Super Mario Bros. turns 40: A look back at the iconic Nintendo game

?Game Over?: Mario & Luigi team up with S?o Paulo police for carnival

A March 4 video from S?o Paulo Governor Tarc?sio Gomes de Freitas shows police officers dressed as the iconic mustachioed brothers, along with Yoshi, arresting a suspected thief.

Super Mario Bros. hit a milestone turning 40 years old on Saturday. 

Nintendo’s top-selling video game debuted in Japan on Sept. 13, 1985.

RELATED: Nintendo Switch 2 hits stores Thursday. What to know about the release

Super Mario Bros. is an instant hit for Nintendo

The backstory:

The character Mario was first introduced in the 1981 arcade game, Donkey Kong, as a playable character who must rescue someone from a giant gorilla.

Mario later had an expanded role in his own video along with his brother Luigi, as the plumbing brothers duo, dressed in hats and overalls, journey through a colorful world to the Mushroom Kingdom to save a princess from an evil dinosaur-like creature named Bowser, King of the Koopa.

FILE - A cartoon figurine of Super Mario Bros. stands in front of a Nintendo Switch store in a shopping market. (Photo by Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Expand

After debuting on the Japanese version of the Nintendo system, Famicon, Super Mario Bros. became an instant hit with gamers worldwide. Guinness World Records noted that the original version of the video game sold over 40 million copies globally, establishing itself as a force in the gaming industry. 

Through the years, Nintendo released iterations of the game for consumers including "Super Mario Bros. 2," "Super Marioland," "Mario Kart" and "Super Mario 3D World."

And the video game’s popularity resulted in it being re-imagined on the big screen with the release of the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros Movie," which raked in $1.3 billion at the box office, according to Deadline.