Super Mario to the rescue!

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What’s the first thing you think of when you hear Super Mario? Maybe you’ve played the video game before. Maybe it’s just the memorable music and sound effects. Either way, did you know that Mario not only saved Princess Peach from Bowser, but also the entire video game industry from eternal ruin? Let’s explore.

Between 1983 to 1985, the video game market went into a big time economic recession in the United States. Some of the reasons included market saturation (occurs when a product is so widely available that a company can no longer find new customers to buy it) in video games and video game consoles. There were also too many competitors in the industry and a lot of low-quality video games. To top it off, the arrival of personal computers contributed to the waning interest in console games. The arcade era of video games subsequently came to an end. Revenue had crashed from $3.2 billion in 1983 (equivalent to $10.34 billion in 2025) to around $100 million in 1985 (equivalent to $299.35 million in 2025). That’s a whopping $3.1 billion loss!

Nintendo is a Japanese gaming company, and is much older than you think. It started out in 1889 with the production and distribution of gaming cards, like karuta (traditional Japanese card sets used in fast-paced matching and reflex games) and hanafuda (cards with pictures of flowers, animals, and nature instead of numbers). They came to America and established themselves there in 1980. A year later, they released a game called Donkey Kong, which became a hit with the public. Back in Japan, they released a product called Famicom (short for Family Computer) in 1983, which was already a hit in Japan. Now given the failing console game industry, they had to repackage it to an already skeptical industry. So, they called it the Nintendo Entertainment Switch (NES). They made it a boxy, VCR-like shell with detachable controllers. Sure enough, it was a hit with the market.

Nintendo would also take quality control into their hands, ensuring nothing but top-quality games. They also designed the “Official Nintendo Seal”, which certified games, consoles, and accessories which they would sponsor. The seal wasn’t just branding, it was the answer to what caused the market crash in the first place: too many low-quality games in the industry. The strategy would end up becoming the blueprint for the modern console industry — every major gaming platform since, from PlayStation to Xbox, still uses some version of the approval system Nintendo pioneered.

Now, Mario had already made his debut in 1983 in an arcade game simply called ‘Mario Bros.’ The game involved players controlling Mario, and his brother Luigi as they exterminate turtle-like creatures, giant flies, and crabs emerging from the sewers of New York City. Interestingly, it was a spin-off of ‘Donkey Kong’.

A still from Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023). | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Eventually on September 13, 1985, ‘Super Mario Bros.’ was released for NES.