Mario Bros. is a 1983 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for arcades. It was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo's chief engineer. Players control Italian twin brother plumbers Mario and Luigi as they exterminate turtle-like creatures, giant flies, and crabs emerging from the sewers of New York City by knocking them upside-down and kicking them away. The Famicom/NES version was the first game to be developed by Intelligent Systems. It is part of the Mario franchise and the first spin-off of the Donkey Kong series.
The arcade and Famicom/NES versions were received positively by critics. Elements introduced in Mario Bros., such as floating coins, enemy turtles, and Luigi, were carried over to Super Mario Bros. (1985) and became staples of the Mario series.
An updated version, titled Mario Bros. Classic, is included as a minigame in all of the Super Mario Advance series and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003). The NES version of Mario Bros. was re-released through the Wii and Wii U's Virtual Console, as well as the Nintendo Classics service for the Nintendo Switch. The original arcade version was released by Hamster Corporation as part of the Arcade Archives series for the Switch in 2017.
Mario Bros. features two plumbers, Italian brothers Mario and Luigi, having to investigate the sewers of New York after strange creatures have been appearing down there. The objective of the game is to defeat all of the enemies in each phase, using only running and jumping.
Unlike subsequent Mario games, players cannot jump on enemies to squash them, until they are already flipped on their back. Each phase consists of a series of platforms with pipes at each corner of the screen, along with an object called a "POW" block in the center. The screen uses wraparound, so characters that go off to one side reappear on the opposite side. Points are scored for defeating enemies and collecting the bonus coins that emerge from the pipes afterward.
Enemies are defeated by kicking them over once they have been flipped on their back. This is accomplished by hitting the platform the enemy is on directly beneath them. If the player allows too much time to pass after doing this the enemy will flip itself back over and recover. Four types of enemies emerge from the pipes: Shellcreeper; Sidestepper; Fighter Fly, which moves by jumping and can only be flipped when it is touching a platform; and Slipice, which turns platforms into slippery ice. Fireballs are a fifth enemy, floating around the screen instead of sticking to platforms. The "POW" block flips all enemies touching a platform or the floor when activated, but can only be used three times before disappearing. The game contains bonus stages. In later rounds, icicles begin to form on the underside of the platforms and fall off. One life is lost whenever the player touches an un-flipped enemy, fireball, or fully formed icicle. The game ends when all lives are lost.
Mario Bros. was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi, two of the lead developers for Donkey Kong (1981). In Donkey Kong, Mario dies if he falls too far. For Mario Bros., Yokoi suggested to Miyamoto that Mario should be able to fall from any height, which Miyamoto hesitantly thought would make it "not much of a game". He eventually agreed on some superhuman abilities. He designed a prototype that had Mario "jumping and bouncing around", which he was satisfied with. Yokoi suggested combating enemies from below, observing that it would work because there are multiple floors, but this proved too easy in gameplay, which the developers fixed by requiring the enemies to be touched after flipping. This was also how they introduced the turtle as an enemy that could only be hit from below. Because of Mario's appearance in Donkey Kong with overalls, a hat, and a thick moustache, and because Mario Bros. has a large network of giant pipes, Miyamoto changed Mario's occupation from carpenter to plumber. The game's music was composed by Yukio Kaneoka.
A popular story of how Mario went from Jumpman to Mario is that an Italian American landlord, Mario Segale, had barged in on Nintendo of America (NoA)'s staff to demand rent, and they decided to rename Jumpman after him. This story is contradicted by former NoA warehouse manager Don James, who has stated that he and NoA president Minoru Arakawa named the character after Segale as a joke because Segale was so reclusive that none of the employees had ever met him.
Miyamoto set the game in subterranean New York City due to what he called its "labyrinthine network of sewage pipes". The pipes were inspired by several manga, which he said feature waste grounds with pipes lying around. In this game, they are used to allow the enemies to enter and exit the stage neatly, to avoid them piling up on the bottom of the stage. The green coloring of the pipes, which Nintendo's late president Satoru Iwata called an uncommon color, came from Miyamoto having a limited color palette and wanting to keep things colorful. He added that two shades of green combine well.
Mario Bros. introduced Mario's brother, Luigi, who was created for the multiplayer mode by doing a palette swap of Mario. The two-player mode and several aspects of gameplay were inspired by Joust. To date, Mario Bros. has been released for more than a dozen platforms. The first movement from Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik is used at the start of the game. This song has been used in later video games, including Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Game Machine magazine reported that the game made its North American debut at the Amusement & Music Operators Association show during March 25–27, 1983, and entered mass production in Japan on June 21. The book Arcade TV Game List (2006), authored by Masumi Akagi and published by the Amusement News Agency, lists the release dates as March 1983 in North America and June 1983 in Japan. However, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said in a 2013 Nintendo Direct presentation that the game was released in Japan on July 14, 1983.
Upon release, Mario Bros. was initially labeled as being the third game in the Donkey Kong series. For home video game conversions, Nintendo held the rights to the game in Japan, while licensing the overseas rights to Atari, Inc.
Mario Bros. was ported by other companies to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit computers, Atari 7800, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum. The two versions for Commodore 64 are an unreleased Atarisoft version, and a 1986 version by Ocean Software. The Atari 8-bit computer version by Sculptured Software is the only home port which includes the falling icicles. An Apple II version was never commercially released.
A version by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems for the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System was released in Japan on September 9, 1983, followed by North America in June 1986. Another NES version was released exclusively in Europe in 1993 as part of the Classic Series. A version for NEC's PC-8001, unrelated to the Hudson Soft-developed Mario Bros. Special and Punch Ball Mario Bros., was developed by MISA and published by Westside Soft House in 1984. A modified version for the Famicom Disk System, titled Kaettekita Mario Bros., was released only in Japan on November 30, 1988, through the Disk Writer service. This version featured product placement from Japanese food company Nagatanien, with cutscenes advertising various food products.
In Taiwan and Mainland China, the game is sometimes nicknamed as Pipeline (管道) or Mr. Mary (瑪莉) due to the fact that counterfeits were distributed widely.
The NES version of Mario Bros. was ported via the Virtual Console service in North America, Australia, Europe, and Japan for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U. The original arcade version of Mario Bros. was released in September 2017 for the Nintendo Switch as part of the Arcade Archives series. The NES version is one of the first games to have been added to the Nintendo Classics service on the Switch.