In 1985, Super Mario Bros. was published as a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Family Computer. In place of Mario Bros., the game's single-screen arcade predecessor, it featured side-scrolling platformer stages. Super Mario Bros. is the most famous game in the Super Mario franchise, even though Donkey Kong was the first game in the series. It introduced many series mainstays, like power-ups, iconic adversaries like Goombas, and the fundamental idea of saving Princess Peach from Bowser.

In addition to starting a whole series of Super Mario platform games, Super Mario Bros.'s enormous success helped popularize the genre overall, helped the North American gaming industry recover from the 1983 video game crash, and was largely responsible for the NES's initial success, for which it was bundled as a launch title. Super Mario Bros. was the best-selling video game of all time for almost thirty years, selling over 40 million copies worldwide, until Wii Sports eventually overtook it.