Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
Development was a culmination of the team's technical knowledge after working on the 1984 games Devil World, Excitebike, and Kung Fu, along with their desire to further advance the platforming "athletic game" genre they had created with their earlier games.
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani has stated that Miyamoto had told him personally that an earlier scrolling platformer using Iwatani's character, Pac-Land, was an influence on Super Mario Bros.
Miyamoto also wanted to create a game that would be the "final exclamation point" for the ROM cartridge format before the forthcoming Famicom Disk System was released.
Developers of previous hit games joined the team in February 1985, importing many special programming techniques, features, and design refinements such as these: "Donkey Kongs slopes, lifts, conveyor belts, and ladders; Donkey Kong Jr.s ropes, logs and springs; and Mario Bros.s enemy attacks, enemy movement, frozen platforms and POW Blocks".
Miyamoto said the shell-kicking 1-up trick was carefully tested, but "people turned out to be a lot better at pulling the trick off for ages on end than we thought".
Playing that release, Chris Kohler of Kotaku called the game's intense difficulty "The meanest trick Nintendo ever played".
In the fall of 1986, Top Score newsletter reviewed Vs. Super Mario Bros. for arcades, calling it "without a doubt one of the best games" of the year and stating that it combined "a variety of proven play concepts" with "a number of new twists" to the gameplay.
The arcade game received the award for the "Best Video Game of 1986" at the Amusement Players Association's Players Choice Awards, held during their first US national competition in January 1987 where the game was popular among arcade players.
Reviewing the NES version, the "Video Game Update" segment of Computer Entertainer magazine in June 1986 praised the "cute and comical" graphics, lively music and most of all its depth of play, including the amount of hidden surprises and discoveries.
The review said it was worthy of "a spot in the hall of fame reserved for truly addictive action games" and was a "must-have" NES game.
Top Score also reviewed the NES version in early 1987, noting that it is mostly the same as the arcade version and stating that it was "a near-perfect game" with simple play mechanics, "hundreds of incentives" and hidden surprises, an "ever-changing" environment, colorful graphics and "skillfully blended" music.
The Games Machine reviewed the NES version upon its European release in 1987, calling it "a great and playable game" with praise for the gameplay, which it notes is simple to understand without needing to read the manual and has alternate routes for problems that can occasionally be frustrating but rewarding, while also praising the "splendid" graphics and sound.
In 1989, ACE called it the "undisputed king of cutesy platform-style arcade adventures" and that the "game is crammed with secret levels, 'warps' and hidden treats such that you never tire of playing it".
Computer and Video Games said this "platform/arcade adventure" is one of "the all-time classic video games" with "a multitude of hidden bonuses, secret warps and mystery screens.
They said the graphics and sound are "good, but not outstanding, but it's the utterly addictive gameplay which makes this one of the best games money can buy".
Nintendo Power named it the fourth best NES game, describing it as the beginning of the modern era of video games and "Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece".
Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked it first on its list of the "Greatest 200 Games of Their Time".
In 2009, Game Informer named Super Mario Bros. the second greatest game of all time, behind The Legend of Zelda, saying that it "remains a monument to brilliant design and fun gameplay".
In 2014, IGN named Super Mario Bros. the best Nintendo game, saying it was "the most important Nintendo game ever made".
In 2017, Polygon ranked it the eighth best Super Mario game, crediting it for starting "this franchise's habit of being an exception to so many rules".
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.
IGN 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.
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).
Nintendo World Reports Jon Lindemann, in 2009, called it their "(Likely) 1999 NWR Handheld Game of the Year", calling the quality of its porting and offerings undeniable.
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.
It is the first version to be a complete port of the original Famicom version.
The Disk System hardware launched later than originally planned, on 1986-2-21, with launch titles including ports from ROM cartridges such as Super Mario Bros. and Golf, plus the new action-adventure title The Legend of Zelda.
Its best-selling game is Super Mario Bros., first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, with sales of more than 40million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.
Directed and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, it is the successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. and the first game in the Super Mario series.
The early level design was focused on teaching players that mushrooms were distinct from Goombas and would be beneficial to them, so in World 1-1, the first mushroom is difficult to avoid if it is released.
Super Mario Bros. was first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, for the Family Computer (Famicom).
A port to the Famicom Disk System, Nintendo's proprietary floppy disk drive, was released only in Japan on February 21, 1986.
Outside of Japan, VS. Super Mario Bros. was officially released for arcades in overseas markets during early 1986, becoming the first version of the game to get a wide international release.
The arcade game debuted at the 1986 Amusement Trades Exhibition International (ATEI) show in London, held in January 1986; this was the first appearance of Super Mario Bros. in Europe.
It 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 cannot 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 GameShark or Action Replay.
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.
Clare Edgeley of Computer and Video Games gave the arcade version a positive review upon its ATEI 1986 debut.
The arcade game received the award for the "Best Video Game of 1986" at the Amusement Players Association's Players Choice Awards, held during their first US national competition in January 1987 where the game was popular among arcade players.
Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked it first on its list of the "Greatest 200 Games of Their Time".
Official Nintendo Magazine also award the game first place in a 2009 list of greatest Nintendo games of all time.
Allgames Colin Williamson praised the porting of the game and the extras, noting the only flaw of the game being that sometimes the camera goes with Mario as he jumps up.
In 2021, speedrunner Niftski set a historic milestone with the first run under four minutes and fifty-five seconds.
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, and one of the earliest isekai anime.
It sold 6,810,000 copies within Japan and 40,240,000 copies worldwide.
In sales of a single game software title within Japan, it held the No. 1 position of all time for more than 30 years, until Animal Crossing: New Horizons rewrote the record in 2020. There is a gap of about 400,000 copies from New Super Mario Bros., the No. 2 best seller in the series, and a gap of about 9,000,000 copies in worldwide sales.
In the book version of the special program Shin Denshi Rikkoku broadcast on NHK, the developer Shigeru Miyamoto recalled that he had expected sales of the game to be around 1,500,000 copies, and that its selling tens of millions of copies worldwide, including the timing of the North American release, was "completely luck", and assessed that "its true strength, without exaggeration, is 1,500,000 copies".
The strategy guide released by Tokuma Shoten was also highly popular, recording No. 1 in sales among all books for 2 consecutive years since its release.
In the survey "Games readers want to pass on to the future", held to commemorate issue No. 1000 of Famitsu, it took No. 1 by a wide margin.
In 2005 it was selected at No. 1 in "Top 100 games of all time" by IGN in the United States.
An unopened copy of this game, which had been bought in 1986 as a Christmas present and left stored in a desk drawer for about 35 years, was found in the United States in 2021. When it was put up for auction on 4/2 of the same year, the auction company announced that it had been sold for 660,000 dollars (about 73,000,000 yen in Japanese currency), the highest price ever paid for a piece of game software at that time.
Afterwards, copies were sold at auction for 2,000,000 dollars (about 200 million and 20,000,000 yen) in 8/2021 and for 3,000,000 dollars (about 400 million and 80,000,000 yen) in 6/2026.
Its best-selling game is Super Mario Bros., first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, with sales of more than 40million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.
In 2005, Nintendo re-released this conversion as a part of the game's 20th anniversary; this special edition had approximately 876,000 units sold.
By 1987, copies of the game had been sold for the Famicom.
Altogether, excluding ports and re-releases, 40.24 million copies of the original NES release have been sold worldwide, with 29 million copies sold in North America.
The game's Wii Virtual Console release was also successful, reaching number 1 by mid-2007, and at an estimated 660,000 units for outside of Japan and Korea in 2009.
Deluxe ranked third in the bestselling handheld game charts in the U.S. between June 6 and 12, 1999 with more than 2.8 million copies in the U.S.
The series is one of the bestselling, with more than 310 million units sold worldwide .
It is Japan's bestselling book of 1985 at 630,000 copies sold.
It is also Japan's bestselling book of 1986 with 860,000 copies by January 1986, and a total of .
A game of the same name was also released for the Game & Watch outside Japan in 1986 and 1988
A Game & Watch version has also been released outside Japan, but its content is different.
Super Mario Bros. was released in September 1985 in Japan for the Famicom, the Japanese version of the NES.
Its exact North American release date is debated; though most sources report it was released in October 1985 as a launch game, when the NES had a limited release in the US, several sources suggest it was released between November 1985 and early 1986.
The NES version received a wide North American release later that year, followed by Europe on May 15, 1987.
It soon drew a loyal following across North American arcades, and appeared as the eighth top-grossing arcade video game on the US Play Meter arcade charts in May 1986.
The Games Machine reviewed the NES version upon its European release in 1987, calling it "a great and playable game" with praise for the gameplay, which it notes is simple to understand without needing to read the manual and has alternate routes for problems that can occasionally be frustrating but rewarding, while also praising the "splendid" graphics and sound.
In 2012, G4 ranked Super Mario Bros. the best video game of all time, citing its revolutionary gameplay and its role in helping recover the North American gaming industry from the video game crash of 1983.
Its best-selling game is Super Mario Bros., first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, with sales of more than 40million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.
It is one of the best-selling games, with more than copies sold worldwide.
According to the NPD Group (which tracks game sales in North America), it became the best-selling video game on the Game Boy Advance from June 2004 to December 2004.
More than copies of the original NES version had been sold worldwide by 1994, and by April 2000, for which it was awarded the Guinness World Record for the best-selling video game of all time.
Reviewing the NES version, the "Video Game Update" segment of Computer Entertainer magazine in June 1986 praised the "cute and comical" graphics, lively music and most of all its depth of play, including the amount of hidden surprises and discoveries.
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.
Allgames Colin Williamson praised the porting of the game and the extras, noting the only flaw of the game being that sometimes the camera goes with Mario as he jumps up.
Alongside the NES, it is credited as a key factor in reviving the video game industry after the 1983 crash, and helped popularize the side-scrolling platform genre.
Around July 1985, development time was extended to 3–4 weeks to adjust and fix memory bugs.
In 2012, G4 ranked Super Mario Bros. the best video game of all time, citing its revolutionary gameplay and its role in helping recover the North American gaming industry from the video game crash of 1983.
Alongside the NES platform, Super Mario Bros. is often credited for having resurrected the video game industry after the market crash of 1983.
Video game developer Yuji Naka has cited Super Mario Bros. as a large inspiration toward the concept for the immensely successful 1991 Genesis game, Sonic the Hedgehog; according to Naka, the game was conceived when he was speedrunning World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., and considered a platformer based on moving as fast as possible.
At the celebration of the game's 25th anniversary at the Nintendo World Store, then-record-holder andrewg attempted a speedrun as creator Miyamoto watched.
In 2021, speedrunner Niftski set a historic milestone with the first run under four minutes and fifty-five seconds.
The early level design was focused on teaching players that mushrooms were distinct from Goombas and would be beneficial to them, so in World 1-1, the first mushroom is difficult to avoid if it is released.
Playing that release, Chris Kohler of Kotaku called the game's intense difficulty "The meanest trick Nintendo ever played".
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.
Nintendo of America later translated it into English as How to win at Super Mario Bros. and published it in North America via the Nintendo Fun Club and early issues of Nintendo Power magazine.
According to Chounosuke Kujiratake, author of the Famicom Cancelled Game Encyclopedia, shelved titles existed from the Famicom's earliest days, but examples began appearing among third parties around 1986, the year after Super Mario Bros. was released; by 1987, cancellations were occurring even among major publishers' and licensed titles.
Super Mario Bros. used the fast scrolling game engine Miyamoto's team had originally developed for Excitebike, which allowed Mario to smoothly accelerate from a walk to a run, rather than move at a constant speed like in earlier platformers.
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