Super Mario

Super Mario (also known as Super Mario Bros. and simply Mario) is a platform game series developed and published by Nintendo and starring their mascot, Mario. The series was created by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and is the flagship series of the greater Mario franchise. At least one Super Mario game has been released for every major Nintendo video game console. A limited number of Super Mario games have also released on non-Nintendo gaming platforms. The Super Mario games are set primarily in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom, typically with Mario as the main player character. He is often joined by his brother, Luigi, and other members of the Mario cast. As platform games, they involve the player character running and jumping across platforms and defeating enemies in themed levels. The games have simple plots, typically with Mario and Luigi having to rescue the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. The first game in the series, Super Mario Bros., released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, established the series' core gameplay concepts and elements. These include a multitude of power-ups that give the character special powers such as size-changing and fireball-throwing. The Super Mario series, part of the greater Mario franchise, includes numerous spin-offs spanning various genres and media such as film, television, printed media, and merchandise. More than 430 million copies of Super Mario games have been sold worldwide, making it the sixth-best-selling video game series, behind the larger Mario franchise, the puzzle series Tetris, the Call of Duty series, the Pokémon video game series, and Grand Theft Auto.