: 19 Other enemies, such as underwater foes and enemies with spiked tops, cannot be jumped on and damage the player instead. : 11 These shells may be deflected off a wall to destroy other enemies, though they can also bounce back against Mario, which will hurt or kill him. For example, a Goomba will flatten and be defeated, : 12 while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile. Mario's primary attack is jumping on top of enemies, though many enemies have differing responses to this. The game ends when the player runs out of lives, although a button input can be used on the game over screen to continue from the first level of the world in which the player died. Mario loses a life if he takes damage while small, falls in a bottomless pit, or runs out of time. : 12 Players start with a certain number of lives and may gain additional lives by picking up green spotted orange 1-up mushrooms hidden in bricks, or by collecting 100 coins, defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell, or bouncing on enemies successively without touching the ground. If Mario gets hit in this mode, then instead of dying he turns back to regular Mario. If the player gains a Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and gains the ability to break bricks above him. Other 'secret', often invisible, bricks may contain more coins or rare items. The game world includes coins for Mario to collect and special bricks marked with a question mark ( ?), which when hit from below by Mario may reveal more coins or a special item. : 7 It is a side-scrolling platform game where the player moves to the right to reach the flagpole at the end of each level.

The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces, and save Princess Toadstool.

Mario's brother, Luigi, is controlled by the second player in the game's multiplayer mode and assumes the same plot role and functionality as Mario. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario, the protagonist of the series. Mario wields a Fire Flower, allowing attacks with fire projectiles. have become prominent in popular culture. It has been re-released on most Nintendo systems. The game began a multimedia franchise including a long-running game series, an animated television series, an animated feature film, a live-action feature film and another upcoming animated feature film. Koji Kondo's soundtrack is one of the earliest and most popular in video games, making music a centerpiece of game design. It is credited alongside the NES as one of the key factors in reviving the video game industry after the 1983 crash, and helped popularize the side-scrolling platform game genre. It is one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 58 million copies sold worldwide. is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise for its precise controls.

The design of the first level, World 1-1, serves as a tutorial for platform gameplay. The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka as 'a grand culmination' of the Famicom team's three years of game mechanics and programming, drawing from their experiences working on Devil World and the side-scrollers Excitebike and Kung Fu to advance their previous work on platforming ' athletic games' such as Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. They traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as enemies and pits with the aid of power-ups such as the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Starman. Players control Mario, or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode, as they traverse the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from King Koopa (later named Bowser). The NES version received a wide release in North America that year and in PAL regions in 1987. Following a limited US release for the NES, it was ported to international arcades for the Nintendo VS. and the first game in the Super Mario series, it was first released in 1985 for the Famicom in Japan. The successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros. is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

The original super mario brothers game