Super Mario Bros. is the 1985 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the title that introduced the world to one of gaming’s most enduring mechanics: a magic mushroom that transforms small, vulnerable Mario into a taller, stronger hero capable of smashing through bricks and surviving an extra hit. In this article, we’ll dig into how this simple growth mechanic came to be, how it works in the original game, and why this single power-up became the foundation for an entire franchise of transformations.
Born From a Sketching Mistake
The story behind Mario’s growth power-up starts in a surprisingly mundane way. According to creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the very first sketches the development team drew of Mario for this game turned out far too large for the hardware to handle properly, forcing the team to shrink him down to fit the NES’s technical limitations.
Rather than treat this as a simple art correction, the development team saw an opportunity. They decided it would be far more interesting to let Mario grow and shrink dynamically during gameplay by eating a magic mushroom, an idea directly inspired by Alice eating mushrooms to change her size in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. What began as a technical compromise ended up becoming one of gaming’s most iconic and recognizable mechanics.
How the Magic Mushroom Works in Super Mario Bros.
In the original NES release, this power-up was officially called the Magic Mushroom, a name unique to this game before later entries in the series renamed it the Super Mushroom going forward. The mushroom emerges from a flashing question mark block whenever Mario or Luigi jumps up and strikes it from below, a control scheme carried over directly from the original arcade game Mario Bros., where bumping platforms from underneath was the primary way to interact with the environment.
Once it emerges from the block, the Magic Mushroom begins sliding to the right across the ground, regardless of which direction Mario originally hit the block from. If Mario or Luigi makes contact with it, “regular,” small Mario instantly transforms into Super Mario, visibly doubling in size on screen.
What Changes When Mario Goes Super
This transformation isn’t just a visual change, it fundamentally alters how the game plays. While in this enlarged Super Mario state, players gain two significant advantages:
- An extra hit of protection — Rather than dying instantly from enemy contact, Super Mario simply shrinks back down to his small form, giving players a crucial safety buffer.
- The ability to break Brick Blocks — Small Mario can only bump question mark blocks, but Super Mario can physically smash through ordinary brick blocks scattered throughout each level, opening up hidden paths, extra coins, and additional power-ups.
There’s also a clever bit of design logic tied to this mechanic: if Mario is already in his Super form and hits another question mark block that would normally contain a Magic Mushroom, a Fire Flower appears in its place instead, rewarding players who are already powered up with an even stronger ability. However, if Super Mario takes a hit and shrinks back down to small size before grabbing that Fire Flower, the block effectively reverts to functioning as a basic Magic Mushroom instead.
A Mechanic Simple Enough to Need No Explanation
Part of what made this power-up so effective from a design standpoint was just how instantly understandable it was. Players didn’t need a tutorial or any on-screen text to understand what the mushroom did, the visual feedback of Mario instantly growing larger communicated everything necessary in a single moment. This kind of intuitive, silent communication through pure visual design became a hallmark of Nintendo’s approach to game design more broadly, and the Magic Mushroom stands as one of the earliest and most influential examples of that philosophy in action.
A Foundation the Entire Franchise Would Build Upon
While the original NES release kept things simple with just the Magic Mushroom and the Fire Flower, this single growth mechanic laid the groundwork for an enormous range of size-changing power-ups across the decades that followed. Future entries in the series would introduce ideas like the Mini Mushroom, which shrinks characters down to a tiny size, and eventually the Mega Mushroom, introduced years later in New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS, which takes the original growth concept to its logical extreme by turning Mario into a screen-filling giant capable of plowing through entire levels, enemies, and obstacles alike.
Even decades after its debut, the core idea hasn’t changed much from what players first experienced in 1985: a simple mushroom, a sudden change in size, and an entirely different way of interacting with the world around you. It’s a testament to how well the original concept was designed that Nintendo has continued building variations on it throughout nearly every mainline Mario release since.
Final Thoughts
The Magic Mushroom in the original Super Mario Bros. began as nothing more than a workaround for an art problem, yet it grew into one of the most recognizable and influential mechanics in all of gaming. Its simplicity, born from necessity and inspired by a children’s literature classic, gave players an immediate, satisfying sense of empowerment that needed no explanation whatsoever. Nearly four decades later, that same core idea, eat something, grow bigger, become stronger, still echoes through nearly every Mario game released since.