Super Mario Bros.

''This article is about the 1985 video game. For other uses, see Super Mario Bros. (disambiguation).''

Super Mario Bros.[a] is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo. The successor to the 1983 arcade game, Mario Bros., it was released in Japan in 1985 for the Famicom, and in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 and 1987 respectively. Players control Mario (or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode) as they travel the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist, Bowser. They must traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as enemies and pits with the aid of power-ups such as the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower and Starman.

Super Mario Bros. was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and was initially planned as a farewell to the Famicom in Japan before the release of the Famicom Disk System, drawing technical influence from several of the console's previous games. It was designed with ease of access in mind, with the first level, World 1-1, designed to introduce the core mechanics. The music was composed by Koji Kondo, and is considered influential in making music a larger aspect of video games.

Super Mario Bros. is frequently hailed as one of the all-time greatest video games, with praise going towards its precise controls. It has sold over 40 million physical copies, making it one of the best-selling games of all time and one of the defining NES games. It is credited alongside the NES as one of the key factors in reviving the video game industry after the 1983 crash, and helped popularize side-scrolling platform games. It began an expansive franchise including a long-running game series, an animated television series, and a feature film. Ports and remakes of the game have been released for most of Nintendo's future systems. Alongside Mario himself, Super Mario Broshas become a prominent aspect of popular culture.

Gameplay
In Super Mario Bros., the player takes on the role of Mario, the protagonist of the series. Mario's younger brother, Luigi, is controlled by the second player in the game's multiplayermode and assumes the same plot role and functionality as Mario. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces, and save Princess Toadstool.[6]:7 The game is a side-scrolling platformer; the player moves from the left side of the screen to the right side in order to reach the flag pole at the end of each level.

The game world features coins scattered around 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 Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and gains the ability to break bricks above him. If Mario gets hit in this mode, then instead of dying he turns back to regular Mario.[6]:12 Players start with a certain number of lives and may gain additional lives by picking up green spotted orange 1-Up mushrooms hidden in bricks, or by collecting 100 coins, defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell, or bouncing on enemies successively without touching the ground. Mario loses a life if he takes damage while small, falls in a bottomless pit, or runs out of time. The game ends when all lives are lost, although a button input can be used on the game over screen to continue from the first level of the world in which the player died.[7]

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,[6]:12 while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile.[6]:11 These shells may be deflected off a wall to destroy other enemies, though they can also bounce back against Mario, which will hurt or kill him.[6]:19 Other enemies, such as underwater foes and enemies with spiked tops, cannot be jumped on and damage the player instead. Mario can also defeat enemies above him by jumping to hit the brick that the enemy is standing on. Mario may also acquire the Fire Flower from certain ? blocks that when picked up changes the color of Super Mario's outfit and allows him to throw fireballs. A less common item is the Starman, which often appears when Mario hits certain concealed or otherwise invisible blocks. This item makes Mario temporarily invincible to most hazards and capable of defeating enemies on contact.[6]:10

The game consists of eight worlds with four sub-levels called "stages" in each world."[8][6]:7 The final stage of each world takes place in a castle where Bowser is fought above a suspension bridge; the first seven of these Bowsers are "false Bowsers" whom are actually minions disguised as him, whilst the real Bowser is found in the 8th world. Bowser and his decoys are defeated by jumping over them and reaching the axe on the end of the bridge, although they can also be defeated using a Fire Flower. The game also includes some stages taking place underwater, which contain different enemies. In addition, there are bonuses and secret areas in the game. Most secret areas contain more coins for Mario to collect, but some contain "warp pipes" that allow Mario to advance directly to later worlds in the game without completing the intervening stages. After completing the game once, the player is rewarded with the ability to replay the game with changes made to increase its difficulty, such as all Goombas in the game being replaced with Buzzy Beetles, enemies similar to Koopa Troopas who cannot be defeated using the Fire Flower.[9]

Plot and setting
In the fantasy setting of the Mushroom Kingdom, a tribe of turtle-like creatures known as the Koopa Troopas invade the kingdom and uses the magic of its king, Bowser, to turn its inhabitants, known as the Mushroom People, into inanimate objects such as bricks, stones and horsehair plants. Bowser and his army also kidnap Princess Toadstool, the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom and the only one with the ability to reverse Bowser's spell. After hearing the news, Mario sets out to save the princess and free the kingdom from Bowser.[6]:2 After traveling through various parts of the kingdom and fighting Bowser's forces along the way, Mario reaches Bowser's final stronghold, where he is able to defeat him by striking an axe on the bridge suspended over lava he is standing on, breaking the bridge, defeating Bowser, and allowing for the princess to be freed and saving the Mushroom Kingdom.[10]

Development
Super Mario Bros., the successor to the 1983 arcade title Mario Bros., was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, both of whom belonged to Nintendo's Creative Department, and largely programmed by Toshihiki Nakago of SRD Company, Ltd.[11] Though not originally using any particular character, the very deliberate creative process of what would become their next game was motivated by their technical knowledge from previous games such as Excitebike, Devil World and Kung Fu, by a desire to give the ROM cartridge format "a final exclamation point" in light of the forthcoming Famicom Disk System which was expected to become the dominant new game delivery medium, and by continuing their legacy of "athletic games" with a character running and jumping with many obstacles. Miyamoto explained, "We felt strongly about how we were the first to come up with that genre, and it was a goal of ours to keep pushing it."[12][13] The game was made in tandem with The Legend of Zelda, another Famicom game directed and designed by Miyamoto, which released in Japan five months after Super Mario Bros. As a result, certain elements were carried over from The Legend of Zelda to Super Mario Bros; for instance, the fire bars that appear in the game’s castle levels began as an unused object from Zelda.[14] Development was aimed at simplicity in order to have a new game available for the end-of-year shopping season.[15]

The developers started by putting together a prototype in which the player simply moved a 16 by 32 pixel square around a single screen. Tezuka suggested the use of Mario after seeing the sales figures of Mario Bros., which was still selling well throughout the previous year.[16] The team chose to name the game "Super Mario Bros." after deciding to implement the Super Mushroom into the game.[13] The game initially made use of a concept in which Mario or Luigi could enter a rocket ship and drive it around while firing at enemies, but this went unused;[17] the final game's sky-based bonus stages are a remnant of this concept.[12][18] After releasing Mario Bros., the team had reflected that it had been an illogical gameplay decision for Mario to be hurt by stomping upon the walking turtles, so they decided that any future Mario game would "definitely have it so that you could jump on turtles all you want."[12] When designing King Koopa, Miyamoto initially imagined the character as an ox, taking inspiration from the character design of the Ox King the Toei Animation film Alakazam the Great. However, when Tezuka saw Miyamoto’s design for the character, he noted that it looked more akin to that of a turtle, prompting the two to work on defining and fleshing out the character’s design until coming up with his final appearance.[19]

The development of Super Mario Bros. is an early example of specialization in the video game industry, made possible and necessary by the capabilities of the Famicom. Miyamoto designed the game world and led a team of seven programmers and artists who turned his ideas into code, sprites, music and sound effects.[20]

The team based the level design around a small Mario, intending to later make his size bigger in the final version. Then they decided it would be fun to let Mario change his size via a power-up. The early level design was focused on teaching players that mushrooms were distinct from Goombas and would be beneficial to them, so in the first level of the game, the first mushroom is difficult to avoid if it is released.[21] The use of mushrooms to change size was influenced by common Japanese folktales in which people wander into forests and eat magical mushrooms; this also resulted in the game world being named the "Mushroom Kingdom". The team also deliberately chose not to have Mario begin levels as Super Mario in order to make obtaining a mushroom more gratifying for the player.[13] Miyamoto explained: "When we made the prototype of the big Mario, we did not feel he was big enough. So, we came up with the idea of showing the smaller Mario first, who could be made bigger later in the game; then players could see and feel that he was bigger."[22] A rumor stemming from a Japanese magazine claimed that the developers came up with the idea to include a small Mario after a bug in the game caused only the upper-half of his body to appear, but this claim has been disavowed by Miyamoto.[13] Miyamoto said the shell-kicking 1-up trick was intentionally designed and carefully tested, but "people turned out to be a lot better at pulling the trick off for ages on end than we thought".[12] Other features, such as blocks containing multiple coins, were inspired by programming glitches.[22]

Super Mario Bros. was developed via a 256-kilobit cartridge.[23] Due to technical limitations at the time, several tactics were used to save cartridge space. For instance, clouds and bushes in the game’s backgrounds use that same sprite recolored.[14] Sound effects were also recycled; the sound that plays when Mario is damaged is recycled and used as the sound effect for when he enters a pipe, as applies similarly to Mario jumping on an enemy and swimming in an underwater level.[15] After completing the game, the development team decided that they should introduce players with a simple, easy-to-defeat enemy rather than beginning the game with Koopa Troopas. By this point, the game had nearly run out of memory, so the designers created the Goombas by making a single static image and flipping it back and forth to save space while creating a convincing character animation.[24] After the addition of the game’s music, around 20 bytes of open cartridge space were left. Miyamoto used this remaining space to add a sprite of a crown into the game, which would appear in the player’s life counter if they managed to obtain at least 10 lives.[23]

World 1-1
During the third generation of video game consoles, tutorials which explained the mechanics of the game were rare. Instead, players learned how a video game worked through being guided by level design. The opening section of Super Mario Bros. was therefore specifically designed in such a way that players would be forced to explore the mechanics of the game in order to be able to advance. Rather than confront the newly oriented player with obstacles, the first level of Super Mario Bros. lays down the variety of in-game hazards by means of repetition, iteration, and escalation.[25] In an interview with Eurogamer, Miyamoto explained that he created "World 1-1" to contain everything a player needs to "gradually and naturally understand what they're doing", so that they can quickly understand how the game works. According to Miyamoto, once the player understands the mechanics of the game, the player will be able to play more freely and it becomes "their game."[26][27]

Minus World
The "Minus World" (also referred to as "World Negative One") is the name given to an unbeatable glitch level present in the original release of Super Mario Bros. World 1-2 contains a hidden warp zone, with warp pipes that transport the player to worlds 2, 3, and 4, accessed by running over a wall near the exit. If the player is able to exploit a bug that allows Mario to pass through bricks, the player can enter the warp zone by passing through the wall and the pipe to World 2-1 and 4-1 may instead transport the player to a stage labeled "World -1". This stage's map is identical to worlds 2-2 and 7-2, and upon entering the warp pipe at the end, the player is taken back to the start of the level, thus trapping the player in the level until all lives have been lost. Although the level name is shown as " -1" with a leading space on the heads-up display, it is actually World 36-1, with the tile for 36 being shown as a blank space.[28]

The Minus World bug in the Japanese Famicom Disk System version of the game behaves differently and creates multiple, completable stages. "World -1" is an underwater version of World 1-3 with an alternate color palette, and contains sprites of Princess Toadstool, Bowser, and Hammer Bros. "World -2" is an identical copy of World 7-3, and "World -3" is a copy of World 4-4, also with an alternate color palette. After completing these levels, the player returns to the title screen as if the game were completed.[29][30] There are actually hundreds of glitch levels beyond the Minus World, which can be accessed in a multitude of ways.[31][32]

Music
Nintendo sound designer Koji Kondo wrote the six-song musical score for Super Mario Bros., as well as designing all of the game's sound effects.[33] At the time he was composing, video game music was mostly meant to attract attention, not necessarily to enhance or conform to the game. Kondo's work on Super Mario Bros. was one of the major forces in the shift towards music becoming an integral and participatory part of video games.[34] Kondo had two specific goals for his music: "to convey an unambiguous sonic image of the game world", and "to enhance the emotional and physical experience of the gamer".[34]

The music of Super Mario Bros. is coordinated with the onscreen animations of the various sprites, which was one way which Kondo created a sense of greater immersion. Kondo wasn't the first to do this in a video game; for instance, Space Invaders features a simple song that gets faster and faster as the aliens speed up, eliciting a sense of stress and impending doom which matches the increasing challenge of the game.[35]However, Kondo attempted to take the idea further, stating that the primary question determining the use of a game' should music was "Do the game and music fit one another?"[36] Unlike most games at the time, for which composers were hired later in the process to add music to a nearly finished game, Kondo was a part of the development team almost from the beginning of production, working in tandem with the rest of the team to create the game's soundtrack. Kondo's compositions were largely influenced by the game's gameplay, intending for it to "heighten the feeling of how the game controls".[37]

Before composition began, a prototype of the game was presented to Kondo so that he could get an idea of Mario's general environment and revolve the music around it. Kondo wrote the score with the help of a small piano to create appropriate melodies to fit the game's environments. After the development of the game showed progress, Kondo began to feel that his music did not quite fit the pace of the game, so he changed it a bit by increasing the songs' tempos.[38] The music was further adjusted based on the expectations of Nintendo's play-testers.[39]

Release
Super Mario Bros. was first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, for the Famicom. It was later rereleased there for the Famicom Disk System, Nintendo's proprietary floppy disk drive for the Famicom.[1][3] The game was released in North America later that year for the Nintendo Entertainment System.[1][2] Alongside the game's separate release, the game was also released in 1988 along with the shooting range game Duck Hunt as part of a single ROM cartridge which came packaged with the NES as a pack-in title. This version of the game is extremely common in North America, with millions of copies of it having been manufactured and sold in the United States.[40][41][42] Another cartridge, touting the two games as well as World Class Track Meet, was also manufactured.[43]

The game's concrete North American release date is unknown and is frequently debated; despite generally being cited as having been released alongside the NES in October of 1985 as a launch title, several other sources conflict with this statement, suggesting that the game may have released in other varying time frames ranging from November of 1985 to early 1986.[1]

Alternate versions
As one of Nintendo's most popular games, Super Mario Bros. has been re-released and remade numerous times, with every single major Nintendo console up to the Wii U sporting its own port or remake of the game with the exception of the Nintendo 64.[44]

Ports
Super Mario Bros. has been ported several times since its release. A version of the game titled Super Mario Bros. Special developed by Hudson Soft was released in Japan in 1986 for the NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1personal computers. Despite featuring similar controls and graphics, the game has different level designs and new items, as well as brand new enemies based on enemies from Mario Bros. and 'Donkey Kong'.[44] A handheld LCD game titled Super Mario Bros was released as a part of Nintendo's Game & Watch line of LCD games.[45]

Vs. Super Mario Bros.
Vs. Super Mario Bros. is an arcade adaptation of the original version of Super Mario Bros, released through Nintendo's NES-based arcade cabinet, the Nintendo Vs. Unisystem (and its variant, Nintendo Vs. Dualsystem). Several of the game's levels are changed, containing narrower platforms, more dangerous enemies, and omitting several hidden secrets such as 1-ups, making the game more difficult than the original Super Mario Bros. Entirely new stages are also present, several of which went on to be featured in the game's Japanese sequel, Super Mario Bros 2.[44] The game was featured in an official contest during the 1986 ACME convention in Chicago.[46]

An emulated version of the title was released for the Nintendo Switch via the Arcade Archives collection on December 22, 2017.[47][48] Chris Kohler of Kotaku called the game "The meanest trick Nintendo ever played", referring to the several level changes as differences which made it difficult for people who had mastered the NES game.[49]

Super Mario All-Stars
Main article: Super Mario All-Stars

A remade version of Super Mario Bros. was included as a part of Super Mario All-Stars, a compilation game released in 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, alongside remakes of several of the other Super Mario games released for the NES.[50] The version of Super Mario Bros. included in this compilation has improved graphics and sound to match the SNES's 16-bit capabilities, as well as minor alterations to some of the game's collision mechanics. The game also features the ability for a player to save their progress midway through the game and changes the game's multiplayer mode so that the two players switch off after every level in addition to whenever a player dies. Super Mario All-Stars was also rereleased for the Wii as a re-packaged, 25th anniversary version, featuring the same version of the game, along with a 32-page art book and a compilation CD of music from various Super Mario games.[51]

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe,[b] sometimes referred to as Super Mario Bros. DX, was released on the Game Boy Color in 1999 in North America and Europe[52] and in 2000 in Japan. Based on the original Super Mario Bros., it features an overworld level map, simultaneous multiplayer, a Challenge mode in which the player finds hidden objects and achieves a certain score in addition to normally completing the level, and eight additional worlds based on the main worlds of the Japanese 1986 game Super Mario Bros. 2. It is compatible with the Game Boy Printer. Compared to Super Mario Bros., the game features a few minor visual upgrades such as water and lava now being animated rather than static, and a smaller screen due to the lower resolution of the Game Boy Color.

It was released on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in 2014. In Japan, users who registered a Nintendo Network ID on their Nintendo 3DS system between December 10, 2013 and January 10, 2014 received a free download code, with emails with download codes being sent out starting January 27, 2014.[53] In Europe and Australia, users who registered a Nintendo Network ID on their Nintendo 3DS system between December 10, 2013 and January 31, 2014 received a free download code, with emails with download codes being sent out from February 13 to 28, 2014.[54][55] It was released for purchase on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in Europe on February 27, 2014,[56] in Australia on February 28, 2014,[57]and in North America on December 25, 2014.[58]

Re-releases
In early 2003, Super Mario Bros. was ported to the Game Boy Advance as a part of the Famicom Minis collection in Japan and as a part of the NES Series in the US. This version of the game is entirely emulated, making it completely identical to the original game. According to the NPD Group (which tracks game sales in North America), this re-released version of Super Mario Bros. was the best-selling Game Boy Advance game from June 2004 to December 2004.[59] In 2005, Nintendo re-released this port of the game as a part of the game's 20th Anniversary; this special edition of the game went on to sell approximately 876,000 units.[60]

The game is one of the 19 unlockable NES games included in the GameCube game Animal Crossing, for which it was distributed by Famitsu as a prize for owners of Dobutsu no Mori+; outside of this, the game can't be unlocked through in-game conventional means, and the only way to access it is through the use of a third-party cheat device such as a Game Shark or Action Replay.[61]

Super Mario Bros. is featured as one of the 30 included games with the NES Classic Edition, a dedicated video game console containing several NES games.[62] This version of the game allows for the use of suspension points to save in-game progress, and can be played in various different display styles, including its original 4:3 resolution, a "pixel-perfect" resolution and a style emulating the look of a cathode tube ray television.[13]

Virtual Console
Super Mario Bros. has been re-released for several of Nintendo's game systems as a part of their Virtual Console line of classic video game releases. It was first released for the Wii on December 2, 2006 in Japan, December 25, 2006 in North America and January 5, 2007 in PAL regions. The release is a complete emulation of the original game, meaning that nothing is changed from the its original NES release.[63][64] This version of the game is also one of the "trial games" made available in the "Masterpieces" section in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where it can be demoed for a limited amount of time.[65] A Nintendo 3DS release of the game was initially distributed exclusively to members of Nintendo's 3DS Ambassador Program in September 2011. A general release of the title later came through in Japan on January 5, 2012, in North America on February 16, 2012 and in Europe on March 1, 2012. The game was released for the Wii U's Virtual Console in Japan on June 5, 2012, followed by Europe on September 12, 2012 and North America on September 19, 2012.[66]

Modified versions
Several modified variants of the game have been released, many of which are ROM hacks of the original NES game. A promotional, graphically-modified version of the game titled All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.[c]was officially released only in Japan in December 1986 for the Famicom Disk System as a promotional item given away by the popular Japanese radio show All Night Nippon and published by Fuji TV, the same company which later went on to publish Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (which was released outside of Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2). (and in turn is extremely rare). The game features graphics based upon the show, with sprites of the enemies, mushroom retainers, and other characters being changed to look like famous Japanese music idols, recording artists, and DJs as well as other people related to All-Night Nippon.[67] The game also makes use of the same slightly upgraded graphics and alternate physics featured in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. This version of the game is considered extremely rare, with copies going online for upwards of nearly $500.[68] On November 11, 2010, a special red variant of the Wii containing a pre-downloaded version of the game was released in Japan to celebrate Super Mario Bros.'s 25th anniversary. This version of the game features several graphical changes, such as "?" blocks instead having the number "25" on them to symbolize the game's anniversary.[68]

Super Luigi Bros., a redux of the game featuring Luigi, was included as a feature within NES Remix 2, based on a mission featured in the first NES Remix featuring Luigi in a backwards version of World 1-2. The player now controls Luigi instead of Mario, who now jumps higher and slides more when running on the ground similar to his appearance in the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 (if the game's two-player mode is selected, both players control as Luigi), and the game's level designs are exactly the same as they are in the original Super Mario Bros but completely mirrored (i.e. the game scrolls from left-to-right rather than vice versa).[69][70]

Reception
Super Mario Bros. was immensely successful and helped popularize side-scrolling platform games.[72] Altogether, excluding ports and rereleases, the original NES version of the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game in the Mario series and one of the best-selling video games of all time,[73]with 29 million copies sold in North America.[74] The game was the all-time best-selling game for over 20 years until its lifetime sales were ultimately surpassed by Wii Sports.[75] The game's Wii Virtual Console release was also successful, becoming the #1 selling game out of the service's line-up of games by mid-2007.[76]

Video game magazine Computer Entertainer / Video Game Update highly praised Super Mario Bros., writing that the game was worthy of "a spot in the hall of fame reserved for truly addictive action games", praising its "cute and comical" graphics and its lively music. It stated that the title was a must-have for the system, and considered its greatest strength to be its depth of play.[77]

Retrospective critical analysis of the game has been extremely positive, with many touting it as one of the best video games of all-time.[78] 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".[79] The game ranked first on Electronic Gaming Monthly 's "Greatest 200 Games of Their Time" list[80] and was named in IGN 's top 100 games of all-time list twice (in 2005 and 2007).[81] In 2009, Game Informer put Super Mario Bros. in second 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".[82] The Game Informer staff also ranked it the second best in their 2001 list of the top 100 games ever made.[83] In 2012, G4ranked Super Mario Bros. first of the "Top 100 Video Games of All Time", citing its revolutionary gameplay as well as its role in helping recover the NA gaming industry from the Video Game Crash of 1983.[84] In 2014, IGN ranked Super Mario Bros. as the best Nintendo game in their "Top 125 Nintendo Games of All Time" list, saying that "this is the most important Nintendo game ever made".[85]:9 In a poll held by IGN in 2005, the game was ranked number one in the website's list of the 100 greatest video games of all-time.[86] In 2017, Polygon ranked the game #8 out of the core Super Mario games, crediting the game with "kick[ing] off this franchise's habit of being an exception to so many rules".[87]

Several critics have praised the game for its precise controls, which allow the player to control how high and far Mario or Luigi jumps, and how fast he runs.[63] AllGame gave Super Mario Bros. a five-star rating, stating that "[T]he sense of excitement, wonder and – most of all – enjoyment felt upon first playing this masterpiece of videogame can't barely be put into words. And while its sequels have far surpassed it in terms of length, graphics, sound and other aspects, Super Mario Bros., like any classic – whether of a cinematic or musical nature – has withstood the test of time, continuing to be fun and playable" and that any gamer "needs to play this game at least once, if not simply for a history lesson".[9] Reviewing the Virtual Console Release of the game, IGN called it "an absolute must for any gamer's Virtual Console collection."[8] Darren Calvert of Nintendo Life called the game's visuals "unavoidably outdated" compared to newer games, but mused that they were impressive at the time that the game was released.[88]

The Game Boy Advance port of Super Mario Bros. holds an aggregate score of 84 on Metacritic.[89] Many critics compared the port to previous ports of the game such as Super Mario Deluxe and Super Mario All-Stars, noting its comparative lack of brand new content to separate it from the original version of the game. Jeremy Parish of 1up.com called the game "The most fun you'll ever have while being robbed blind," ultimately giving the game a score of 80% and praising its larger-scaling screen compared to Deluxe while greatly criticizing its lack of new features.[90] IGN 's Craig Harris labeled the game as a "must-have," but also mused "just don't expect much more than the original NES game repackaged on a tiny GBA cart."[91] GameSpot gave the port a 6.8 out of 10, generally praising the gameplay but musing that the port's graphical and technical differences from the original version of the game "prevent this reissue from being as super as the original game."[92]

The Game Boy Color port of the game also received wide critical appraisal; IGN 's Craig Harris gave Super Mario Bros. Deluxe a perfect score, praising it as a perfect translation of the NES game. He hoped that it would be the example for other NES games to follow when being ported to the Game Boy Color.[93] GameSpot gave the game a 9.9, hailing it as the "killer app" for the Game Boy Color and praising the controls and the visuals (it was also the highest rated game in the series, later surpassed by Super Mario Galaxy 2 which holds a perfect 10).[94] Both gave it their Editors' Choice Award.[95][96] Allgame 's Colin Williamson praised the porting of the game as well as the extras, noting the only flaw of the game being that sometimes the camera goes with Mario as he jumps up.[97] Nintendo World Report 's Jon Lindemann, in 2009, called it their "(Likely) 1999 NWR Handheld Game of the Year," calling the quality of its porting and offerings undeniable.[98] Nintendo Life gave it a perfect score, noting that it retains the qualities of the original game and the extras.[99] St. Petersburg Times ' Robb Guido commented that in this form, Super Mario Bros. "never looked better."[100] The Lakeland Ledger 's Nick S. agreed, praising the visuals and the controls.[101] In 2004, a Game Boy Advance port of Super Mario Bros. (part of the Classic NES Series) was released, which had none of the extras or unlockables available in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. Of that version, IGN noted that the version did not "offer nearly as much as what was already given on the Game Boy Color" and gave it an 8.0 out of 10.[102] Super Mario Bros. Deluxe ranked third in the best-selling handheld game charts in the U.S. between June 6 and 12, 1999[103]and sold over 2.8 million copies in the U.S.[104] It was included on Singapore Airlines flights in 2006.[105] Lindermann noted Deluxe as a notable handheld release in 1999.[106]

Legacy
The success of Super Mario Bros. led to the development of many successors in the Super Mario series of video games, which in turn form the core of the greater Mario franchise. Two of these sequels, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3, were direct sequels to the game and were released for the NES, experiencing similar levels of commercial success. A different sequel, also titled Super Mario Bros. 2, was released for the Famicom Disk System in 1986 exclusively in Japan, and was later released elsewhere as a part of Super Mario All-Stars under the name Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. The gameplay concepts and elements established in Super Mario Bros. are prevalent in nearly every Super Mario game. The series consists of over 15 entries; at least one Super Mario game has been released on nearly every Nintendo console to date. Super Mario 64, an entry in the series and the first to take place in a three-dimensional environment, is widely considered one of the greatest games ever made, and is largely credited with revolutionizing the platforming genre of video games and its step from 2D to 3D. The most recent release is Super Mario Odyssey, released in 2017 for the Nintendo Switch. The series is one of the best-selling, with over 310 million copies of games sold worldwide as of September 2015.[107] In 2010, Nintendo released special red variants of the Wii and Nintendo DSi XL consoles in re-packaged, Mario-themed limited edition bundles as part of the 25th anniversary of the game's original release.[108] To celebrate the series' 30th anniversary, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker, a game for the Wii U which allows players to create custom platforming stages using assets from Super Mario games and in the style of Super Mario Bros. along with other styles based around different games in the series.[109]

The game's success helped to push Mario as an American cultural icon; in 1990, a study taken in North America suggested that more children in the United States were familiar with Mario than they were with Mickey Mouse, another popular media character.[110] The game's musical score composed by Koji Kondo, particularly the game's "overworld" theme, has also become a prevalent aspect of popular culture, with the latter theme being featured in nearly every single Super Mario game.[111] Alongside the NES platform as a whole, Super Mario Bros. is often credited for having resurrected the video game industry after it had experienced a market crash in 1983.[86]

Super Mario Bros. and its sequels inspired various projects in media; the 1986 anime film Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! is acknowledged as one of the first feature-length films to be based directly off of a video game.[112] A live-action film based on the game was released theatrically in 1993, starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi, respectively. An American animated television series titled The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! ran from 1989 to 1990, starring professional wrestler Lou Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi. An animated film based on the series created by Illumination Entertainment is currently in production.[113]

In the United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted an amicus brief which supported the overturn a law which would ban violent video games in the state of California. The brief cited social research that declared Super Mario Bros, among several others, to contain cartoon violence similar to that found in children's programs such as Mighty Mouse and Road Runner that garnered little negative reaction from the public.[114][115]

In 2015, game designer Josh Millard released Ennuigi, a metafictional fangame with commentary on the original game which relates to Luigi's inability to come to terms with the game's overall lack of narrative.[116][117][118][119]

Video game developer Yuji Naka has cited Super Mario Bros. as a large inspiration towards the concept for the immensely successful 1991 Sega Genesis game, Sonic the Hedgehog; according to Naka, the general idea for the game first materialized when he was playing through game and trying to beat the game’s first level as quickly as possible, and thought about the concept of a platformer based around moving as fastly as possible.