Super Mario Bros.

aka: Mario 1, SMB, Super Irmãos, Super Mario Brothers
Moby ID: 7298
NES Specs
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Description official descriptions

The Princess has been kidnapped by the evil Bowser, and it is up to Mario and brother Luigi to save the day.

The first-ever platform adventure for the Mario Brothers has the player exploring level after level, with Bowser to contend with as the end of level boss. Power-ups include the Super Mushroom, which increases Mario's size and power, the fire flower, allowing him to shoot fireballs at enemies, and the ever-important starman for a short burst of invincibility.

Each level includes a bonus section filled with coins plus a shortcut through the level, plenty of bad buys and obstacles to get past, and an end-of-level flag, in which the higher the player grabs it, the more points are awarded to them. Certain levels also include warp points, which take the player to higher levels.

Spellings

  • スーパーマリオブラザーズ - Japanese spelling
  • 超级马里奥兄弟 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 슈퍼 마리오브라더스 - Korean spelling

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Credits (NES version)

7 People

Directed by
Produced by
Executive producer
Assistant director
Programmed by
Graphics designed by
Original music by

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 57 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 453 ratings with 18 reviews)

Really good game.

The Good
This game is very good for its age and is still fun to play alone or with friends(personally I liked Luigi better), and you have to save the princess, Peach. The game can get repetitive sometimes but if that happens you can always use the secret pipes or passage ways.The game is fun fighting and jumping on the enemies and the ability to run saved me a lot of times when I was running short on time. This game is good but nowhere near Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World.

The Bad
Now that I am older it really feels outdated.

The Bottom Line
Its good fun to play with friends or alone to bring back the good memories. This game changed gaming after E.T. for Atari almost killed it. I end this review with a tribute the lovable song of the first level, second, and boss levels and hum them aloud to salute Super Mario Bros.

NES · by Ryan Johnson (3) · 2005

Hmmmm.... Mushrooms!!

The Good
Looking at this legendary game decades away is somewhat of a futile exercise, as everything good and bad about it has already been penned by anyone from respected critics, to dummies with only a passing knowledge of the game that arguably made Nintendo what it is today... of course, since I have nothing better to do, why shouldn't I indulge in adding my two cents to the fray?

Don't worry, I promise I'll be brief :)

With it's blend of trippy, fantasy levels, cutesy enemies, smooth scrolling and perfectly refined game mechanics (that remain the template for the genre to this day), Super Mario Bros. managed to bring a level of arcade gaming perfection previously unheard of in home-based videogame systems, and provided an original experience unrivaled anywhere. The story has been chronicled everywhere so there's no point in reiterating it, but the results are baffling: with a simple design evolved from the basic run'n jump games that preceeded it, the designers managed to hit that nail of game design that such games as Tetris or even Doom also got: simple, but detailed game mechanics, challenging arcade gameplay supported by a perfect control scheme, smooth graphics and sounds to complement the gameplay, and lots of imagination poured into unique creatures and levels, devious jumping puzzles, etc.

Interesting to note that a storyline is never a big consideration in any case, uh? I'll leave that for someone else to discuss. In any rate SMB manages to be one of the holy classics of gaming due to the sheer FUN it is to play, an enjoyable ride from start to finish as you embark on the rather silly but engaging quest to save the sterotypical maiden in distress as an excuse to sort out the many challenges laid for you on each level and longing for the challenges that awaited you on the next carefully designed level (not a trivial matter, as any game of that era can prove, when advancing levels the games merely recycled what had been done before, adjusting the difficulty or simply speeding up gameplay (see: PAC-MAN) Mario on the other hand offered unique challenges in different settings and with different moods (thanks to the excellent graphics and sounds of it's day, which allowed a full soundtrack whose main theme is nothing short of an anthem for a generation of gamers [myself included in a somewhat uncanny and frightening way, as I'm able to almost mystically recall the tune years away as if it were some type of racial memory!]).

All that plus a lot of strange underlying themes that have always to it's charm when viewed from the warped eyes of an adult mind (Eating a mushroom makes you "higher"? Yeah, like Peyote right? A "flower" that makes you shoot fireballs? Mushroom-People turned into blocks? (which you get to break!) Jumping plumbers?? To this day I wonder just what kind of fumes the developers of these types of games inhaled, either that or the designers where trying to tell us something all along... probably a pro-drugs message of some sort.

The Bad
Probably the only problem with Mario is that as the Mega-blockbuster title of it's day, it was copied and cloned to death, making it so that pretty much every console to this day has to have a cutesy mascot platformer with trippy locales and gameplay based on the same grounds as Mario's (run'n jump through many levels, facing a boss near the end, doing whatever makes him angry three times, and then repeating until you get to the princess or whatever it is you need to find).

The 2P mode was pretty crappy the way I see it, and I also disliked the fact that you had to beat the game in one sitting (reason numero uno for me to hate early console-based platformers) which coupled with the large number of levels made it more of a challenge than I was willing to handle at the time (I mean, C'mon!! You keep rescuing the princess and it's just a stupid retainer over and over again!! What the fuck?? Am I not good enough for her???).

...Oh yeah! And the movie!! BWAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!

The Bottom Line
Just a little game that spawned an entire genre, cemented the most well-known videogame mascot ever, and sold billions of copies worldwide. A pretty good achievement for a company that used to make cards and a game based on the acid trips of a couple of plumbers stoned out of their minds.

NES · by Zovni (10504) · 2005

A plumber in a kingdom full of talking mushrooms

The Good
What can you say about this game that has not been already said. But i will review this game anyway because i love this game anyway.

The story is very very simple: You play as a plumber named Mario who is in a kingdom called the mushroom kingdom. In this kingdom he has to rescue princess Peach from the evil koopa king Bowser. That is it for the story. Everyone how it goes and every other mario game has the same story anyway so we can talk about the gameplay.

The gameplay is just perfect. the a button is for jumping. the d-pad is for the direction mario is walking. the b button is only there for running if you hold down or if you have the fireflower, you can shoot fireballs at enemies. The controls are simple and easy to understand. Jumping in this game is the most important thing. If you don't jump, you won't come very far. If you run, holding down the b button, you can jump higher and wider which is also very important if you want to jump over huge gaps. During your play, you are going to come across three power-ups . There is the power mushroom which turns mario in super mario. He can take one more hit than usual. Usually if he gets hit as normal mario, he dies. So it is a good thing this mushroom exists. There is also the fire flower. With this you can shoot fireballs at enemies which makes your progress much easier. Occasionally you come across a star in one of the question blocks. This star makes invincible for a short time. The enemies very simple to beat most of the time. The enemies you encounter are for example goombas, koopa troopas, hammer bros. and a few more. Some enemies are easy to beat but some can be annoying especially the hammer bros., which come in pairs sometimes and throwing hammers at you.

The graphics have aged surely but they hold up pretty well even over 30 years later. I really like the simple design and the level design is pretty good as well. My favourite level is still the very first level because is the perfect introduction for a game to get used to the controls.

The soundtrack is legendary. Koji Kondo, the composer for most of the mario games, composed a soundtrack which i will always remember and does not know the music that plays during this game. The overworld theme is probably the most well known video game theme of all time and the rest of these tracks memorable as well although this tracks are very short but the music does not annoy me in this.

The Bad
There are only small problems i have. The jumping is not responsive as it should be. If you are running and you want to jump, the jumping does not always respond and you can fall to death which is annoying but it is only occasionally. The other thing is that those bowser fights are always the same. in the first worlds spits fire at you and later he is throwing hammers at you. I really wished there would be a little more variety in those fights. But other than that i do not have any problems.

The Bottom Line
This game is a classic, i can stress this enough. If you know anything about video games than you have to play this game. It was released in 1985 on the NES and it was released on many other platforms so if you have time in your life, than play this game. You will probably can beat this game in one or two hours. Ho and play it now.

NES · by Lisa Müller (28) · 2018

[ View all 18 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
It seemed like a weird idea for Star Wars also... Pseudo_Intellectual (66274) Jan 31, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The NES version of Super Mario Bros. appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cereal

Super Mario Bros. was popular enough to have a breakfast cereal based on the game called the "Nintendo Cereal System", and was co-packaged with Legend of Zelda cereal. The sweetened corn bits were in the shape of Mario, Koopa Troopa, Goomba, Bowser, and a Super Mushroom.

NES supplement

For a time, Super Mario Brothers was the game packaged with a new NES system, along with the Zapper Light Gun and the game Duck Hunt.

Parody

Joe Dixon released a spoof version of Super Mario Bros. in late 2002. It replaces Mario, Toadstool, and the enemies with characters from South Park.

Sales

According to the Guiness Book Of Records, as of 2003 Super Mario Bros. is the best-selling video game of all time, with a total of 40.23 million units sold worldwide, as of 1999. The whole Mario Bros. series has 26 games and sold over 152 million copies since 1983, according to Guiness.

It is widely believed that the billionth game unit sold by Nintendo was Super Mario Bros..

TV series

Super Mario Bros. was popular enough to have a TV cartoon based on it in the late 1980's-early 1990's. It starred "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario, and Danny Wells as Luigi in the live-action segments, and animated Mario cartoons Monday-Thursday (Friday was for cartoons based on Legend of Zelda).

Awards

  • EGM
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #2 (Titles That Revolutionized Console Gaming) (NES version)
    • February 2006 - #1 out of 200 Games of their Time
  • FLUX
    • Issue #4 - #66 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue 100) - #2 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time list"
    • October 2005 (Issue 138) - one of the "Top 25 Most Influential Games of All Time"
  • IGN
    • #1 Game of All Time (or revolutionary graphics and gameplay at the time of its release)
  • Official Nintendo Magazine
    • Greatest Nintendo Game
  • Power Play
    • 1987 - Best NES Game '87
  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #24 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
    • Issue 37 - #23 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2015 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame

Information also contributed by Big John WV, Guy Chapman, Mat Neuteboom, Maw, Mumm-Ra, PCGamer77 and sgtcook

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Wii added by Corn Popper. Nintendo 3DS added by ResidentHazard. Wii U, Arcade added by Michael Cassidy. Game Boy Advance added by Guy Chapman. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Jeanne, Guy Chapman, chirinea, Alaka, Vaelor, gamewarrior, LepricahnsGold, Patrick Bregger, sgtcook, Thomas Thompson, FatherJack, lightlands, SoMuchChaotix.

Game added September 28, 2002. Last modified March 16, 2024.