Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros. (known as Super Mario in Super Mario All-Stars, Japanese スーパーマリオブラザーズ Super Mario Brothers) is the semi-sequel to Mario Bros., a game which was released for the Famicom on September 13, 1985, and on the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in late 1985 or 1986. This is the first game to be set explicitly in the Mushroom Kingdom, marking the first appearances of Bowser and Princess Toadstool, as well as Koopa Troopas, Goombas and many other Mario series enemies. Super Mario Bros. was the best selling video game of all time until recently when it was surpassed by Wii Sports, and was largely responsible for the initial success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. As of 2003, the game has sold more than 40.23 million copies worldwide, making it the second best selling video game of all time.

Story
One day, King Bowser Koopa, the great and powerful leader of the militaristic Koopa Troop, invades the peaceful Mushroom Kingdom. He and his Koopa Troop were jealous of the beautiful kingdom, and King Bowser decides 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 Mushroom King's daughter Princess Toadstool can undo the spell. Knowing this, Bowser immediately 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, Mario's brother Luigi. The ultimate objective is to race through the worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom, evade or eliminate Bowser's forces, and save the Princess. .

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 (some of them collapse when Mario lands on 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.

Enemies include Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Buzzy Beetles, Koopa Paratroopas, Bullet Bills, Hammer Bros., and jumping Cheep-Cheeps. All these enemies can be defeated when Mario jumps on them. Koopa Troopas and Buzzy Beetles will cower in their shell when jumped on, which Mario can kick to defeat other enemies with. Koopa Paratroopas will also lose their wings and fall to the ground when Mario jumps on them. Other enemies include Piranha Plants, the Spiny-throwing Lakitus and the Hammer Bros. These enemies are hard to defeat, and Mario has to either shoot fireballs at them or just avoid them. There are a few levels which take place underwater. In the water, Mario can swim freely from the top to the bottom of the screen. The enemies in underwater levels are Bloobers and Cheep-Cheeps. Mario can only defeat these creatures by shooting them with fireballs.

If Small Mario takes a hit, falls down a pit, or if the time limit runs out, he loses a life, and restarts the level. The point where Mario continues depends on how far he ran through the level before dying; either from the very beginning, or at one of several invisible "checkpoints" throughout the level.

Mario can get special power-ups out of ? Blocks or, uncommonly, Brick Blocks. Most of the ? Blocks in which Mario can find these items are visible, but some are hidden and only become visible when Mario hits them from beneath. With the Super Mushroom, he turns into Super Mario. As Super Mario, he can survive the hit of an enemy one time, at the cost of turning back to Small Mario. He may also destroy empty Brick Blocks by jumping beneath them. Additionally, he can also get the Fire Flower. With the Fire Flower, Super Mario turns into Fire Mario, which allows him to shoot fireballs at enemies to defeat them from a distance. With the 1-Up Mushroom, he gains an additional life; he can also get an extra life if he collects 100 coins. With the Starman, which can only be found in Brick Blocks, Mario turns invincible for a short amount of time, and can defeat enemies by simply touching them.

At the end of each level, there is a castle with a flagpole nearby. When Mario reaches the flagpole, he takes down Bowser's flag and enters the castle, completing the level. The higher the spot that Mario hits the flagpole, the more points he recieves. If there are two players playing the game, Luigi's turn comes whenever Mario loses a life. Luigi has no special abilities in the game that are different from Mario's.

The fourth level of each world plays inside a castle. They are usually filled with Firebars, and Podoboos. At the end of a castle level, Mario is confronted with a False Bowser in Worlds 1 - 7 and the real Bowser in World 8. Mario ordinarily has no way to hurt Bowser, and has to either use the Ax to destroy the bridge, causing either the false Bowser or the real Bowser to fall into the lava, or pelt Bowser with a number of fireballs, which produces the same result and reveals the true forms of the fakes. After defeating a false Bowser, Mario frees several Toads from the castle, at which point they say their iconic sentence: "Thank you, Mario! But our princess is in another castle...". At the end of the castle in World 8, Mario frees the grateful Princess Toadstool and completes his adventure.

Modes
After beating the game, the player is given the option to start the game again in Hard Mode, where all Goombas are replaced by Buzzy Beetles, and all enemies walk faster; all of the elevator-style lifts are about sixty-percent of their original size, while firebars appear in all possible locations. However, the player still has the same amount of time to complete each level. The Mario Bros. gain no special powers in Hard Mode, and they receive no extra points when they defeat an enemy. The story remains exactly the same, as each of the first seven castles contain a Mushroom Retainer that needs rescuing, while the eighth castle has Princess Toadstool. If the player finishes the game on hard mode, he or she will unlock nothing new from the previous time the game was finished.

Items
Super Mario Bros. introduced some elements that made subsequent appearances in later Mario games:

Playable

 * Mario
 * Luigi

Non-Playable

 * Princess Toadstool
 * Mushroom Retainer

Enemies

 * Blooper
 * Bowser
 * Bill Blaster
 * Bullet Bill
 * Buzzy Beetle
 * Cheep Cheep
 * Firebar
 * Goomba
 * Hammer Bro.
 * Koopa Paratroopa
 * Koopa Troopa
 * Lakitu
 * Piranha Plant
 * Podoboo
 * Spiny
 * Spiny Egg

Bosses

 * False Bowser
 * Bowser

Development
Super Mario Bros. was developed concurrently with The Legend of Zelda by Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka and Toshihiko Nakago. Other people involved with the game include Koji Kondo, the composer, Kazuaki Morita and Yasunari Nishida, two programmers, and Hiroshi Yamauchi, the executive producer. According to the developers, some aspects were taken out of one game and brought over to another. For example, the firebars that are present in the castles of Super Mario Bros. were originally in The Legend of Zelda (this particular switch was made by Shigeru Miyamoto). A goal of Super Mario Bros. was to have the character traverse many different types of lands. According Tezuka the initial concept behind Super Mario was a dynamic, athletic game that would be set on land, sea and air and that would feature a large character. They wanted a Mario that was twice the size of the regular one.

In the beginning of development, Mario wasn't the playable character. At the start, they used a 16 X 32 pixel square that moved abouton a single non-scrolling screen. According Nakago, this was groundbreaking at the time. During this time the square wasn't even able to jump. Eventually though, Tezuka managed to get Mario to be the playable character.

Nakago and his team, Systems Research and Development (SRD), managed to make a blue background in the game. Typically games released during this time featured black backgrounds as to not strain someone's eyes. Developers realized that users would play their games for an extensive amount of time, and that a bright color might have distracted the player from the action. According to Nakago, he was so excited. After this, the entire development went on to designing the maps for the game. When designing the stages, Miyamoto and Tezuka would draw them out on paper and send them to Nakago and his team at SRD to program into the game. Miyamoto told SRD to make sure each stage lasts about a minute. After contemplating this, he realized that in most games it takes about a second to get from one end of the screen to the other, meaning in a single stage there would have to be numerous screens in one stage. At first they thought that Miyamoto would want them to create 60 screens per stage, but he then explained to them that there would be obstacles in each screen that would take time to get past. At most, the stage with the most screens has only thirty-two, though most stages only averaged around twelve.

Nakago stated that SRD would frequently receive a rich amount of documents requiring them to alter some aspects of stages. Back then, adjusting the conditions of a stage was tiresome while today it can be done quickly, especially in s game such as this. Apparently, the group would "pour over" the documents every day and by 10 at night they would finally be finished, go home and come back to repeat the process.

Reception
Super Mario Bros. received favorable reviews and considered one of the best games of all time. One of the most-praised aspects of the game is the precise controls in which players are able to control how far and high the characters jump and how fast they can run. The game popularized side scrolling video games, and the game received several sequels, followed by spin-offs, and many different ports and alternative versions. All characters, enemies and items found throughout the game have returned for following Mario games and the plot of Bowser kidnapping the princess has returned throughout the series.

It ranked the first spot in Electronic Gaming Monthly's "Greatest 200 Games of Their Time", named in IGN's top 100 games of all time lists in 2005 and 2007, and declared the second-best Mario game of all time. Super Mario Bros. has sold 40.24 million copies, being the best-selling Mario game and the second best-selling game of all time. It has received several other works such as a TV series based off it and movie.

References in Later Games

 * Super Mario Bros. Special- A sequel created by Hudson.
 * Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels- A direct sequel to Super Mario Bros. using many of the same sounds and sprites.
 * Super Mario Bros. 3- Bowser returns along with the rest of the Koopa Troop.
 * All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.- Many levels from ''Super Mario Bros. return.
 * Vs. Super Mario Bros.- This is a harder version of Super Mario Bros. for arcades.
 * 2-in-1 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt- A re-release of the game which was bundled with the NES console in the NES Action Set. As the name suggests, the game was in a cartridge that also includes the Zapper Light Gun game, Duck Hunt.
 * 3-in-1 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet- Same as 2-in-1 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, but as the title suggests, the cartridge also includes the game, World Class Track Meet. This bundle also includes the NES Power Pad that World Class Track Meet utilizes.
 * Super Mario Bros. 2- The American sequel to this game. Mushrooms, Starmen, and Koopa Shells appear
 * Super Mario Land- Mario's sprite in this game is near identical as in Super Mario Bros. and gameplay is also near identical.
 * Alleyway- Several sprites from Super Mario Bros appear in bonus levels.
 * New Super Mario Bros.- Many things from Super Mario Bros. return here, such as- Flagpoles, Warp Zones (in the form of cannons) and also a picture from Super Mario Bros. is an unlockable background.
 * Super Mario 64- Outside the Warp Pipe which leads to the final boss, carved into pillars are what look like sprites of Mario and Bowser from this game.
 * Super Mario Sunshine - A castle level is seen when Mario first met F.L.U.D.D.
 * Super Smash Bros. Brawl- The stage Mushroomy Kingdom is based on worlds 1-1 and 1-2 of this game.
 * Super Paper Mario - The sprites of Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser appear around said character when they collect the Pill Pals, plus, when any character (including a Koopa Troopa) grabs a Mega Star, they turn into a huge version of their SMB1 Sprites. (Mario and Luigi are their small forms in both.)

Alternate Versions, Re-releases

 * 1985 - Original release (US/Japan)
 * (Year Unknown) - Ported into the American arcade machine, the Nintendo Playchoice-10.
 * 1986 - Re-released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan.
 * 1986 - Game & Watch title.
 * 1986 - Released in arcades as VS Super Mario Bros.
 * 1988 - Re-released on the NES in the US as part of the 2-in-1 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt compilation, packaged with the NES Action Set.
 * 1990 - Re-released on the NES in the US as part of the 3-in-1 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet compilation, packaged with the NES Power Set.
 * 1993 - Remake available on the SNES as part of the Super Mario All-Stars compilation (known as Super Mario Collection in Japan). Graphics and sound were updated, and many glitches were removed.
 * 1994 - Remake available on the SNES in the US as part of the Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World compilation, packaged with the SNES Mario Set.
 * 1998 - Remake released on the Game Boy Color as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. The game featured the original game's graphics but loads of additional content.
 * 2001 - The original game is available as an unlockable NES game in Animal Crossing. Unfortunately, it can currently only be unlocked using an Action Replay cheat.
 * 2004 - The original game was re-released on the Game Boy Advance as part of the NES Classics / Famicom Mini collection, celebrating 20 years of the Famicom in Japan.
 * 2006 - Available on the Wii as part of the Virtual Console.
 * 2008 - Available in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a playable demo.

Trivia

 * The Super Mario Bros. Deluxe manual and the the Virtual Console page of this game state that Koopas used black magic to aid their conquest of the Mushroom Kingdom, though the only other occurrences of this is by the Koopalings in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Bowser in Paper Mario (with the aid of the Star Rod) and in Mario Party.
 * The game was placed 14th in the 100th issue of Nintendo Power's "100 best Nintendo games of all time" in 1997.
 * This game was originally supposed to be updated and packaged with Super Mario Advance, which would mean its sequels would have had the same side game.
 * Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 had Classic World 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, and 2-2. Only World 1-1 was released outside Japan.
 * The Super Mario Bros. Stamps set was released in Japan at the end of May, 2007. The stamps feature sprites of characters and items from this game.
 * If the player manages to get 129 or more lives, they will receive an instant Game Over should they die again. The game somehow interprets this as the player having a negative amount of lives; this is likely due to data overflow.
 * In order to differanciate the Goomba from the Super Mushroom to new players, and teach them that Super Mushrooms were a positive thing in the game, in the very first portion of World 1-1, the developers designed it so the player could stomp the incoming "menacing" Goomba, instinctively; and later reveal the Super Mushroom inside the ? Block. Since the Super Mushroom resembles the Goomba, the player might think is another enemy so he/she jumps over it again to stomp it. Doing this eventually led to the tranformmation from Small Mario to Super Mario.