All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. is a wonderfully odd slice of 1986 Nintendo history: a contest-prize version of Super Mario Bros. that turns a familiar platformer into a radio-show souvenir. The first few stages pull you in through recognition, then the altered character sprites make you look twice at what would otherwise be a standard run.

Its value lies more in the novelty than in reinvention. You still get tight, direct side-scrolling platform action, with a handful of stages borrowed from Super Mario Bros. 2 adding a little extra surprise, but this is chiefly a fan-facing remix for anyone who enjoys the original and appreciates unusual game artifacts.

Platform: NES

Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. starts from a place that is immediately comfortable: it is a 2D, side-view Mario platformer built around direct control and forward momentum. If you know the rhythm of Super Mario Bros., you can settle into it quickly. That familiarity is the point, and it makes the strange promotional makeover easier to enjoy rather than something you have to learn around.

The twist is that this is mainly a graphical hack rather than a wholesale new game. Your moment-to-moment focus stays on navigating the same kind of scrolling platform stages, so the novelty comes from seeing a known game reframed for a Japanese radio program. A handful of levels drawn from Super Mario Bros. 2 give the package a modest jolt of variety, especially if you came expecting nothing beyond altered sprites.

That also defines the limitation. Don’t go in expecting a radically reworked Mario adventure; go in because you want a compact, peculiar variation on a classic formula. The contest-prize origin gives it a charmingly specific purpose, but the play itself remains familiar enough that its long-term pull depends on how much you already enjoy Super Mario Bros.

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. — screenshot 1

Graphics

The key visual change is in the sprites: some characters have been redrawn as famous Japanese celebrities and people connected to All Night Nippon. Against the recognizable side-scrolling Mario stages, those replacements are the whole joke and the main reason this version feels memorable instead of merely familiar.

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. — screenshot 2

Story

This is not a new narrative take on Mario so much as a promotional crossover. All Night Nippon’s twentieth anniversary is the frame, turning the game into a playful piece of radio-show memorabilia rather than a story-driven sequel.

The celebrity and program-related sprite changes give the cartridge its personality. They make the journey feel tied to a particular moment in Japanese pop culture, even when the platforming structure remains rooted in Super Mario Bros.

If you want fresh characters with a developed plot or a new dramatic reason to push through the stages, this will feel thin. If the idea of a mainstream radio show borrowing Mario’s world for a contest prize already makes you smile, that context is more than enough.

Overall Experience

All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. is a fun curiosity with a real playable backbone, not just an odd label on a shelf. The familiar Mario action keeps it lively, while the altered sprites and occasional Super Mario Bros. 2 stage make each recognizable stretch feel slightly offbeat.

Its strongest quality is how specific it is. Nintendo and Fuji Television turned a twentieth-anniversary radio promotion into a working NES remix, and that narrow purpose gives the game more character than a generic reskin would have.

Give it a chance if you love early Mario, Japanese game history, or bizarre licensed crossovers that actually preserve a solid game underneath. For everyone else, it is a brief detour rather than an essential stop—but a genuinely charming one.