Super Mario Bros.: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Super Mario Bros. didn't arrive from nowhere: it distilled Kyoto's arcade-era experiments in jumping, scrolling and screen-filling color into a 32-kilobyte grammar every platformer since has spoken. This mix traces the scrolling arcade games Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka studied, the Kansai rivals racing alongside them, the storybook and manga imagination behind the Mushroom Kingdom, and the indie generation still building on its physics.

The Kynda mix for Super Mario Bros.

• Key Influence · Pac-Land by Namco (1984). Namco's side-scrolling Pac-Man spin-off is routinely identified as the template Nintendo answered: a horizontally scrolling, cartoon-bright journey through themed landscapes rather than a single fixed screen. Miyamoto's team had been building single-screen games (Mario Bros., Donkey Kong) and wanted scrolling movement across a continuous world; Pac-Land proved an arcade audience would follow a mascot rightward through scenery, which became Super Mario Bros.' core structure.,
• Influencia Obscura · Space Panic by Universal (1980). Largely forgotten outside arcade history, Universal's Space Panic is generally credited as the first platform game: ladders, girders, monsters, and a hero digging holes to trap them. It predates Donkey Kong by a year and shaped the entire climbing-and-jumping grammar Nintendo inherited and then rebuilt horizontally. Knowing it reframes Super Mario Bros. as the endpoint of a Japanese arcade lineage rather than a sudden invention.,
• Local Roots · Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light by Intelligent Systems (1990). Intelligent Systems was founded in Kyoto by ex-Nintendo engineers and worked hand-in-glove with Nintendo's R&D teams on NES-era development tools and games. Shadow Dragon is the clearest statement of what the Kyoto satellite studio culture produced once freed to pursue strategy and narrative — the same city, the same hardware constraints, the same obsession with teaching rules through play that shaped Super Mario Bros.,
• Beyond the Medium · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865). Nintendo's own designers have pointed to Carroll's Wonderland as the imaginative register of the Mushroom Kingdom: a small protagonist who shrinks and grows by eating things found in a nonsense landscape, surrounded by talking creatures and arbitrary royal authority. The Super Mushroom's grow-and-shrink mechanic is Alice's cake and bottle turned into a game rule, which is why the kingdom feels like a children's storybook rather than science fiction.,
• Peer · Castlevania by Konami (1986). Arriving one year later on the Famicom Disk System, Castlevania took Super Mario Bros.' side-scrolling stage structure and inverted its mood: deliberate, weighted jumps you cannot steer mid-air, gothic horror iconography, stage-ending bosses. It is the clearest evidence of how fast Mario's grammar became an industry standard that rivals could argue with, and it defined the stiffer, more punishing branch of NES action design.,
• Key Collaborator · Super Mario World by Koji Kondo (1990). Kondo was a fresh graduate when he scored Super Mario Bros., writing the overworld theme to match the feel of Mario's running and jumping rather than to any brief — arguably the most recognized melody written for any game. Super Mario World gave him an eight-bit-to-sixteen-bit leap and a single theme reorchestrated across athletic, cave and castle variants, showing the method behind his work with Miyamoto.,
• Legacy · Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega (1991). Sega's team, with Yuji Naka programming and Naoto Ohshima designing, built Sonic as a direct rebuttal to Mario: speed instead of precision, loops instead of ledges, a mascot explicitly conceived to out-cool Nintendo's plumber. Its entire design argument only makes sense as a response to Super Mario Bros., and it turned the platformer into the medium's defining genre and console-war battleground through the nineties.,

What influenced Super Mario Bros.

• Excitebike. The team's work on Excitebike informed Super Mario Bros. “It was a culmination of Miyamoto's gameplay concepts and technical knowledge drawn from his experiences of designing Donkey Kong , Mario Bros , Devil World (1984), the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984), and the 1985 NES port o…” (Wikipedia)
• Devil World. The team's experience making Devil World informed the design of Super Mario Bros. “It was a culmination of Miyamoto's gameplay concepts and technical knowledge drawn from his experiences of designing Donkey Kong , Mario Bros , Devil World (1984), the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984), and the 1985 NES port o…” (Wikipedia)
• Mario Bros.. The team imported enemy and platform features from Mario Bros. into Super Mario Bros. “It was a culmination of Miyamoto's gameplay concepts and technical knowledge drawn from his experiences of designing Donkey Kong , Mario Bros , Devil World (1984), the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984), and the 1985 NES port o…” (Wikipedia)
• Donkey Kong by Nintendo. The development team brought design features from Donkey Kong into Super Mario Bros. “It was a culmination of Miyamoto's gameplay concepts and technical knowledge drawn from his experiences of designing Donkey Kong , Mario Bros , Devil World (1984), the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984), and the 1985 NES port o…” (Wikipedia)
• Kung-Fu Master. Kung-Fu Master's side-scrolling gameplay was a step toward Miyamoto's design for Super Mario Bros. “It was a culmination of Miyamoto's gameplay concepts and technical knowledge drawn from his experiences of designing Donkey Kong , Mario Bros , Devil World (1984), the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984), and the 1985 NES port o…” (Wikipedia)
• The Legend of Zelda. Fire bars in Super Mario Bros. originated as objects in The Legend of Zelda. “In Mario , Miyamoto downplayed the importance of the high score in favor of simply completing the game. [ 37 ] This concept was carried over to The Legend of Zelda .” (Wikipedia)
• Pac-Land by Namco (1984). Pac-Land (Namco) — titan for Super Mario Bros. “Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani has stated that Miyamoto had told him personally that an earlier scrolling platformer using Iwatani's character, Pac-Land , was an influence on Super Mario Bros.” (Wikipedia)
• Donkey Kong Jr.. The team imported features from Donkey Kong Jr. into Super Mario Bros. “Developers of previous hit games joined the team in February 1985, importing many special programming techniques, features, and design refinements such as these: " Donkey Kong ' s slopes, lifts, conveyor belts, and ladders; Donkey Kong J…” (Wikipedia)
• Kung Fu by Ed Spielman (1972). The team's experience making Kung Fu informed Super Mario Bros. “Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka designed Super Mario Bros. as a culmination of the team's experience working on Devil World and the side-scrollers Excitebike and Kung Fu .” (Wikipedia)
• Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (1592). Journey to the West (Wu Cheng'en) — culture for Super Mario Bros. (openlibrary.org)
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) — culture for Super Mario Bros. (openlibrary.org)
• Jump Bug by Hoei / Alpha Denshi (1981). Jump Bug (Hoei / Alpha Denshi) — ghost for Super Mario Bros.
• Space Panic by Universal (1980). Space Panic (Universal) — ghost for Super Mario Bros.
• Pitfall! by Activision (1982). Pitfall! (Activision) — titan for Super Mario Bros.
• Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka (1952). Astro Boy (Osamu Tezuka) — culture for Super Mario Bros.

Peers and kindred spirits

• Takashi Tezuka. Tezuka and Miyamoto produced Super Mario Bros. (also via Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island) “The landmark games Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were produced by Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka .” (Wikipedia)
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island by Takashi Tezuka (1995). Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (Takashi Tezuka) — collaborator for Super Mario Bros. “Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka designed Super Mario Bros.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Alex Kidd in Miracle World by Sega (1986). Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Sega) — peer for Super Mario Bros. “It became the thirteenth highest-grossing arcade game of 1986 in the United States according to the annual RePlay arcade chart, which was topped by Sega's Hang-On.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past by Toshihiko Nakago (1991). The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Toshihiko Nakago) — collaborator for Super Mario Bros. “was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka of the Nintendo Creative Department, and largely programmed by Toshihiko Nakago of SRD, which became a longtime Nintendo partner and later a wholly owned subsidiary.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Super Mario World by Koji Kondo (1990). Super Mario World (Koji Kondo) — collaborator for Super Mario Bros. “Koji Kondo's soundtrack is one of the earliest in video games, making music a centerpiece of the design.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Mega Man 2 by Capcom (1988). Mega Man 2 (Capcom) — peer for Super Mario Bros.
• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light by Intelligent Systems (1990). Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (Intelligent Systems) — geography for Super Mario Bros.
• Castlevania by Konami (1986). Castlevania (Konami) — peer for Super Mario Bros.
• Ghosts 'n Goblins by Capcom (1985). Ghosts 'n Goblins (Capcom) — geography for Super Mario Bros.
• Gradius by Konami (1985). Gradius (Konami) — geography for Super Mario Bros.

Who Super Mario Bros. influenced

• Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega (1991). Sonic the Hedgehog's developer cited Super Mario Bros. as a major inspiration for its concept. “Video game developer Yuji Naka has cited Super Mario Bros. as a large inspiration toward the concept for the immensely successful 1991 Genesis game, Sonic the Hedgehog ;” (Wikipedia)
• Super Mario Maker. Super Mario Maker lets players create stages in the style of Super Mario Bros. “Nintendo released Super Mario Maker , a game for the Wii U which allows players to create custom platforming stages using assets from Super Mario games and in the style of Super Mario Bros. along with other styles based around different …” (Wikipedia)
• Ennuigi. In context, Ennuigi is a fangame commenting on Super Mario Bros. “In 2015, game designer Josh Millard released Ennuigi , a metafictional fangame with commentary on the original game which relates to Luigi's inability to come to terms with the game's overall lack of narrative.” (Wikipedia)
• Super Mario Bros. Crossover. Super Mario Bros. Crossover recreates Super Mario Bros. “Super Mario Bros. Crossover , a PC fangame developed by Jay Pavlina and released in 2010 as a free browser-based game, is a full recreation of Super Mario Bros. that allows the player to alternatively control various other characters fro…” (Wikipedia)
• Mari0. In context, Mari0 combines elements of Super Mario Bros. with Portal. “Mari0 , released in December 2012, combines elements of the game with that of Portal (2007) by giving Mario a portal-making gun with which to teleport through the level,” (Wikipedia)
• Super Mario RPG. Super Mario RPG’s setting was based on the Super Mario Bros. series. “The story takes place in a newly rendered Mushroom Kingdom based on the Super Mario Bros. series .” (Wikipedia)
• Tuper Tario Tros. Tuper Tario Tros combines elements from Super Mario Bros. and another game. “In 2009, developer SwingSwing released Tuper Tario Tros , a game which combines elements of Super Mario Bros. with Tetris .” (Wikipedia)
• Hideo Kojima. Kojima cited the game as an inspiration for entering the industry. “Kojima has cited Yuji Horii 's The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983) [ 148 ] and Shigeru Miyamoto 's Super Mario Bros. (1985) [ 149 ] as the games that inspired him to enter the video game industry .” (Wikipedia)
• Super Meat Boy by Team Meat (2010). Super Meat Boy (Team Meat) — legacy for Super Mario Bros.
• Celeste by Maddy Makes Games (2018). Celeste (Maddy Makes Games) — legacy for Super Mario Bros.