Reception and Legacy
Super Mario Bros. popularized the side-scrolling genre of video games and led to many sequels in the series that built upon the same basic premise. Altogether, excluding Game Boy Advance and Virtual Console sales, the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game in the Mario series and the second best-selling game in the world. IGN had given the game a 9.5 a week before release day Almost all of the game's aspects have been praised at one time or another, from its large cast of characters to a diverse set of levels. One of the most-praised aspects of the game is the precise controls. The player is able to control how high and far Mario or Luigi jumps, and how fast he can run. Nintendo Power listed it as the fourth best Nintendo Entertainment System video game, describing it as the game that started the modern era of video games as well as "Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece". The game ranked first on Electronic Gaming Monthly′s "Greatest 200 Games of Their Time" list and was named in IGN's top 100 games of all time list twice (in 2005 and 2007). ScrewAttack declared it the second-best Mario game of all time. In 2009, Game Informer put Super Mario Bros. in second place on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time," behind The Legend of Zelda, saying that it "remains a monument to brilliant design and fun gameplay". In 2012, G4 ranked Super Mario Bros. first of the "Top 100 Video Games of All Time," citing its revolutionary gameplay as well as its role in "almost single-handedly" rescuing the video game industry.
The game was succeeded by two separate sequels that were produced for different markets: a Japanese sequel which features the same game format as the original and a Western sequel that was localized from an originally unrelated game titled Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. In both cases, the games are titled Super Mario Bros. 2, causing both games to be rereleased in different countries with different titles.
Super Mario Bros. has spawned many successors: Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (named Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan), Super Mario Bros. 2 (released in Japan as Super Mario USA), Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World (which had the working title of Super Mario Bros. 4) for the Super NES, Super Mario 64 (for Nintendo 64), Super Mario Sunshine (for Nintendo GameCube), New Super Mario Bros. (for Nintendo DS), Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2 (for Wii), Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. 2 (for Nintendo 3DS), and New Super Mario Bros. U (for Wii U). The game's sequels also inspired products in various media, such as an American television series, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, from 1989, and a live-action film, Super Mario Bros., released in 1993.
In the United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted an amicus brief citing social research that declared Super Mario Bros to be a violent video game. It was compared to Mighty Mouse and Road Runner, cartoons that depict a similar form of violence with little negative reaction from the public.
Super Mario Bros (along with many other Nintendo games) was proved to be NP-hard by Greg Aloupis, Erik Demaine and Alan Guoyz.
The game has inspired many iOS sidescrollers, most notably Sunflat Games's PapiJump Cave.
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Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or legacy:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)