Nintendo Releases Super Mario Bros.

On September 13, 1985, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. in Japan for the Family Computer, known internationally as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Directed and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and co-designed with Takashi Tezuka, the title built upon their earlier work on games such as Excitebike and Kung Fu. Seeking to move past the static single-screen format of the 1983 arcade title Mario Bros., the team developed an expansive side-scrolling platformer with dynamic movement, distinct vertical environments, and bright, colorful backdrops.

Technical limitations guided much of the game's ingenious construction. The developers worked within a cartridge capacity of just 256 kilobits of program code alongside 64 kilobits of visual assets. To conserve space, graphic elements were repurposed; bushes were built from the same graphic tiles as clouds, simply recolored green, while sound effects such as taking damage and entering a pipe used the same audio cues. Goombas, the game's basic adversaries, were drawn as a single image that was mirrored back and forth to simulate walking. Programmer Toshihiko Nakago later recalled that when about twenty bytes were left over late in development, Miyamoto used them to add a small crown, a reward for players who built up ten or more extra lives.