History of the Nintendo Entertainment System
In the late 80s, Nintendo's dominance was threatened by newer, technologically superior consoles. 1987, NEC and Hudson Soft released the PC Engine, and a year later, Sega released the 16 bit Mega Drive. Both were introduced in North America in 1989, where they were respectively marketed as the "TurboGrafx-16" and the "Genesis." Facing new competition from the PC Engine in Japan, and the Genesis in North America, Nintendo's market share began to erode. Nintendo responded in the form of the Super Famicom ("Super Nintendo Entertainment System" in North America and Europe), the Famicom's 16-bit successor, in 1990. Although Nintendo announced their intention to continue to support the Famicom alongside their newer console, the success of the newer offering began to draw even more gamers and developers from the original NES, whose decline accelerated. However, Nintendo did continue support of the NES for about three years after the September 1991 release of the Super NES, with the NES's final first-party games being "" and "Wario's Woods".
Super Mario Bros.
"Super Mario Bros." was first released in Japan on September 13, 1985, for the Family Computer. It was released later that year in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Its concrete North American release date is unknown and is frequently debated; despite generally being cited as having been released alongside the NES in October 1985 as a launch title, several other sources conflict with this statement, suggesting that the game may have released in other varying time frames ranging from November 1985 to early 1986. The game was released in Europe two years later on May 15, 1987 for the NES.
In 1988, the game was re-released along with the shooting range game "Duck Hunt" as part of a single ROM cartridge, which came packaged with the NES as a pack-in title, as part of the console's "Action Set". This version of the game is extremely common in North America, with millions of copies of it having been manufactured and sold in the United States. In 1990, another cartridge, touting the two games as well as "World Class Track Meet", was also released in North America as part of the NES "Power Set". It was released on May 15, 1987 in Europe, and during that year in Australia as well. In 1988, the game was re-released in Europe in a cartridge containing the game plus "Tetris" and "Nintendo World Cup". The compilation was sold alone or bundled with the revised version of the NES.