Super Mario Bros. · NES · Nintendo of America · 1985 · 16 pages
The Super Mario Bros. manual established the Mushroom Kingdom's foundational mythology in sixteen pages, introducing the Koopa Tribe's transformation of citizens into bricks and stones — lore the game never referenced but that shaped how a generation of players understood what they were running through.
Nintendo's manual for the American release of Super Mario Bros. contained a piece of world-building that became notorious decades later: the brick blocks scattered across the Mushroom Kingdom were transformed citizens, converted by Bowser's dark magic. The manual's prose described the Mushroom People as having been turned into bricks, stones, and horsehair plants, giving Mario's block-smashing habit an accidental grimness that the cheerful visuals did nothing to suggest. Carried over from the Japanese manual, this lore defined the setting for a generation of players.
Introducing the eerie lore that the Mushroom Kingdom's bricks are transformed citizens — a detail the game itself never mentions.
The Super Mario Bros. manual's most quoted passage explains why the Mushroom Kingdom is in peril: "One day the Koopa tribe of turtles invaded the Mushroom Kingdom. Famous for their black magic, the Koopas easily took over the kingdom of the peace-loving Mushroom People. The Mushroom People were turned into mere stones, bricks, and even field horsehair plants." The same story appears in the original Japanese booklet.
The consequence is that players who read this passage before their first session understood every brick block as a potential former citizen. Mario was not building-block-smashing his way to a flagpole; he was potentially re-smashing people. The manual installed this reading without dwelling on its implications.
The idea that every brick might be a former citizen has fascinated players ever since.
The Super Mario Bros. manual established a structural template that Nintendo's localisation team would use for years: brief mythological setup, character introductions for the protagonist and antagonist, control diagrams, and a glossary of power-ups and enemies. The approach was efficient and reader-friendly, designed for a player who might range from eight to thirty-five years old.
Subsequent Nintendo manuals — Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong — followed variants of this structure. World, characters, controls, items. The formula worked because it answered the three questions every player had before starting: What is this place, who am I, and what do I do with the buttons?
Super Mario Bros. sold forty million copies. Most buyers encountered the Mushroom Kingdom through this sixteen-page document before any other source. It was not merely a manual but the primary text of one of the most commercially successful fictional worlds ever created.