Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is a port, but a generous one. At its centre is “Original 1985”, a faithful conversion of the NES game with the original sprites and course layouts, now with a world map, a save at any time, five lives to start with and animated water and lava. Nintendo R&D2 then wrapped it in modes that rewarded the replaying the original always invited: Challenge, You VS. Boo, the link-up VS Game, high-score tables, a Toy Box and an Album of unlockable pictures.

The biggest bonus is hidden. Rack up 300,000 points and Super Mario Bros. for Super Players appears, a version of the Japanese sequel known in the West as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, with its first eight worlds rebuilt for the handheld.

Everything had to fit on the Game Boy Color’s smaller screen, and that is the one big compromise. You see less of each course than on a television, so the game lets you nudge the view up and down and shift Mario’s position on screen with Select. Critics in 1999 mostly forgave it; when the game came back on the 3DS in 2014, Nintendo Life found the cramped view much harder to ignore.

For the story and the full course-by-course guide, see our Super Mario Bros. page. This page is about what the Game Boy Color version adds, changes and leaves out.

Quick answers about the Game Boy Color version.

The plot is the 1985 one, retold in the booklet: the Koopa, a tribe of turtles skilled in dark magic, have invaded the Mushroom Kingdom and turned its people into stones, bricks and other objects; only Princess Toadstool can undo the spell, and King Koopa has carried her off. Our Super Mario Bros. page tells it course by course. Here we follow what Deluxe does with it, mode by mode.

Original 1985: eight worlds in your pocket

Eight worlds, four courses each, the fourth always a castle. The booklet’s rules are the old ones: 100 coins for a life, a timer whose leftover seconds become points, a restart point about halfway through most courses, and a flagpole that pays more the higher you grab it.

What is new is the frame around it. A world map shows where you are, a save is never more than a pause away, and once a castle is cleared Mario stamps on it until it collapses.

Fake Bowsers, rescued Toads and the kiss

The castle bosses are still impostors until World 8-4, and fireballs still reveal what they really are. In the English versions, beating them with fireballs also fills in two album pictures, a quarter at a time. Every rescued Mushroom Retainer now unlocks something in the Toy Box’s Mystery Room.

Rescue the real princess and she thanks you with a kiss, which earns the Mario Award and the Kiss picture. Finishing the second quest earns the Bowser Award.

Challenge mode

Challenge mode opens once you have cleared a course in Original 1985, and each of the 32 courses hides three medals. Five red coins are scattered through it, some in place of ordinary coins and some in new spots. A Yoshi Egg sits in an invisible block. And each course has a Challenge Score; beat it for the High Score Medal. Medals count only if you reach the flagpole.

Scoring is tweaked to make the targets interesting: 1-Up Mushrooms are worth 2,000 points, extra lives from chains of stomps or kicks become 10,000 points, and grabbing every coin in a bonus area earns a “Perfect Bonus” of 10,000. The course-select screen adds up all your best scores; fill its bar at 1,160,000 points for the Toad Award, and collect every medal for the Peach Award.

You VS. Boo

Score 100,000 points and Boo wants a race. You VS. Boo is a one-player time trial over eight new courses, numbered 1-1 to 2-4 and remixed from the original’s layouts with Face Blocks, trampoline floors and spiked blocks. Boo floats straight through walls. Finish fast enough and the white Boo is replaced by a quicker green one, then a red one, then a Black Boo whose pace is tied to your own best time. Press Select before a race to start as Super or Fire Mario.

The VS Game

Link two Game Boy Colors with a Game Link Cable and Mario races Luigi over the same eight courses. First to the flagpole wins; if both lose a life at once, the one with more coins takes it. The VS courses add 3-2-1 Blocks that count down and flip, and players can toggle Face Blocks to shut each other in, throw fireballs at each other, or grab a Star to dash ahead. The mode is missing from the 3DS Virtual Console release, which has no link-up.

Super Mario Bros. for Super Players

Reach 300,000 points in Original 1985 and a second game unlocks. For Super Players is a remake of The Lost Levels, but a cut-down one: only Worlds 1 to 8 are playable, the wind and Luigi’s floatier jump were removed, and some courses were changed so their gaps can be crossed without them. It has a single save slot, and the flagpole 1-Up trick in Worlds 7-1 and 8-1 no longer works. Clearing its World 8-4 earns the Yoshi Award.

Toy Box and Album

The Toy Box opens with two toys: a Fortune Teller, where you pick one of five cards (an Extremely Lucky draw at the start of a new file gives you ten lives instead of five), and a Calendar that holds up to twelve dates and comes with three days already marked: when Super Mario Bros., the Family Computer and the Game Boy launched in Japan. Find a Yoshi Egg and Yoshi Is Here! appears, a roulette that shows where an egg is hidden.

Each rescued captive unlocks one of eight Mystery Room options: printer banners (Worlds 1, 3 and 7), animations (Worlds 2 and 4), printable graphics (World 5), a story-making mode (World 6) and, for Princess Peach, an editor for the title screen’s pictures, text and music. The Album, “Mario’s Memory”, collects 56 items: five Awards, eight printable icons, twenty pictures, nine pieces of story artwork and fourteen banners.

Every world and VS course in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

The eight worlds of Original 1985, with what each castle rescue unlocks in the Mystery Room, then the eight courses of You VS. Boo and the VS Game.

1. 
   World 1Original 1985 · courses 1-1 to 1-4Rescuing the Retainer in 1-4 unlocks five Game Boy Printer banners.
2. 
   World 2Original 1985 · courses 2-1 to 2-4The 2-4 rescue unlocks animations.
3. World 3Original 1985 · courses 3-1 to 3-4The 3-4 rescue unlocks five more banners.
4. World 4Original 1985 · courses 4-1 to 4-4The 4-4 rescue unlocks more animations; 4-4 has a new chime for the right path.
5. World 5Original 1985 · courses 5-1 to 5-4The 5-4 rescue unlocks printable graphics, including the eight printable icons.
6. World 6Original 1985 · courses 6-1 to 6-4The 6-4 rescue unlocks the story-making mode and nine pieces of story artwork.
7. World 7Original 1985 · courses 7-1 to 7-4The 7-4 rescue unlocks the last four banners; 7-4 also has the right-path chime.
8. 
   World 8Original 1985 · courses 8-1 to 8-4Beat the real Bowser for the Mario Award; Peach unlocks the title-screen editor.
9. 
   VS course 1-1OvergroundBig sections of Face Blocks.
10. 
    VS course 1-2UndergroundEchoes World 1-2, down to a fake Warp Zone.
11. VS course 1-3OvergroundBorrows from Worlds 2-3 and 4-3.
12. 
    VS course 1-4CastleBuilt from 1-4 and 3-4, without Fire-Bars or Podoboos.
13. 
    VS course 2-1OvergroundRegular running plus trampoline floors.
14. 
    VS course 2-2UnderwaterA swim much like World 2-2.
15. 
    VS course 2-3Based on World 3-3Lined with spiked blocks.
16. 
    VS course 2-4CastleClusters of spiked blocks and a middle section of blocks.

Mario still runs with B, jumps with A and gets bigger, fierier and invincible exactly as he did in 1985. The changes are all around the edges, and the extra modes are where Deluxe earns its name.

What changed in Original 1985

The instruction booklet calls the main game “Original 1985”, and it is close to the NES game. The differences are these: you start with five lives rather than three; you can save at any moment from the new pause screen, which remembers the course you were on; each world has a map showing your progress; the castle collapses after you clear it; water and lava are animated; and Peach and the Mushroom Retainers have talking animations.

There is no alternating two-player game, so Luigi is a choice: press Select on the world map to swap brothers. He is now coloured like Mario with green where Mario has red. Sound is new in places (the Jumping Board, Spiny Eggs, skids, Cheep-cheeps and a chime when you take the right path in the 4-4 and 7-4 mazes), and at the end Peach kisses whichever brother rescued her, on tiptoe or kneeling depending on his size.

Most of the famous glitches are gone, the Minus World included. The physics are a touch tighter (the widest gap in World 8-1 can be cleared without grabbing the coins above it), the staircase at the end of each course is a block shorter, and the flagpole stands a block closer to it.

The small-screen compromise

The Game Boy Color’s screen is smaller than the NES picture, so Deluxe shows a cropped window on each course; Nintendo Life’s 2014 review measured the view at about a third smaller in both directions. To help, holding up or down on the +Control Pad looks above or below Mario, and Select shifts Mario’s position on screen to show more of what is ahead. The status line is trimmed to score, coins and time, with lives and course moved to the pause screen.

It is the drawback reviews keep coming back to: enemies and pits arrive with less warning than they did on the NES.

Scores, rankings and infrared

The top ten scores are kept in a Rankings table; you enter your name after a Game Over and can choose a colour for the letters. Two players can swap their records through the Game Boy Color’s infrared port and decide whether to merge the tables. Continuing after a Game Over restarts you at the course where you lost.

Game Boy Printer support

Deluxe is built for the Game Boy Printer. Album pictures can be printed, the Toy Box can turn screens into stickers, and the Mystery Room unlocks printable banners, icons and story artwork as you rescue the Mushroom Retainers. Even a fortune from the Fortune Teller can be printed. Printing is disabled in the 3DS Virtual Console release.

A Game Boy Color exclusive

The Game Pak works only in a Game Boy Color. Put it in an original Game Boy and you get a notice telling you so instead of a game.

Power-ups and objects

The items you meet across the modes, with the Game Boy Color sprites.

• 
  Super MushroomMakes Mario or Luigi Super.
• 
  Fire FlowerFireballs; in the VS Game they can hit your rival.
• StarmanBrief invincibility; in the VS Game it lets you dash.
• 
  1-Up MushroomAn extra life; in Challenge mode, 2,000 points instead.
• 
  Poison MushroomFound in For Super Players; it hurts.
• 
  Red CoinChallenge mode: five per course.
• 
  Yoshi EggChallenge mode: one per course, in an invisible block.
• 
  Jumping BoardThe red springboard, with its own new sound.
• 
  Super SpringThe green springboard.
• 
  SpringboardBounces Mario upwards.
• 
  Spike TrapHurts on contact; the VS courses use plenty (the booklet calls them Spiked Blocks).
• 
  Face BlockFlips between solid and empty; in the VS Game players toggle them to trap each other.

The 1985 cast, with Yoshi and Boo joining for the new modes.

Character	Who they are	In this game	Abilities & notes
MarioHero	The plumber hero of the original.	Playable in every mode; Player 1 in the VS Game.	Small, Super and Fire forms; earns the Mario Award for beating World 8-4.
LuigiSwap with Select	Mario’s brother.	Chosen on the world map in Original 1985, and Player 2 in the VS Game.	Recoloured to match Mario’s sprite with green in place of red; Fire Luigi is a darker green.
Princess ToadstoolPrincess Peach	The princess whose magic can break the Koopa spell.	Waits in the castle of World 8-4; rescuing her unlocks the title-screen editor.	New talking animation and an ending kiss.
Mushroom RetainerToad	The princess’s attendants, held in the first seven castles.	Each one rescued unlocks a Mystery Room option.	Their message gained a comma; a sad Toad appears when you fail a challenge.
BowserKing Koopa	The Koopa king who kidnapped the princess.	Fought in World 8-4; seven impostors guard the earlier castles.	Beating fake Bowsers with fireballs fills in album pictures (English versions).
YoshiNew to the game	The dinosaur from Super Mario World.	Hidden as a Yoshi Egg in every Challenge course, and the host of Yoshi Is Here!	The Yoshi Award goes to anyone who clears World 8-4 of For Super Players.
BooRacing rival	The shy ghost, here as a speed demon.	Your opponent in You VS. Boo; moves through walls.	White, then green, red and black as you beat its times. Called “Ghost” in the Japanese version.

Enemies & bosses

The original line-up, as Game Boy Color sprites and new artwork, plus the four Boos of You VS. Boo.

• 
  GoombaOriginal 1985Little Goomba, the first enemy you meet.
• 
  Koopa TroopaOriginal 1985Green or red; kick its shell.
• 
  Koopa ParatroopaOriginal 1985Winged Koopa.
• 
  Buzzy BeetleOriginal 1985Fireproof shell.
• 
  Piranha PlantOriginal 1985Rises from pipes.
• 
  Hammer BroOriginal 1985Throws hammers in pairs.
• 
  LakituOriginal 1985Drops Spiny eggs from his cloud.
• 
  SpinyOriginal 1985Can’t be stomped; its egg has a new sound.
• 
  Cheep-cheepOriginal 1985Swims and leaps; also has a new sound.
• 
  BlooberOriginal 1985Squid of the underwater courses.
• 
  Bullet BillOriginal 1985Fired from cannons.
• 
  PodobooCastlesLeaps from the lava.
• 
  Bowser (boss)World 8-4The real King Koopa; seven fake Bowsers guard the earlier castles.
• 
  Green BooYou VS. BooFaster than the white Boo.
• 
  Red BooYou VS. BooFaster again.
• 
  Black BooYou VS. BooPaced by your own best time.

Key staff

From Wikipedia.

A small hardware team brings the NES classic to the new colour handheld.

R&D2 takes on Mario

Deluxe was made by Nintendo R&D2, which Wikipedia describes as a small team better known for hardware peripherals. It was Toshiaki Suzuki’s debut as a director. According to Wikipedia’s summary of his interviews with N-Sider and Kyoto Report, the team collaborated closely with Shigeru Miyamoto and Toshihiko Nakago, who had programmed the 1985 original, and felt little pressure because they were sure the game would be fun and would sell.

Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka and Nakago are credited as supervisors, and the first two for the original game design.

From a one-course demo to the shelves

IGN reported in 2000, as cited by Wikipedia, that a one-course prototype had been shown before the Game Boy Color itself was released. Pre-release screenshots show World 1-1 and the first fake Bowser, and a version of the North American box art shown at E3 1999 survives. The game launched in North America on 10 May 1999 and in Europe later that year.

Japan: Nintendo Power cartridges only

Japan never got a boxed release. Instead, from 1 March 2000, players could have it written on to a rewritable Nintendo Power cartridge at a kiosk (Wikipedia names the Lawson convenience stores). The Japanese version is a revised one: some Challenge targets are lower, saves keep your score and power-up, You VS. Boo and For Super Players unlock as soon as you reach the score, and Boo is renamed Ghost.

Selling it

Nintendo ran print adverts in North America and Germany, and Prima Games published the official strategy guide.

How to open everything, plus a couple of codes from The Cutting Room Floor. For more, see our cheats page linked below.

Unlock You VS. Boo

Reach 100,000 points in total across Original 1985 games. In the English versions the mode appears after you next see a Game Over.

Unlock Super Mario Bros. for Super Players

Reach 300,000 points in total across Original 1985 games (again, English versions need a Game Over first).

Unlock Challenge mode

Clear a course in Original 1985 (instruction booklet).

Ten lives from the Fortune Teller

Draw Extremely Lucky in the Toy Box before starting a new file and you begin with ten lives instead of five.

Finding Yoshi Eggs

Once you have found one egg, Yoshi Is Here! appears in the Toy Box; stop its roulette with A to see a snapshot of where a course’s egg is hidden.

The five Awards

Mario Award: beat World 8-4. Bowser Award: finish the second quest. Peach Award: every red coin, Yoshi Egg and High Score Medal in Challenge mode. Toad Award: fill the Challenge score bar (1,160,000). Yoshi Award: beat World 8-4 of For Super Players.

Erase everything

Hold Select while pressing A on the file screen to delete all saved data.

GameShark: hidden level select

The Cutting Room Floor documents an unused level select that can load every course, including unused ones, with the code 0131B5FF; you start with no lives.

Some unlocks differ in the Japanese version, which needs no Game Over.

Deluxe fixed most of the NES game’s bugs, but not all of them.

No more Minus World

The Minus World glitch was fixed, along with many other original glitches.

Wall clipping still works

The trick of clipping into the wall at a course’s scroll-stop point survived the port.

Small Fire Mario, Japanese edition

The Small Fire Mario glitch was fixed in the English versions but returns in the Japanese version by a different route, through saving and loading.

Unobtainable pictures on 3DS

On the 3DS Virtual Console, which has no link-up, two album pictures cannot be earned without hacking.

Two trailers for the 2014 Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console release.

• Three dates are pre-set on the Calendar: the days Super Mario Bros., the Family Computer and the Game Boy launched in Japan.
• In the Japanese version the default Rankings names use the Japanese enemy names: KOOPA, TERESA, JUGEMU, NOKO2, PAKKUN and KURIBO instead of BOWSER, BOO, LAKITU, TROOPA, TOAD and GOOMBA.

• 

  The Album is called “Mario’s Memory”.
• The life counter tops out at 127, one fewer than in Super Mario All-Stars.
• The Mushroom Retainers’ famous message gained a comma after “you”.
• Worlds 9 and A to D of For Super Players are in the cartridge in various unfinished states, and an unused test course sits between World 8-4 and the 1-2 bonus area, with a red coin that cannot be collected normally (The Cutting Room Floor).
• The first ground tile in the graphics data is the Lost Levels version, and an early design of the “Extremely Lucky” card still shows up if you print that fortune (The Cutting Room Floor).
• A release on LodgeNet is also listed, alongside the Game Boy Color and 3DS versions.
• Japanese 3DS owners got the Virtual Console release first, as a free download promotion from 27 January 2014; Europe followed with its own promotion before it went on sale.

• 

  The Fortune Teller has five fortunes, from Extremely Lucky to Extremely Unlucky, but only one of them does anything.
• The VS Game is the one mode missing from the 3DS release, which removes the Fortune Teller’s link-up text and disables printing as well.
• The Japanese version’s jumps are slightly higher (The Cutting Room Floor).

Box art from each region, plus the cartridge.

More from the Game Boy Color version.

Official artwork drawn for the Game Boy Color release.

From the Game Boy Color to the 3DS, and why it is hard to buy today.

Releases and re-releases

• Game Boy Color 10 May 1999North America.
• Game Boy Color 1 July 1999Europe (according to some sources; Wikipedia gives December 1999 for the UK).
• Nintendo Power (Japan) 1 March 2000Written to rewritable cartridges at kiosks; no boxed release.
• 3DS Virtual Console 27 January 2014Japan, as a free promotional download.
• 3DS Virtual Console 27 February 2014Europe, on sale (Nintendo UK).
• 3DS Virtual Console 25 December 2014North America.
• 3DS eShop closes 27 March 2023No more purchases on Nintendo 3DS.

Where to play it now

With the 3DS eShop closed, the cartridge and existing 3DS downloads are the ways to play. It has not joined the Game Boy library of Nintendo Switch Online. The original Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels are both much easier to find.

Its place in the series

It sits between the 16-bit Super Mario All-Stars remake of 1993 and the Classic NES Series release on Game Boy Advance. More Mario games are on our games list.

Sales

Nintendo has not published a sales figure for Deluxe. Wikipedia, citing NPD, lists it as the 12th-best-selling American game of 1999 on any platform and 14th in 2000, and cites IGN for its peak of third on the weekly handheld chart in June 1999.

Two often-quoted totals come from unofficial compilations, not from Nintendo: about 2.8 million in the United States (The Magic Box’s US Platinum Chart, archived 2004) and about 5.07 million worldwide as of December 2014 (an Install Base forum compilation, 2021).

• 12thbest-selling US game of 1999 (NPD, via Wikipedia)
• 14thbest-selling US game of 2000 (NPD, via Wikipedia)
• 2.8mUS, unofficial (The Magic Box)
• 5.07mworldwide to Dec 2014, unofficial (Install Base)

Reviews

Game Boy Color scores from Wikipedia’s review table; the last two are reviews of the 2014 3DS release.

In 1999 the reviews were close to unanimous. IGN’s Craig Harris gave it a perfect score and called it the Game Boy Color game to own; GameSpot’s Cameron Davis named it the machine’s killer app. The extras were what lifted it above a straight port, and the smaller view was the usual reservation.

Fifteen years later the view looked worse. Reviewing the 3DS release, Nintendo Life’s Marcel van Duyn praised the bug fixes, the map and the bonus modes but found the cropped screen made pits and enemies hard to react to and missed Worlds 9 to D of The Lost Levels; his advice to newcomers was that “the already available original NES version is probably the smarter option.” Retrospectives have been kinder, with Retro Gamer, Nintendo Life and Digital Trends all placing it high among the best Game Boy Color games (as listed by Wikipedia).

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe has yet to receive a community review on Super Luigi Bros.

If you’ve played Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and would like to submit a review, please get in touch.

• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe – Cheats / Unlockables / Hints

• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe – Instruction Booklet (TXT)

• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe – Artwork, Pictures & Printables

• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe – Box Art

• Super Mario Bros. Deluxe – Screenshots

Every fact on this page was checked against the 13 sources listed here.