History - Super Mario Fan Page

? Timeline

Key Moments

1981

Donkey Kong

Jumpman debuts in arcades. The character who will become Mario is born under technical constraint.

1983

Mario Bros.

Jumpman is renamed Mario and joined by Luigi. The brothers work the sewers of New York.

1985

Super Mario Bros.

The NES launch title that redefined gaming globally. 40 million copies sold.

1988

SMB 2 & 3

Two sequels in one year: a reimagined western edition and the greatest NES game ever made.

1989

Mario Goes Portable

Super Mario Land launches with the Game Boy - a new team, new kingdoms, Princess Daisy’s debut.

1990

Super Mario World

SNES launch title. Yoshi’s debut. 96 exits. The pinnacle of 2D Mario.

1992

SML 2 & Wario

Super Mario Land 2 introduces Wario — anti-Mario, future franchise star.

1995

Yoshi’s Island

The Super FX2 chip powers a bold visual reinvention. Baby Mario, eggs, and a crying mechanic.

1996

Super Mario 64

The leap to 3D. An N64 launch title that defined third-person platforming for two decades.

? 1981–1984

The Arcade Origins

Jumpman, Donkey Kong, and the birth of a character.

Super Mario Bros. (1985) - the NES box art that launched a generation — Super Mario Bros. (1985) - the game that arrived with the NES and rebuilt the North American video game market from scratch.

Donkey Kong: The Unlikely Origin (1981)

Mario was not designed — he was invented by necessity. In 1981, Shigeru Miyamoto was tasked with producing a game for Nintendo’s struggling arcade division using a Radar Scope cabinet. The result was Donkey Kong: a carpenter called Jumpman must rescue his girlfriend Pauline from a giant gorilla.

Jumpman’s design was driven entirely by hardware limitation. At the resolution available — roughly 16 × 16 pixels for a character sprite — hair was impossible to animate convincingly, so a cap was substituted. A mouth was too small to render, so a moustache defined the face. Overalls distinguished arms from the body in motion. The character was defined by what the hardware could not do.

Mario Bros.: Luigi Arrives (1983)

In 1983, Mario Bros. gave the carpenter a profession (plumber), a surname (Mario), and a brother (Luigi). Designed for simultaneous two-player cooperation, the game was set in the sewers of New York, with Mario and Luigi battling turtles, crabs, and fighter flies by bumping platforms from beneath to flip enemies, then kicking them away.

Mario Bros. established the cooperative dynamic that would define the series’ two-player modes and introduced Luigi — a character who would eventually earn his own franchise, his own mansion, and an entire Year (2013) dedicated to him by Nintendo.

? 1985–1989

The NES Era

World 1-1. Eight worlds. The most important games in platform history.

Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 gameplay - the iconic opening stage — Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 - perhaps the most analysed single stage in game design history. Every element teaches the player how to play without a single word.

Super Mario Bros.: World 1-1 Changes Everything (1985)

Super Mario Bros. launched alongside the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in October 1985. The American video game market had collapsed in 1983 under a flood of low-quality Atari 2600 software. Nintendo repackaged the NES as a toy — complete with R.O.B. the robot — to get past skeptical retailers and created Super Mario Bros. as the system’s killer application.

The game’s design was revolutionary in its pedagogy. World 1-1 begins with a gap and a Goomba: the player must jump. A ? Block releases a mushroom that grows Mario larger. The player learns, without instruction, that blocks reward and that growing is good. By the time the player reaches the first castle, they understand physics, power-ups, enemies, and flagpoles — all taught through play. Miyamoto called this “obstacles that teach.”

Super Mario Bros. 3: The NES at Its Ceiling (1988)

Released in Japan in October 1988 and North America in February 1990, Super Mario Bros. 3 is widely considered the greatest NES game ever made. Eight themed worlds — each with an overworld map, distinctive aesthetic, and unique enemy roster — gave the game a sense of geography unprecedented in platform games. The Tanooki Suit, Frog Suit, and Hammer Suit expanded Mario’s power-up vocabulary dramatically.

SMB3 previewed in the 1989 American film The Wizard, starring Fred Savage, making it the first game in history to be genuinely famous in America before it was available to purchase. Queues formed outside stores on its February 1990 US release — a cultural moment unprecedented for a video game.

Super Mario Bros. 3 NES box art — Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988 JP / 1990 NA) - the game that had American children lining up outside stores before it had even shipped.

Super Mario Bros. 3 Longplay

A complete run through all eight worlds of Super Mario Bros. 3 — from World 1’s grasslands through the airships, giant enemies, and the ice world, to the final confrontation with Bowser in Dark Land.

Longplay · World of Longplays

? 1990–1995

The SNES Golden Era

Yoshi’s debut. 16-bit masterpieces. The peak of 2D platform design.

Super Mario World SNES gameplay - Mario riding Yoshi in Dinosaur Land — Super Mario World (1990) - the SNES launch title that introduced Yoshi and expanded the Mario universe to 96 exits across 72 stages.

Super Mario World: Yoshi at Last (1990)

Yoshi — a rideable dinosaur Miyamoto had sketched for the original Super Mario Bros. but the NES hardware could not support — finally arrived with the SNES. Super Mario World launched with the Super Famicom in Japan (November 1990) and the SNES in North America (August 1991). The game showcased everything the SNES could do: a 512-colour palette, hardware-accelerated scrolling, sampled audio via the Sony SPC700 chip, and Mode 7 effects in the ghost house and Bowser stages.

Super Mario World features 96 exits across 72 stages — the largest Mario game yet. Many stages contain two exits, requiring players to find alternate paths. The hidden Star Road connects across the map to Bowser’s castle in a secret warp network; the Special Zone beyond it contains the game’s eight hardest stages, accessible only after clearing Star Road entirely.

Yoshi’s Island: A Bold Reinvention (1995)

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995) used the Super FX2 chip — an enhanced version of the co-processor used in Star Fox — to achieve its distinctive hand-drawn crayon-and-watercolour visual style. The game cast Yoshi and Baby Mario as protagonists, set in the past before Mario’s adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom.

The egg-throwing mechanic — swallow enemies, turn them into eggs, aim with a reticle and fire — replaced the simple jumping of previous games as the central skill expression. Flutter jumping, Yoshi vehicle transformations, and the 100-point completion system made it one of the most replayable entries in the series. Baby Mario’s crying when knocked from Yoshi’s back remains one of the most deliberately irritating sounds in platform game history.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island SNES box art — Yoshi’s Island (1995) - the hand-drawn crayon aesthetic was achieved using the Super FX2 chip, rendering the effect in real time rather than using pre-rendered assets.

I designed the underwater levels in Super Mario Bros. partly because I was afraid of the ocean. I wanted to put that feeling of unease into the game — the sensation of something coming from behind you in dark water. — Takashi Tezuka

? 1996

The Leap to 3D

Super Mario 64 and the invention of third-person gaming.

Super Mario 64 Nintendo 64 box art — Super Mario 64 (1996) - the N64 launch title that invented the conventions of third-person 3D gaming. The face-stretching title screen caused queues at E3 1996.

Super Mario 64: Reinventing the Platform Game (1996)

Super Mario 64 shipped as a Nintendo 64 launch title in June 1996 in Japan and September 1996 in North America. The game placed Mario inside Peach’s castle as a hub world, with 15 paintings serving as portals to self-contained 3D environments. The analogue stick of the N64 controller mapped directly to Mario’s movement speed: a gentle push walked, a full push ran. Backflips, triple jumps, wall kicks, and long jumps gave Mario a movement vocabulary that no 3D game had explored.

The camera system — controlled via the C buttons and operated in-world by a Lakitu character — was developed in parallel with the game itself. Miyamoto’s team observed that existing 3D games of the era were difficult to navigate because cameras were fixed. They invented the free-roaming third-person camera to solve the problem — and the entire industry followed. The BLJ (Backwards Long Jump) speedrunning technique that allows clipping through certain walls emerged from the physics system’s momentum accumulation.

What if everything looks perfect but it’s just not fun? That’s the most dangerous trap in game design. — Shigeru Miyamoto