For four decades, Super Mario has captivated gamers and shaped the video game industry. From record-breaking sales to speedrunning milestones, here’s a numerical look at Nintendo’s iconic hero.
Nintendo's chirpy Italian mascot Mario has run and jumped his way to four decades of global stardom, broadening the appeal of the video game industry as one of its most beloved characters.
40 Million Cartridges
The original Super Mario Bros. cartridge game was released in 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console in the United States and elsewhere, and on Japan's Famicom console. It sold 40.2 million copies worldwide, including 6.8 million in Japan — one for every 18 members of the country's population at the time.
"Until that point, Famicom users were almost all children. But Super Mario Bros. even featured in mainstream weekly magazines alongside celebrity gossip," Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Toyo Securities, told AFP.
"That shows the title's impact — it significantly widened the age range of video game consumers," he said.
Eight
The number of people who worked on the side-scrolling platform game Super Mario Bros., according to an interview with its creator Shigeru Miyamoto from a 1988 Japanese book. Miyamoto's team included Takashi Tezuka, who became a longtime collaborator and contributed to many games in Nintendo's Mario and Legend of Zelda series.
The instantly recognizable, upbeat theme tune was written by Koji Kondo, the composer behind the company's most famous game music.
Four Minutes, 54 Seconds, 515 Milliseconds
The time it took the American player "averge11" to complete Super Mario Bros. last month, setting a new record.
The play-through, which beat the last record by a few hundredths of a second, thrilled the world of speedrunning — the art of finishing a game as quickly as possible by making use of all known tricks and technical glitches.
The record for completing the game blindfolded belongs to a Japanese player who did it in 14 minutes and 46 seconds, according to Guinness World Records.
Number One... in Bookstores
The best-selling book of all genres in Japan in 1985 and 1986 was titled Super Mario Bros: The Complete Strategy Guide. Over 111 pages, it detailed the best routes to take through the game's 32 levels — which were painstakingly drawn out by hand, in an era before screenshots were commonplace.
The book sold more than 1.3 million copies in Japan.
$1.56 Million
The price that a single Super Mario 64 cartridge, still in its original packaging, fetched at auction in July 2021.
That makes the game — released in 1996 for the Nintendo 64 console — the most expensive ever sold at an online auction, according to Guinness World Records.
452 Million Games
Altogether, the games in the Super Mario series have sold more than 452 million units as of March 2025, Nintendo says.
This figure is only for platform games and does not include megahit spin-offs like Mario Kart or sports games starring the red-clad plumber and his friends.
By Mathias CENA / AFP
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