for the Super NES, Super Mario 64 (for Nintendo 64), Super Mario Sunshine (for GameCube), New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS, and Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii.
The game's sequels also inspired products in various media, such as an American television series, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, from 1989, and a live-action film, Super Mario Bros., released in 1993.
In the United States Supreme Court case Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Progress & Freedom Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation together submitted an amicus brief citing social research that declared Super Mario Bros to be a violent video game. It was compared to Mighty Mouse and Road Runner, cartoons that depict a similar form of violence with little negative reaction from the public.
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