- This article is about the NES game; for the series see Super Mario Bros. series
- "Super Mario" redirects here. For other uses, see Super Mario (disambiguation).
The title screen
Super Mario Bros. is the first super Mario game. It was originally released on the Famicom (the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System) on 13 September 1985.
The game is a side-scrolling platformer that saved video games from the Video game crash of 1983
Mario and Luigi are on a quest to defeat Bowser, King of the Koopas and save Princess Toadstool. Currently, over 40.24 million households worldwide has this game. This makes it the biggest-selling videogame of all time.
Gameplay
Super Mario Bros. is divided into eight worlds, which each have four levels. Mario has to get to the end of the level by jumping over various gaps and avoiding the enemies on his way. Mario can use several platforms, (which sometimes fall down when Mario hits them), stairs in the level, as well as Jumping Boards. There are also pipes along the way, some of which Mario can enter to visit various coin rooms before returning to the level, a bit further ahead than when he left.
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Story
One day, King Bowser, the great and powerful leader of the militaristic Koopa army, invades the peaceful Mushroom Kingdom. He and his Koopa Troop were jealous of the beautiful kingdom, and King Bowser decided to take it for himself. To do this, Bowser casts an evil spell upon the kingdom and transforms all of its inhabitants into blocks, weeds, and other odd objects. It is foretold that only the Princess Toadstool can undo the spell, so Bowser kidnaps her. Fortunately, the heroic Mario Bros. get wind of the Mushroom Kingdom's plight and race to its rescue.
The player takes the role of Mario, or in the case of a second player, Luigi. The ultimate objective is to race through the worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom, evade or eliminate Bowser's forces, and save the Princess.
Limitations
In 1991, Shigeru Miyamoto explained about the limitations in creating Mario: "We had to work under technical constraints including the number of pixels and number of colours the Famicom can display. There are many reasons why we drew him the way we did. We gave him a moustache rather than a mouth because that showed up better. We gave him a hat rather than hair because that looked better, too. Mario wears overalls because that shows the movement of his arms, and he's wearing white gloves because the white contrasts better with the coloured backgrounds. These are the technical reasons we made him look the way he does."
Due to the limitations of memory, Luigi is actually a palette swap of the Mario sprite. This means that there wasn't any need for all those new frames of animation.
Music
The music in Super Mario Bros. is very typical of 1980s video games, being played on a synthesizer. The game is known for it's overworld theme, which has become a staple of the series.