NES · 1985
Super Mario Bros.
The game that saved the North American market and taught the world how to play. World 1-1 remains the most studied piece of game design in history.
Super Mario Bros. launched in September 1985 in Japan and reached North America packaged with the Nintendo Entertainment System, tasked with reviving a video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash. It succeeded beyond any reasonable prediction. The game sold over 40 million copies, established Nintendo as the dominant force in home gaming, and introduced a set of design principles — implicit teaching through level layout, responsive physics, escalating challenge — that the entire platform genre still follows.
Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka designed the game at Nintendo R&D4. Miyamoto had already created Donkey Kong (1981), which introduced Mario as Jumpman, and Mario Bros. (1983), which gave him his name and his brother Luigi. Super Mario Bros. was something different: a continuous side-scrolling world, a physics system that made jumping feel like thought made physical, and a structure that rewarded exploration as much as completion. Koji Kondo composed the soundtrack working within the NES’s three-voice limitation — and produced the most recognisable piece of game music ever written.