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." has been re-released for several of Nintendo's game systems as a part of their Virtual Console line of classic video game releases. It was first released for the Wii on December 2, 2006 in Japan, December 25, 2006 in North America and January 5, 2007 in PAL regions. The release is a complete emulation of the original game, meaning that nothing is changed from the its original NES release. This version of the game is also one of the "trial games" made available in the "Masterpieces" section in "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", where it can be demoed for a limited amount of time.
A Nintendo 3DS release of the game was initially distributed exclusively to members of Nintendo's 3DS Ambassador Program in September 2011. A general release of the title later came through in Japan on January 5, 2012, in North America on February 16, 2012 and in Europe on March 1, 2012. The game was released for the Wii U's Virtual Console in Japan on June 5, 2013, followed by Europe on September 12, 2013 and North America on September 19, 2013.