3 did, all thanks to Nintendo’s ingenious Hollywood marketing scheme. It’d be hard to keep something like that a secret from today’s kids though, due to instant, always-on news and updates.īut it was a lot of fun being surprised by game makers when I was a kid, and Nintendo pulled off one of the greatest reveals in gaming history with Super Mario Bros. There’s never been another title that made me feel the same sense of anticipation and excitement as Super Mario Bros. But there it was in defiance of expectation, in a movie, playing on my TV! The graphics looked other-worldly in glorious standard definition, and the gameplay looked like something from the future.ĭecades later my teenager spends hours a day watching other people play games on Twitch and YouTube, but “The Wizard” was the OG experience of watching influencers game. Without YouTube or social media (neither had been invented yet) or gaming magazines to thumb through, I’d probably never lay eyes on so much as a screenshot until the game made its way to US shores. 3! At the time, it was only available in Japan. The big reveal came and there it was: Super Mario Bros. I remember feeling sheer awe as I watched the end of the movie on my family’s 19-inch TV. And at 10-years-old, since I couldn’t afford Nintendo Power magazine, I managed to watch the movie without knowing what the “secret unreleased game” it was supposed to reveal was. In a time long before the internet, there were still surprises in the world. In fact, like thousands of children at the time, I became interested in Nintendo‘s greatest game when it made its theatrical debut in the hit movie “The Wizard” starring Fred Savage. 3 again for the first time, they’d choose the latter. And it’s cold.īut, don’t get me wrong, it’s not just a great game because critics named Tristan Greene, who work at The Next Web, universally agree that if they could travel back in time and either buy stock in Amazon or play Super Mario Bros. Anything more than 8-bit graphics is a waste of … something. Just because your games play on virtual reality headsets that were science-fiction plot devices in ours doesn’t make them better. Stop it.Īnd if you’re younger: get off my lawn. And don’t even bring up coin-op arcade games. If you’re older than me: whatever ancient Atari game you’re thinking of isn’t better. If you’re my age, it was the absolute peak of 1980s video game technology, and you were the perfect age to appreciate it. It doesn’t matter how old you are, Super Mario Bros. It’s incomprehensible that this isn’t a globally recognized holiday, but nonetheless, we’re here to help you celebrate this momentous occasion in gaming history. 3 was launched in Japan on October 23rd 1988 (and every game since has been sub par).

Super mario bros 3 arcade machine