Super Mario Bros. is released in Japan for the NES, which starts the Super Mario series of platforming games.
Super Mario is a platform game series created by Nintendo starring their mascot, Mario. Alternatively called the Super Mario Bros. series or simply the Mario series, it is the central series of the greater Mario franchise. At least one Super Mario game has been released for every major Nintendo video game console. There are more than 20 games in the series.
The Super Mario games are set primarily in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, typically with Mario as the player character. He is usually joined by his brother, Luigi, and often by other members of the Mario cast. As platform games, they involve the player character running and jumping across platforms and atop enemies in themed levels. The games have simple plots, typically with Mario and Luigi rescuing the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. The first game in the series, Super Mario Bros., released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, established the series' core gameplay concepts and elements. These include a multitude of power-ups and items that give the character special powers such as fireball-throwing and size-changing.The Super Mario series is part of the greater Mario franchise, which includes other video game genres and media such as film, television, printed media, and merchandise. More than 380 million copies of Super Mario games have been sold worldwide, making it the fifth-bestselling video game series, behind the larger Mario franchise, the puzzle series Tetris, the series Pokmon video games, and first-person shooter series Call of Duty.
Super Mario Bros. is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo. The successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. and the first in the Super Mario series, it was released in 1985 for the Famicom in Japan. Following a limited US release for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it was ported to international arcades for the Nintendo Vs. System in early 1986. The NES version received a wide release in North America that year and in PAL regions in 1987.
Players control Mario, or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode, as they travel the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser (King Koopa). They 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.
The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka as "a grand culmination" of the Famicom team's three years of game mechanics and programming, drawing from their experiences working on Devil World and the side-scrollers Excitebike and Kung Fu to advance their previous work on platforming "athletic games" such as Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. The design of the first level, World 1-1, serves as a tutorial for platform gameplay.
Super Mario Bros. is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise for its precise controls. It is one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 58 million copies sold worldwide. 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 the side-scrolling platform game genre. Koji Kondo's soundtrack is one of the earliest and most popular in video games, making music into a centerpiece of game design. The game began a multimedia franchise including a long-running game series, an animated television series and a feature film. It has been rereleased on most Nintendo systems. Mario and Super Mario Bros. have become prominent in popular culture.