Super Mario

• 1. Introduction

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  Super Mario is a Nintendo platform game series, and in the United Kingdom the wider Mario franchise is recognized by 91% of adults. That makes it the most famous video game franchise there. Shigeru Miyamoto created the series, and its star is Nintendo's mascot, Mario. At least one Super Mario game has appeared on every major Nintendo console. A few have even appeared on non-Nintendo platforms. The plots are simple. Mario, often joined by his brother Luigi, usually sets out to rescue the kidnapped Princess Peach from the villain Bowser. So why does such a simple premise keep drawing players back? Where did Mario come from, and what did the designers keep changing as the series ran and jumped across decades? What happened when a game built on flat, scrolling screens had to work in three dimensions? And what do the numbers look like after all those years?

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• 2. Arcade To Console

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  In 1980, Nintendo released its first arcade video game, Radar Scope, and it was a commercial failure. Company president Hiroshi Yamauchi asked Shigeru Miyamoto to turn the unused cabinets into a new game. Miyamoto wanted it to star characters from Popeye. Negotiations with Popeye's owner, King Features, fell through, so three new characters were created instead: Jumpman, Lady and Donkey Kong. The game, called Donkey Kong, reached arcades in 1981. Lady was later renamed Pauline, and Jumpman was renamed Mario. Miyamoto then made Mario's brother Luigi by giving Mario's sprite a new palette. The two starred together in the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. Both games centered on jumping to dodge obstacles, and both are considered landmark titles of the platform genre.

  Also in 1983, the video game market crashed. That July, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan, a console known elsewhere as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. It reached markets outside Japan in 1985. Yamauchi gave Miyamoto his own development team, Nintendo R&D4, which was later renamed Nintendo EAD. Its job was to make games for the console before it arrived in North America. Prototyping for a new Mario game began in December 1984. Miyamoto directed it, and a company called SRD handled the programming.

  Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka led the project, and Super Mario Bros. came out for the NES on the 13th of September 1985. Koji Kondo composed the soundtrack. Its main theme has become one of the best-known video game themes anywhere in the world. The game is credited with helping to revive the industry after the 1983 crash, and with much of the NES's success in North America. It sold over forty million units, which makes it one of the best-selling games of all time.

  In 1986, a sequel called Super Mario Bros. 2 reached players in Japan on the Famicom Disk System. It reused many assets from the first game but was much harder, and some levels came from Vs. Super Mario Bros., an arcade adaptation. Nintendo feared Western audiences would find it too difficult, so it never left Japan. Instead, Nintendo took a game called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic and replaced its characters with Mario characters. Doki Doki Panic began as a prototype for a vertically scrolling, two-player cooperative game. It later gained side-scrolling elements to feel closer to Super Mario Bros., and its cast came from the Yume Kōjō expo as a tie-in. The Mario version was released outside Japan in October 1988 as Super Mario Bros. 2, directed by Kensuke Tanabe. Later, the two games swapped places. The Western version reached Japan as Super Mario USA, and the original Japanese sequel reached the world as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.

  Super Mario Bros. 3 came next, directed and designed by Miyamoto and Tezuka, with Kondo returning as composer. It arrived in Japan in 1988 and in the United States two years later, to critical and commercial success.

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• 3. Power-Up Inventory

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  Beta tests of Super Mario Bros. showed that Mario was too tall, according to an interview with Miyamoto. The team responded with mushrooms that could make him grow and shrink, so the series' signature item was created by chance. The Super Mushroom looks like the Amanita muscaria, with an ivory stalk and a spotted cap. The cap is most commonly red and white, and was originally red and orange. Collecting one turns the character into a "Super" version who is larger and can break certain blocks. If an enemy hits that bigger character, he shrinks instead of losing a life. While he is big, most blocks that would hold a Super Mushroom hold something stronger, such as the Fire Flower.

  Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels introduced the Poison Mushroom, which causes damage when collected. New Super Mario Bros. brought the Mini Mushroom, which shrinks the character to miniature size. It also brought the Mega Mushroom, which temporarily turns the character into a towering, invulnerable giant. That giant can destroy enemies and scenery just by running through them.

  The Fire Flower, introduced in Super Mario Bros., lets the character throw bouncing fireballs at enemies. Super Mario Galaxy was the first 3D game in the series to include it, as a limited-time item, and Galaxy 2 did the same. The Ice Flower shoots balls of ice that freeze enemies into blocks. Those blocks can serve as platforms or be thrown, as seen in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and New Super Mario Bros. U. When the Ice Flower first appeared in Galaxy, it turned Mario or Luigi into ice and let him walk on lava or water by freezing the surface. New Super Mario Bros. 2 added the Gold Flower, which turns brick blocks into coins. Koopa Shells have served as a major projectile since the original game.

  A yellow, flashing star with eyes grants invincibility, and it first appeared in Super Mario Bros. It was originally known as the "Starman" and is also called the "Rainbow Star." A distinctive music track plays whenever it is active, and the character flickers through a variety of colors. In some games he also runs faster and jumps higher. While the star lasts, he can defeat almost any enemy on contact. In Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, the star gives the normally immobile baby Mario the ability to run.

  In Super Mario Odyssey, Mario can even possess other characters, and some of them can launch their own projectiles.

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• 4. Level Design Toolbox

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  Floating item blocks, which first appeared in Super Mario Bros., hand out nearly everything in the series, from coins to power-ups. Variations include blocks that are invisible until hit, blocks that dispense advice, and blocks that produce another block. Others move, freeze, depend on a switch, or bounce. The propeller block lets the character spin up into the air and slowly descend, and the Gold Block generates coins as the character runs. In level design, a single block is the unit of measurement.

  Yellow coins, often floating in groups, serve as puzzles, rewards and guidance through a level. Most games award an extra life at a set total, commonly 50 or 100. Variants include blue, red, silver, dragon and star coins. In Super Mario 64, Sunshine, Galaxy and Galaxy 2, coins also replenish health, and air when the character is underwater. In 64 and Sunshine, collecting 100 coins in a level earns a Power Star or a Shine Sprite respectively. Some stages in 64 give a Power Star for eight red coins, each worth two normal coins. A blue coin in that game is worth five. In Sunshine, blue coins become a side quest. For every ten deposited at the Delfino Bank, Mario earns a Shine Sprite. In the Galaxy games, finishing the game once opens missions that require collecting 100 purple coins for a Power Star. In Galaxy 2, those coins can also feed "Hungry Luma" characters, who turn into an item or another planet.

  The 1-Up mushroom debuted in Super Mario Bros., and the term "1-up" later spread to other game series as a generic word for an extra life. In the monochrome Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2, the 1-Up is a heart instead of a differently colored mushroom. Super Mario World added the 3-Up Moon. Extra lives can also come from collecting coins or playing minigames.

  Green Warp Pipes are the series' most common method of travel. Early games included silver pipes, and later games added red, blue and yellow ones. Some pipes hold enemies, usually Piranha Plants, and in the New Super Mario Bros. series some launch the player into the air. In Super Mario Bros., hidden Warp Zones contain pipes that let players skip several worlds at once. The New Super Mario Bros. series replaces them with pipe-shaped Warp Cannons, found by discovering secret exits. Cannons have appeared in most 3D games since Super Mario 64. There, the character jumps into the barrel, aims, and fires at a distant target.

  Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced the overworld, a map of nonlinear levels that branches according to the player's choice. In the 2D games, the character usually moves to the right across a scrolling screen. Each level has a single exit that must be reached within a time limit. Super Mario World then introduced levels with secret exits.

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• 5. Third Dimension

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  Star Fox, a Super Nintendo game from 1993, was where Miyamoto conceived a 3D Mario design. He considered using the Super FX chip for a SNES game called Super Mario FX, built around "an entire world in miniature, like miniature trains". He eventually reworked the idea for the Nintendo 64. The reason was not the console's greater power. It was that the Nintendo 64 controller had more buttons for gameplay.

  Production of Super Mario 64 began on the 7th of September 1994 and concluded on the 20th of May 1996. The whole project took about three years, with one year on the design concept and about two on production. It was a launch game for the Nintendo 64, and the first 3D and open world game in the series. Each level is an enclosed environment that the player can explore in every direction without a time limit. The player gathers Power Stars from paintings in Peach's castle, which open later courses. The analog stick allows precise movement in all directions. The power-ups are three hats: the Wing Cap for flight, the Metal Cap that turns Mario to metal, and the Vanish Cap that lets him walk through obstacles. The game is considered seminal to 3D video games, and it was the first in the series to use Charles Martinet's voice for Mario. A remake, Super Mario 64 DS, appeared on the Nintendo DS in 2004 and 2005 with new playable characters, abilities, objectives, multiplayer and minigames.

  Super Mario Sunshine reached the GameCube in 2002. Mario and Peach travel to Isle Delfino for a vacation, and a doppelgänger called Shadow Mario vandalizes the island. Mario is sentenced to clean it with a water-squirting device named F.L.U.D.D. The game has independent levels reached from a hub, Delfino Plaza, and Mario earns Shine Sprites by completing tasks in them. It also adds moves such as spinning while jumping. Sunshine introduces Bowser Jr., the last of Bowser's eight children, as an antagonist.

  Miyamoto explained that while making Super Mario 64 with Yoshiaki Koizumi, they realized the game suited the "core gamer" more than the casual, "pick-up-and-go" player. After Sunshine, their focus shifted to more accessible games. That led to Super Mario Galaxy, built with more progression-oriented paths. It launched on the Wii in 2007 and sends Mario or Luigi through space to collect Power Stars. It introduced motion controls to the series, and it was the first Super Mario game with orchestrated music. Each celestial object has its own gravity, so the character can walk sideways or upside down around small planets. The 3D games now fall into two groups. Open world explorers include 64, Sunshine and Odyssey. Linear games with more fixed camera angles include Galaxy, Galaxy 2, 3D Land and 3D World.

  By the mid-2010s, 3D platformers such as Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time were chasing the open-world "collectathon" style that had fallen out of favor by the mid-2000s. Super Mario Odyssey, released for the Nintendo Switch in October 2017, returned to "more open-ended exploration like in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine." Mario must save Peach from a forced marriage with Bowser. Bowser's Fury, part of the 2021 re-release of Super Mario 3D World, brings free-roaming gameplay and many elements from Odyssey.

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• 6. Yoshi And Handheld Detours

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  Super Mario Land reached the Game Boy in 1989, and apart from a Game & Watch conversion of Super Mario Bros., it was the first handheld game in the series. It is a sidescrolling platformer in which Mario saves Princess Daisy from the spaceman Tatanga. The game has twelve levels split across four worlds. Reaching the higher of two exits at the end of a level starts a minigame for extra lives. Items include the Super Mushroom, the Super Flower and the Super Star.

  Yoshi's Island also gave Yoshi a dog to ride, named Poochy. Elsewhere, the plesiosaur Dorrie can be ridden in Super Mario 64, and Plessie can be ridden in Super Mario 3D World. Vehicles have included a magic carpet in Super Mario Bros. 2, and a helicopter, a train and a mole tank in Yoshi's Island. The Koopa Clown Car, the personal transport of Bowser and the Koopalings, even has a fireball-shooting variant in Super Mario Maker.

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• 7. Two-Dimensional Revival

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  After no original 2D release in the series since 1995, New Super Mario Bros. arrived on the Nintendo DS in 2006. Mario and Luigi set out to save Princess Peach from Bowser Jr. Most of the characters and objects are 3D models on two-dimensional backgrounds, which creates a 2.5D effect. The game uses an overworld map similar to the one in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. The classic power-ups return alongside a new Blue Shell.

  New Super Mario Bros. Wii, released in 2009, features four-player cooperative play. Its new power-ups are the Propeller Mushroom, the Ice Flower and the Penguin Suit, and all characters can ride Yoshi. New Super Mario Bros. 2 came to the Nintendo 3DS in the summer of 2012, with a secondary goal of collecting as many coins as possible. New Super Mario Bros. U followed on the Wii U in November 2012. It introduced a Flying Squirrel suit that lets characters glide, and asymmetric gameplay in which the player holding the GamePad can influence the environment. In June 2013, New Super Luigi U arrived as downloadable add-on with shorter but harder levels starring Luigi. It was later released as a standalone retail game, on the 25th of August in North America. The Nintendo Switch port, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, includes both games and adds the playable characters Nabbit and Toadette.

  Super Mario Maker, a creation tool released for the Wii U in September 2015, lets players build their own levels in the style of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros. U. Players can share the results online. A Nintendo 3DS version arrived in December 2016 with a few new pre-installed levels but no online sharing. Super Mario Maker 2 was released for the Nintendo Switch on the 28th of June 2019, with many new items, themes and enemies, a world-builder and online multiplayer.

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• 8. Acclaim And Sales

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  In 2006, IGN ranked Super Mario as the best game franchise. In 1996, Next Generation placed the series fifth on its "Top 100 Games of All Time" list, and ranked Super Mario 64 first, while noting a rule that series be confined to a single entry. By 1999, the magazine listed the Mario series third on its "Top 50 Games of All Time" and wrote, "The depth of the game design was never matched in 2D and has yet to be equaled by a 3D action performer."

  Electronic Gaming Monthly credited the developers' tireless creativity and innovation for the series' excellence. It pointed out that "Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series changed very little in its four installments on the Genesis. The Mario series has changed significantly with each new game." The original Super Mario Bros. topped Electronic Gaming Monthly's list of the greatest 200 games of its time. It also topped IGN's list of the top 100 games of all time twice, in 2005 and 2007. Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and Super Mario 64 have each been ranked as the best in the series by various lists. Before Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Galaxy held the top ranking on GameRankings for ten years.

  By March 1993, the first seven Super Mario games had sold 100 million units together. Today the series has sold more than 430 million copies worldwide, which puts it sixth among video game series. Ahead of it are the larger Mario franchise, Tetris, Call of Duty, the Pokémon video game series, and Grand Theft Auto. Super Mario Bros. sold more than 50 million units across multiple platforms by 1996.

  Super Mario Bros. 3 sold 18 million copies and Super Mario Bros. 2 sold 10 million, placing them second and third among NES games. Super Mario World, at 20 million, is the best-selling game on the SNES. Super Mario 64 leads the Nintendo 64 with 11 million, and Super Mario Sunshine is second on the GameCube with 5.5 million, behind Super Smash Bros. Melee. Super Mario Galaxy sold 12.80 million units and Galaxy 2 sold 7.41 million. New Super Mario Bros. Wii reached 30.32 million, the fourth best-selling game on the Wii. Super Mario 3D World and its Switch port have together sold over 19 million.

  On handhelds, Super Mario Land sold 18.14 million copies and Super Mario Land 2 sold 11.18 million. New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS sold 30.80 million, which makes it the best-selling game on that console. Super Mario Odyssey had sold 29.28 million units as of March 2025, the most of any 3D game in the series. Remakes keep arriving too, including Super Mario Galaxy and Galaxy 2 together in 2025, and a Nintendo Switch 2 edition of Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2026.

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