Released in Japan on September 13, 1985, Nintendo’s landmark platform game turned running and jumping into a global phenomenon and helped define home video games for generations.
THE UNIVERSAL RECORD
Sourced reporting. No opinions.
Brad Socha | September 13, 2026 | 9:53 AM EST
Featured image: North American box art for Super Mario Bros. Image: Nintendo.
On September 13, 1985, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. for its Family Computer, or Famicom, in Japan. Built around an immediately understandable idea, move Mario from left to right while running, jumping, avoiding enemies and discovering secrets, the game became one of the defining works of the medium.
Its influence extended far beyond a single successful release. Super Mario Bros. helped demonstrate what Nintendo’s home console could do, established design principles that would influence generations of platform games and transformed Mario from an established arcade character into the centre of one of gaming’s most enduring series.
Nintendo still recognizes September 13 as the anniversary of the original game’s Japanese release. More than four decades later, its basic vocabulary, question blocks, pipes, power-ups, Goombas, Bowser and the Mushroom Kingdom, remains immediately recognizable to millions of players.
How Super Mario Bros. Was Built
Mario did not begin with Super Mario Bros.
Shigeru Miyamoto created the character for Nintendo’s 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, where the hero was initially known as Jumpman. Mario subsequently appeared in Mario Bros. in 1983 alongside his brother Luigi.
Super Mario Bros., however, gave him a much larger world.
Miyamoto directed the project with Takashi Tezuka, while Koji Kondo composed its music. Rather than confining action largely to a single screen, as many earlier arcade games did, the new game sent players through scrolling environments filled with platforms, enemies, underground passages and hidden areas.
Its simplicity concealed careful design.
World 1-1, the opening level, became a particularly influential example of teaching players through play rather than lengthy written instructions. The environment introduces movement, enemies, jumping, question blocks, power-ups and pipes progressively, allowing players to learn many of the game’s rules by interacting with them.
Mario’s movement also mattered. Running altered the distance of his jumps, giving experienced players greater control and speed while keeping the basic controls accessible to newcomers. Super Mushrooms made Mario larger, Fire Flowers provided a ranged attack and Starmen temporarily made him invincible. Coins and hidden blocks encouraged players to investigate the environment rather than simply race toward the end.
Nintendo’s developers were working within strict cartridge-memory limitations. Design decisions therefore had to make economical use of graphics and data while still creating a game that felt varied. Repeated visual elements and carefully constructed levels helped turn those technical constraints into a coherent style.
The objective was straightforward: travel through the Mushroom Kingdom and rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. Across eight worlds, the game moved between outdoor landscapes, underground areas, underwater stages and castles.
Its soundtrack became nearly as recognizable as the game itself. Kondo’s main Super Mario Bros. theme eventually achieved a distinction unprecedented for video-game music: in 2023, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Recording Registry, the first video-game theme admitted to the collection.
Super Mario Bros. Becomes a Global Landmark
The game’s importance grew as Nintendo expanded beyond Japan.
Nintendo introduced the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America during the same period, initially through a limited 1985 launch before expanding distribution in 1986. Super Mario Bros. became closely associated with the NES, including through console bundles that placed the game in millions of homes.
That relationship mattered at a difficult moment for the North American video-game business. The market had suffered a severe contraction in the early 1980s following years of rapid growth, oversupply and declining consumer confidence. Nintendo’s NES became central to the industry’s recovery, and Super Mario Bros. emerged as one of the system’s defining titles.
Its commercial reach was extraordinary. Guinness World Records lists approximately 40.24 million copies sold for the original game, a figure helped by its widespread bundling with Nintendo hardware. For years it stood among the best-selling video games ever released.
More important than the sales total was what followed.
Nintendo continued expanding Mario’s world through sequels such as Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. Later generations moved Mario into three-dimensional environments with Super Mario 64, motion-oriented play with Super Mario Galaxy and expansive modern worlds with Super Mario Odyssey.
Mario also moved far beyond traditional platform games, appearing in racing, sports, role-playing and party titles and eventually in major motion pictures. Yet many of the franchise’s enduring elements can be traced directly to the 1985 game.
The original has itself survived successive generations of hardware. Nintendo has repeatedly reissued it on later systems, allowing a game designed for 1980s televisions and an eight-bit console to remain playable decades after its debut.
Its legacy is also visible in game design. Super Mario Bros. showed how a limited set of controls could support increasingly complex challenges, how levels could teach mechanics visually and how precise movement could make repeated attempts enjoyable rather than merely frustrating.
What appeared on Japanese store shelves on September 13, 1985, was not Mario’s first adventure and was not the beginning of Nintendo. But it represented a turning point for both.
Super Mario Bros. helped establish the side-scrolling platform game as one of the dominant forms of the era, strengthened Nintendo’s position in the global home-console business and gave Mario the world in which his identity became unmistakable.
More than 40 years later, players can still recognize that world within seconds: a blue sky, brick blocks, a green pipe and a small character running toward the right side of the screen.
Sources:
Nintendo — Super Mario Bros., Family Computer
https://www.nintendo.com/jp/famicom/software/smb1/index.html
Nintendo — Super Mario Bros. History
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ngc/sms/history/sm1/index.html
Nintendo — Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary: Original Super Mario Developers
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/mario25th/4/0/
Nintendo — Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary: Shigeru Miyamoto Interview
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/mario25th/0/0/
Nintendo — Nintendo History
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Hardware/Nintendo-History/Nintendo-History-625945.html
Library of Congress — National Recording Registry: Super Mario Bros. Theme
https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/recording-registry/registry-by-induction-years/2023/
Guinness World Records — Best-Selling Video Game of the Third-Generation Consoles
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/111425-best-selling-videogame-of-the-third-generation-consoles
About the Author
Brad Socha is the founder of The Universal Record, focused on sourced, factual global reporting. Coverage includes international news, geopolitics, technology, and major developments.