VS. System

VS. System
	; VS. Super Mario Bros. in a VS. Table cabinet
Release date	February 1984
Discontinued	1990
Successor	Nintendo PlayChoice-10

The VS. System is a collection of coin-operated VS. DualSystem or VS. UniSystem arcade systems, and the games were designed for competitive play. The VS. DualSystem comes with two screens and four sets of controls, meaning it had support for four simultaneous players, which only the launch title, VS. Tennis, takes advantage of, not any games of the Super Mario franchise. The first model is the red sit-down type that lets players face each other and was later renamed renamed VS. Table.^[2] The upright type looks like two machines conjoined at an angle. The VS. UniSystem is like a conventional upright arcade cabinet with two sets of controls and a single screen, and it can either come as a dedicated gray cabinet or be a conversion from Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., or Popeye cabinets. It is not possible to convert the dedicated wide-body Mario Bros. cabinets or the Punch-Out!! cabinets. In Japan, there are conversion kits for cocktail cabinets.^[3]

The VS. System was designed in response to the video game crash of 1983, when Nintendo created the Nintendo-Pak conversion kits for Mario Bros. in addition to selling the dedicated wide-body cabinets.^[4] Donkey Kong 3 was available only as a Nintendo-Pak, which spared operators from having to buy the cabinet.^[5] The VS. System was successful, and this spurred the development of the Nintendo PlayChoice-10. Nintendo's final first party VS. System titles were each released in Japan in 1985 and in North America in 1990.

The VS. System games are mostly ports of Nintendo Entertainment System games, although many have notable changes in their graphics, gameplay, and difficulty. One exception is VS. Wrecking Crew, released a year before its NES counterpart Wrecking Crew, from which it greatly differs.