One of the most iconic titles in video game history is celebrating its 40th anniversary today but how has Super Mario Bros. managed to stay relevant for so long?
In 1985, most adults considered video games to be, at best, a fad and at worst a malign influence on children across the world. This was back when the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 were the dominant formats in the UK, and Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was one of the best-selling games of the year. At that time, coin-op arcades were the cutting edge of video game technology and in 1985 the most advanced was Sega’s sprite-scaling pioneer Space Harrier.
Despite how ancient the technology may have been, there are many games from that period which remain perfectly playable today, in their original form. The recently re-released Gradius debuted that year, as did Capcom’s Ghosts ‘N Goblins, and the Russian version of Tetris. The art of video game design was in its infancy, but it was still advanced enough to birth games whose popularity and influence continues to this day.
But influence does not necessary imply fame or longevity. Western role-players Wizardry and Ultima, for example, helped inspire the entire concept of Japanese role-playing games but few know or play them today. But everyone knows Super Mario Bros. Whether they’ve ever played it or not they know the game, they know the characters, and they probably even know the music.
As the success of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie proved, it’s not just Mario and his brother that are well known to generations of gamers and non-gamers alike, but his allies, his enemies, and the whole concept of running around and jumping on platforms in a surrealistic cartoon landscape. Super Mario Bros. is one of the quintessential video game experiences and one that can be recognised and understood by almost anyone in the world.
It didn’t necessarily start out that way though, as it took almost two years for the game appear in Europe and given the tardy arrival of the NES console, and the exhortative price of it and its games, it was not widely popular in the UK at the time. And yet even then its presence was keenly felt, in terms of everything from blatant clones like The Great Giana Sisters to the slowly solidifying sense of what a platform game actually is.
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Although Nintendo is treating the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. as if it’s also the birthday of Mario that’s not the case at all. The world’s most famous plumber debuted in Donkey Kong in 1981 and then appeared in multiple other games, including the single screen Mario Bros., before the release of Super Mario Bros. four years later.
The single screen action of Donkey Kong, with its relatively slow and inflexible protagonist, was hugely influential on the nascent platformer genre, including British classics such as Manic Miner and Monty Mole. In 1984, Jet Set Willy was celebrated as the pinnacle of game design on the Spectrum and C64 and yet just a year later Super Mario Bros. arrived and redefined the whole concept of an action video game.
How to play Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo Switch 1 and 2
Super Mario Bros. has been re-released many, many times on almost every Nintendo format, but there’s never been a physical release on either Switch console. However, the original NES version, and its various sequels, are available as part of the basic Nintendo Switch Online service.
Nintendo Switch Online is essentially Nintendo’s version of PlayStation Plus and costs £3.49 for a month, £6.99 for three months, and £17.99 for a year. There’s also a free seven day trial if you haven’t used it before.
The service includes access to a wide range of NES and SNES games, with the latter including Super Mario All-Stars, which features remakes of the original four Super Mario Bros. games, with a similar graphical style to Super Mario World.
Alternatively, Vs. Super Mario Bros. is available to buy for £6.29 from the eShop, as part of the Arcade Archives label. This was a modified version of the game made for arcades, which was much harder than the original. However, because it was originally a coin-op it was actually the first version of the game to be available in Europe and many other countries outside Japan.
What marks Super Mario Bros. as a true classic is not that it influenced other contemporaries, but that it continues to do so even now. Few triple-A publishers other than Nintendo would make a 2D platformer nowadays but distant cousin Yoshi And The Mysterious Book was revealed during Friday’s Nintendo Direct, which also saw the annoucement of Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup In Bellabel Park.
When it was originally released in 2023, Wonder could easily have been named Super Mario Bros. 4 (probably the only reason it wasn’t is because Super Mario World has that subtitle in Japan) and although it’s filled with wildly imaginative features and surprises, as well as co-op options that would’ve been impossible on the NES, the gameplay, and the controls, are still fundamentally the same as they were in 1985.
The New Super Mario Bros. sub-series is not well liked by fans, for its uncharacteristically conservative take on the formula, but the four titles have been incredibly successful, with the original game on the Nintendo DS selling a staggering 30.8 million copies and even New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on Switch selling 18.25 million copies, despite being a fairly straightforward Wii U port.
Many franchises from the 80s still exist today but few are so little changed from their original concept. There was great innovation between Super Mario Bros. 1 and 3 (2, famously, is an adaptation of an entirely unconnected game) and again with Super Mario World, but no matter how much the details and the graphics change the fundamentals remain the same.
But it’s not just Nintendo. The indie scene is not only rife with clones and homages, but few can resist adding a reference to the series at some point, whether it’s Braid or Deltarune. And that’s not even getting into how many other games, from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood to Cyberpunk 2077 joke about princesses being in another castle or other more subtle nods and Easter eggs.
For 40 years Super Mario Bros. has remained one of the most iconic video games in history and there is absolutely no reason to think it won’t remain that way for another 40.
Publishers today dream of the idea of a forever game – a live service title like Fortnite or Minecraft whose popularity will never wane – but Super Mario Bros. achieved that 40 years ago, and it doesn’t need constant updates or expensive new cosmetics to keep it relevant. The design of Super Mario Bros. is so perfect, so inspired and inspiring, that as long as video games are still being played and enjoyed its appeal will never end.
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