Mario (character)

Super Mario Bros. is a video game developed and published by Nintendo in late 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game's two-dimensional, side-scrolling design would come to epitomize the modern platformer, a video game genre characterized by jumping to and from suspended platforms and over obstacles.

As the second-best selling home console game of all time, Super Mario Bros. is largely responsible for the success of Nintendo's first home console and for ending the two-year slump of video game sales in North America that followed the video game crash of 1983. It has inspired countless imitators and was one of designer Shigeru Miyamoto's most influential early successes. In 1990, Fortune magazine writer Susan Moffat predicted, "just as Mickey Mouse helped pioneer the animated picture in the 1930s, so might Mario help establish a new medium called interactive entertainment."

Creating a cultural icon

Mario debuted as the hero in Miyamoto's first game, the arcade smash hit Donkey Kong, under the moniker "Jumpman." Miyamoto intended Jumpman to be his go-to character, a slightly pudgy, silly-looking fellow who could easily fit into any game as needed. Accordingly, he designed his little carpenter mostly by creating elegant solutions to practical, 8-bit problems. A mouth wasn't visible enough, so the character got a mustache; the programmers couldn't animate hair, so he wore a cap; and to make his arm movements visible, he needed white gloves and colored overalls. The character was dubbed Mario by colleagues who said the nose, mustache, and overalls resembled the Italian caretaker at the small New York hotel where Nintendo employees stayed in the United States.

The 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. was the first to feature Mario as the title character and introduced his brother Luigi. And, owing to a colleague's comment on Mario's appearance, Miyamoto gave his character a new occupation: The Mario brothers became plumbers, whose jobs are to exterminate the various pests that come out of pipes—pipes that would become the trademark method of travel in subsequent Mario titles.

Later that year Nintendo released their first home console in Japan: the Family Computer, or Famicom. Evaluating Famicom operations, company president Hiroshi Yamauchi realized that a video game system, like any other computer, is only as useful as the software available for it. Yamauchi prioritized the home console market and in 1984 he assigned Miyamoto to lead Research & Development 4 (R&D 4), a new development group within Nintendo; their assignment was to create the most imaginative video games ever. One of their first titles would take Donkey Kong's plucky hero and place him in a new world.

Game design

Super Mario Bros. began with a simple idea: Miyamoto wondered what it would be like to have a character bouncing around under the background of a clear, blue sky. He took that idea to a programmer, and they started working on it. Kazuaki Morita, one of the game's three main programmers, described the working relationship between its designers and programmers: "In the NES era, the designer and programmer would sit side by side, constantly discussing what the game design should be, and the programmer would actually try to program the design right there on the spot while the designer watched."

At the time, division of labor was still an emerging concept in the video game industry. Before Donkey Kong, programmers were responsible for creating every element of their games—the same person who created the concept was also responsible for the coding, the art, and even the sound effects. But Miyamoto is not a programmer; he is an artist. As IGN's Rus McLoughlin tells it, "the games he designed were so different from everything else simply because he didn't really know what he wasn't supposed to do. That left him free to explore, and exploration soon became a part of his games." Super Mario Bros.'s progression is linear, but the game's hidden items, rooms, and shortcuts encourage exploration and experimentation.

The game's scope and sophistication were unprecedented. Pong, one of the earliest commercial video games, is set on a single screen; Super Mario Bros. has the equivalent of more than 200 screens. The seamless transition between these "screens" as Mario advances from left to right gives the game its smooth "side-scrolling" style of play. The full playing field isn’t immediately visible; it only unfolds with progress, fostering a sense of discovery and a spontaneity that’s complemented by the game’s whimsical, seemingly arbitrary architecture: bricks and platforms hang suspended in mid-air, green sewer pipes protrude from the ground, bottomless pits space the bedrock. Guiding Mario around, over, and under these obstacles and conquering the game’s quirky villains are the primary challenges. These challenges are alleviated by the precise control afforded to the player. The ability to alter the distance, height, and hook of the player-character’s jump is one of the game’s main innovations.

As large as the game is, its objective is as simple as Donkey Kong's: Players control Mario or his brother Luigi in their quest across the Mushroom Kingdom to save its missing monarch, Princess Toadstool. The rules are straightforward: Complete all four levels (linear, self-contained courses) of all eight worlds (collections of levels) within the 300-second time limit given for each level. The fourth level of each world is a castle, and at the end of every castle is Mario's nemesis and Princess Toadstool's kidnapper, Bowser, a fire-breathing dragon reminiscent of Godzilla.

Before the advent of timesaving tools like Character Generator Computer Aided Design (CGCAD), animating Mario’s movements was a laborious process. Miyamoto had to paint each character; the colors in the painting were assigned numbers and the programmers input the numbers into a computer. He also showed programmers not only how a character looked but also how it moved and what special traits it had. The programmers reproduced, line of code by line, Miyamoto’s designs as faithfully as they could.

During this process the team developed programming techniques allowing them to create a larger character than they thought possible, so they planned to make the game so that the player was always "Super" Mario but eventually conceived a magic mushroom to double the character's size, an idea Miyamoto attributed to Alice in Wonderland. Other "power-ups" were added to aid Mario in his quest: a flower that allows him to shoot fireballs, a flashing star that imparts temporary invincibility, and a green "1-UP" mushroom that rewards the player with an extra continue.

Synchronizing game music with game control

When Mario’s star-induced invulnerability is wearing off, the music fades out; when the time limit is critically low, it speeds up. The game's composer, Koji Kondo, believed that Mario's music should enhance or highlight the action onscreen. Because Mario is an action game, Kondo said, "it’s vital that the music sync up directly with game control." Kondo revealed that the game's famous main theme, which counts Paul and Linda McCartney among its admirers, initially underwent significant changes to match changes made to the game's design:

"Actually, the original main theme I composed was never used. I created a piece of music for the game that I had seen, which was an early prototype that wasn't really what the final game ended up being. I saw scenes of Mario just running around in this kind of big empty area—just kind of running around and jumping...it wasn't what Super Mario Bros. eventually became. So the music I originally created for that, it was a bit lazier, with slower tempo...Then, as the game underwent changes in the development process, we realized that the piece really didn't fit—it didn't match what Super Mario Bros. had eventually had become—so I went back and picked up the pace and changed it around so that it fit the game."

The game industry’s response

Super Mario Bros. premiered in Japan in September 1985; by the end of December, Nintendo had produced 2 million units of the game. Its phenomenal sales helped Nintendo command over 90% of the Japanese video game market. Soon afterward the company's nascent North American branch packaged Super Mario Bros. with its game consoles to test its product in New York City. The console was a smash hit, and soon Nintendo distributed it nationwide. The NES, along with Super Mario Bros., is credited with reviving the flatlined North American video game industry after the crash of 1983, a crash blamed on oversupply and poor quality control.

Alternate versions and re-releases of Super Mario Bros.

Alternate versions Ports Super Mario Bros. was ported many times in the year following its original release on the NES. A side-scrolling platform game was released for Nintendo's Game & Watch range of handheld LCD game systems. 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 Famicom Disk System, Nintendo's proprietary floppy disk drive for the Famicom. It was also released in the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt bundle. Vs. Super Mario Bros. Vs. Super Mario Bros. is nearly a separate game in its own right. Designed for Nintendo's NES-based arcade cabinet, the Nintendo Vs. Unisystem, the game's design is identical to Super Mario Bros.. The stages, however, are different; the early stages show only subtle alterations, but later stages are changed entirely and feature an increased difficulty level. Many of these later stages reappeared in the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2. All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. is a very rare version of the game with graphics based upon the popular Japanese radio show All Night Nippon. The game, which was only released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, was a special promotional version that was given away by the show in 1986. The creators altered the sprites of the enemies, mushroom retainers, and other characters to resemble famous Japanese music idols, recording artists, and DJs. The game also combined levels from Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and Super Mario Bros. Special. Super Mario Bros. Special Super Mario Bros. Special was a game released only in Japan by Hudson Soft for the NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1 computers in 1986. Although it has similar gameplay and graphics, the game has new level layouts and it scrolls in a different manner than the original. Many new enemies are included but there is no two-player mode. Super Mario All-Stars In 1993, Nintendo released a compilation of their Super Mario games, titled Super Mario All-Stars, on the Super Nintendo. The version of Super Mario Bros. included in the compilation features improved graphics and sound to match the Super Nintendo's 16-bit capabilities as well as minor alterations to some collision mechanics. Another change: The second player may switch to Luigi after the end of the stage (in the original Super Mario Bros., the second player could only play after Mario died). A save game feature was also included and several glitches from the original release were fixed. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Super Mario Bros. was released on the Game Boy Color in 1999 under the title Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. It features a level map, simultaneous multiplayer, a challenge mode, and eight additional worlds based on the main worlds of the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2. The game, however, can boast very few upgraded visuals, and, since the screen resolution of the Game Boy Color was smaller than the NES, the viewing distance is smaller. To compensate, players can press up and down to see above and below Mario's current position. Re-releases Classic NES Series In early 2004, Nintendo re-released the game on the Game Boy Advance in Japan as part of their Famicom Minis collection and in the U.S. as part of the Classic NES Series. These versions contain no graphical updates and all of the original glitches remain. In 2005, Nintendo again released the game for the Game Boy Advance as part of Super Mario Bros.'s 20th anniversary. Animal Crossing Super Mario Bros. is one of nineteen NES games included in the Nintendo GameCube game Animal Crossing. The only known way to unlock Super Mario Bros. is by use of a game modification device, like the Game Shark or Action Replay. Virtual Console Super Mario Bros. was released in 2006 for Wii's Virtual Console. Super Smash Bros. Brawl Super Mario Bros. is available for trial play in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Super Mario Bros. did more than sell Nintendo's new system—it established the most lucrative video game franchise today and created a new generation of video game fans. There were Mario dolls, magazines, actions figures, cereal, clothing, a TV show, and movies. Nintendo produced countless sequels (something it continues to do) and even gave Mario's sidekicks games of their own. Although Super Mario Bros. was inevitably eclipsed in popularity by its more advanced sequels, it remains in demand today thanks to numerous re-releases and remakes in multiple formats and to thriving modding and "speedruning" communities (a speedrun being a play through of a given title as fast as possible). Glitches also add an unexpected dimension—and longevity—to the game. A programming error allows players who know exactly the right technique to enter World Minus One, a world that was never intended by the game's creator.

As "the blueprint for 2D platform gaming," Super Mario Bros.'s influence on game design has been tremendous. Some of the world's most famous game designers, including SimCity creator Will Wright and Metal Gear designer Hideo Kojima, credit Super Mario Bros. with influencing their work. As a partial consequence, the game enjoys envious placement in the media's "best of" lists. In December 2002, the notoriously critical editors of Edge magazine awarded a retroactive "ten out of ten" rating to Super Mario Bros. In their "The Greatest 200 Videogames of Their Time" editorial, game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly listed Super Mario Bros. as number one; and in their "Top 100 Games" listing, IGN also placed Super Mario Bros. at number one. IGN concluded its praise by saying, "Super Mario Bros. remains one of the most pioneering and influential titles to date. More importantly, it's every bit as addictive, enjoyable, and satisfying today as it was two decades ago."