Super Mario Bros. Turns 25 – Nintendo Celebrates With Japan Exclusive Game

Nintendo’s Mario character has been around since 1981, but most of us know the famed Italian plumber from the NES classic ‘Super Mario Bros.’ which turned 25 earlier this week. Nintendo is celebrating the anniversary with a game – that’s unfortunately only available in Japan.

If you’re a big fan of the ‘Mario’ games, you’re going to want to jump on this. As a way of marking the 25th anniversary of the game that made Nintendo the company it is today, there will be a special edition version of ‘Super Mario All-Stars’ released for the Wii.

Nintendo is calling the release ‘Super Mario Bros. Anniversary Edition.’ It includes everything that ‘All-Stars’ did back in 1993. That means you’re getting ‘Super Mario Bros.,’ ‘Super Mario Bros. 2,’ and ‘Super Mario Bros. 3’ as well as ‘The Lost Levels.’ Also included are a booklet detailing the 25 year history of the series and a CD containing some of the greatest compositions from the ‘Mario’ games.

Sadly, these won’t be remade into high definition versions of the games, since the Wii isn’t a high definition system. I haven’t been able to track down any screenshots yet. It would be nice if the games were made to look a bit nicer on larger TVs and in 16:9.

The release date is set for October 21st in Japan, but it looks like we’re going to miss out on this in the States. The character of Mario turns 30 next year, so perhaps we can count on something then, even if it is just an English version of ‘Super Mario Bros. Anniversary Edition.’

By the way, if you don’t recognize the title ‘The Lost Levels,’ that’s because the game wasn’t originally released stateside. What we call ‘The Lost Levels’ is actually ‘Super Mario Bros. 2,’ and what we call ‘Super Mario Bros. 2’ is actually a reskinned version of a Japanese game called ‘Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic.’ Don’t worry, we got the better of the two.

2 comments

  1. Patrick A Crone

    These games are hands down the greatest platformers ever made. It would’ve been nice to get this game in the states. I’d even settle for Super Mario All-Stars on the Virtual Console(I highly doubt that will happen). I’ll just have to settle for playing the cartridge I still thankfully have.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *