The barrel-lobbing simian was so big, in fact, that it was easy for arcade-goers at the time to completely overlook the little guy leaping and hopping his way up those sloping girders. This was, of course, the screen debut of the character the world would later come to know as Mario, initially known simply as Jumpman: a diminutive underdog with a moustache, peaked cap and matching red dungarees who seemed fated to repeatedly leap over obstacles and die for all eternity. Or at least until the player either ran out of coins or reached the infamous 117th screen, at which point the game ran out of memory and crashed.

Like a pop band living in the shadow of its top 10 hit, though, Nintendo initially struggled to come up with a game that could match Donkey Kong for sheer icon status. Sequels Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3 were charming titles, but neither reached their predecessor’s heights, either culturally or in terms of coins collected from punters.

Mario Bros. NES title screen. Source: Retrogame Man.

All of which is useful context for Mario Bros., released in March 1983 as an arcade game in Japan – roughly six months before Donkey Kong 3 was first seen bleeping and flashing in arcades. In many respects, Mario Bros. is a continuation of Donkey Kong’s ideas: it is a fixed-screen platformer, much like that earlier game, with colourful cartoon graphics, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, and the return of the little hero who appeared in a cameo (narratively framed) as a villain in Donkey Kong Jr. the year before.

By now, however, Mario is a more fleshed-out character with a nationality, a brother, and even something of a backstory. Mario and Luigi are Italian-American plumbers investigating Nintendo’s distinctly Japanese imagining of New York City’s surreal sewage system, which happens to be teeming with turtles (here called Shellcreepers), crabs, deadly houseflies, and, in an unexpected continuation from Donkey Kong, bouncing fireballs.

Contrasting Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.’s emphasis on climbing and avoiding hazards, Mario Bros. is about attack. The two brothers don’t have a weapon between them (curiously, not even a monkey wrench…), but they are seemingly impervious to headaches or mild concussion. Jumping underneath a platform as an enemy passes by above will see that enemy stunned from the impact. Victory comes from charging up to the enemy and booting them off the screen to rack up some points; once a stage is cleared of threats, it’s onto the next.

With its two-player co-op action, Mario Bros. both echoes Williams’ US arcade game Joust, released a year earlier, and plays like a dry run for Taito’s glorious Bubble Bobble, which came out in 1986 – the latter being another two-player, single-screen game where enemies have to be immobilised before they’re snuffed out of existence.

Nor was Mario Bros. the only game called Mario Bros., and starring the Mario brothers, released in 1983. That March saw the launch of the Game & Watch version of Mario Bros. – an entirely different experience that plays like a mixture of Donkey Kong and the juggling action of the first Game & Watch title, Ball. The player controls both Mario and Luigi at the same time, using them as a remote pair of hands to fill boxes with bottles and prevent them from falling off a set of conveyor belts. The handheld Mario Bros. makes an enticing use of two LCD displays arranged to provide a split view of a single factory floor; the two brothers are on either side of the screen, and can be moved up and down to catch the boxes and move them between conveyor belts.

(It’s also worth mentioning Nintendo’s interest in working class jobs here; in Donkey Kong, Mario was imagined as a carpenter working on a construction site. In Donkey Kong Jr, he was a zookeeper. As well as a plumber and factory worker, he’s also variously appeared as a chef (Yoshi’s Cookie), construction worker (Wrecking Crew), boxing referee (Punch-Out) and more besides. In 1990, he broke through the class ceiling and became a medical professional in Dr Mario.)

There had clearly been some internal coordination between Nintendo’s design teams when the Mario Bros. games were made. A few minor colour differences aside, Mario and Luigi look remarkably consistent between the handheld and arcade counterparts, with graphics on the Game & Watch package and the coin-op’s side art depicting two stout fellows with moustaches and contrasting work outfits. As recently as Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., Mario’s proportions varied; on the latter’s arcade artwork, he wears white gloves and sports a curly moustache like a villain from the silent movie era. Here, for the first time, Mario begins to look like someone Nintendo intends to reuse across formats, rather than reinvent from game to game.

In short, 1983 was the year when Nintendo started to get a handle on Mario, his backstory (such as it was) and what he looked like.

In hindsight, though, Mario Bros. now looks and plays like a transitional phase between two eras and two design philosophies. Its fixed screen, black background and easy-to-grasp rules place it in the same arcade lineage of Donkey Kong and the rival games that followed. But Mario Bros.’ characters, attacks and other bits of imagery – pipes, gold coins, bricks and turtles – all point forward to the side-scrolling Super Mario Bros., released two years later in 1985 to enormous critical acclaim and commercial success, albeit in nascent form.

Headbutting a platform to stun the enemy above is a fun concept, but in retrospect, less satisfying and immediately intuitive than Miyamoto’s later idea of having Mario jump on a foe’s head. The green pipes look remarkably close to ones that would appear two years later, but they don’t have a function yet: they’re simply spawn points for the assorted subterranean threats.

Headbutting platforms to stun enemies. Source: Retrogame Man.

Nintendo, in a flush of creative energy, appeared to anticipate that players were itching for something other than the quick-fix thrills of arcade games. And so it was that, just as the North American video game market experienced a crash from which it would take years to recover, Nintendo released its debut console, the Famicom, in July 1983.

Again proving Donkey Kong’s star status, the Famicom (released as the NES outside Japan) was built from the ground up to run a faithful port of Donkey Kong. Mario Bros. emerged not long after, in September 1983, and because the original coin-op hardware was so similar to Donkey Kong’s, the Famicom version was also similar to the original, albeit with a few small differences here and there: sprite designs are smaller (and often flicker), and some levels were removed due to cartridge space issues. This is the version that would later appear on the NES as part of Nintendo’s Black Box Arcade Series – not as a flagship, but as a deliberate preservation of Mario’s arcade past alongside a future that had already been decisively defined. The Arcade Series quietly positioned these games as legacy works, rather than statements of intent.

Overall, it’s the same charming game: the controls are tight and precise, and the two-player action feels even more tailor-made to showcase the Famicom, which included a pair of wired-in controllers.

But as a game with longevity and zeitgeist-grabbing appeal, it was Super Mario Bros. that truly showed the possibilities of a home console. In a decisive step away from the coin-grabbing design of arcade games, Super Mario Bros. is filled with secret areas and hidden bonuses. There’s an objective beyond attaining a high score – the admittedly simplistic ‘rescue the princess’ – and enough ideas and variety to keep players busy for hours.

Mario Bros. was also the last game Nintendo made before it made something of a strategic shift. Like Donkey Kong before it, Mario Bros. was licensed out to other companies, meaning owners of the Atari 2600 and even the ZX Spectrum could buy their own officially-sanctioned port of the turtle-bothering platformer. After Mario Bros., Nintendo became far more protective of its increasingly famous mascot and where he appeared: Super Mario Bros. remained an exclusive to Nintendo consoles, as did his subsequent outings.

Earlier in the 1980s, all kinds of Donkey Kong clones appeared on computers and consoles, and Nintendo either didn’t notice or didn’t mind; when a German company released a Super Mario Bros. knockoff, 1987’s The Great Giana Sisters, the big N scrambled its lawyers.

Mario Bros., then, is a fascinating artefact. Successful but nowhere near as much of a phenomenon as Donkey Kong was at the time, it nevertheless paved the way for bigger, better adventures to come. Within just two years, that mischievous ape had been decisively knocked off his girder and Mario had become Nintendo’s new mascot. Out of the sewers of New York City, a star was born.

Mario Bros. NES, 1986. Made in Japan, Hangtab. 9.6 A+. Source: The Jacksonville Collection.

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