On September 13, 1985, Japanese game manufacturer Nintendo released one of the most revolutionary products in history: the game Super Mario Bros. for the Family Computer System (or Famicom, for short). It's nowhere near an exaggeration to call this release historical for popular culture. Sure, video games were known entities since the early 1970s, when Nolan Bushnell's Atari manufactured some of the first coin-operated arcade machines. And even home consoles were nothing new (the Atari Video Computer System had been out for a decade).

But when Super Mario Bros. made its debut, the home video game market in America was a shambles. Too much product and not enough quality control led to an unprecedented crash in 1983, and Nintendo was met with hostility when it tried to break the Famicom in America. They met this problem by doing everything to not refer to their product as a video game, retitling it the Nintendo Entertainment System and marketing the product to retailers as more of a toy (a distribution deal with Worlds of Wonder, the company behind Teddy Ruxpin and Laser Tag, helped sell that angle).

The NES was a massive success, thanks in no small part to quality games like Super Mario Bros. Considered to be the first major "platform game" - a genre of game that expanded upon the action by including massive, side-scrolling levels and tons of hidden secrets - SMB was given a tremendous boost by being packed in with almost every configuration of NES product. Guinness World Records has listed Super Mario Bros. as the highest-selling video game of all time, having moved more than 40 million units in 25 years. (Recently, according to The Guardian, the game has slipped to second place, behind another addictive packed-in game from Nintendo: Wii Sports. But Mario still leads the pack in terms of franchise sales, what with all the sequels he's been a part of.)

One of the secrets to Mario's success, other than the innovative and addictive gameplay, is the innovative and addictive musical score by Koji Kondo. A classically-trained pianist with an interest in jazz-fusion and synthesizers, Kondo was hired by Nintendo in the early 1980s to compose small bits of music for various projects. While most games would just require fanfares, Kondo created whole songs for SMB - tunes that could repeat through entire levels without sounding repetitive. The tunes he created for the game - particularly the "Ground Theme" which played over most levels, is as instantly an iconic piece of music as anything the American rock scene has spawned. Thanks to Kondo's work, the video game industry earned the musical care that film scores could provide; to this day, video game score enthusiasts are everywhere, providing remixes and arrangements with all the fervor of the major labels.

Given the presence of almost any vintage sound on CD, it's odd that the notion of video game music seems to be a well-hidden niche. The Super Mario Bros. series has had plenty of attention on CD, mostly in Japan (in fact, another such compilation is forthcoming) - but it couldn't hurt to get just a few compilations out in the States. The brief nature of the music means lots of music could fit on such a CD, so the track list could probably extend beyond what you'll see after the jump. (For now, it makes sense to keep it to the 8-bit NES era, the time closest to the game which earns our plaudits on this day.)

Warp to the track list after the jump.

Koji Kondo, Super Mario Bros.: The 25th Anniversary Collection (Nintendo, 2010)

1. "Mario Bros." Title Screen
2. Game A/Miss/Clear
3. Game B/Restart/Extend
4. Bonus Stage/Perfect/Game Over
5. Ground Theme
6. Underground Theme
7. Underwater Theme
8. Castle Theme
9. Bonus/Invincible Theme
10. Course Clear
11. Hurry Up/Miss/Game Over
12. Koopa Defeated/Finale
13. Name Entry Screen
14. Finale
15. "Super Mario Bros. 2" Title Screen
16. Player Select
17. Above Ground Theme
18. Underground Theme
19. Invincible
20. Sub-Space/Bonus Game/Win/Miss
21. Boss Music
22. Final Battle with Wart
23. Stage Clear/Finale
24. Grass Land
25. Overworld Theme
26. Koopahari Desert
27. Athletic Theme
28. Sea Side
29. Underwater Theme
30. Giant Island
31. Invincible Theme
32. The Sky (Part I)
33. Toad House
34. The Warp Whistle/The Sky (Part II)
35. Hammer Bros. Challenge
36. Ice Land
37. Bonus Game
38. Pipe Maze
39. The Music Box
40. The King's Room
41. Fanfare/A Letter from the Princess
42. Koopa World
43. Fortress
44. Doom Ship
45. Final Duel with Bowser
46. Course Clear/World Clear/Super World Clear
47. Hurry Up/Miss/Game Over
48. Finale

Tracks 1-4 from the game Mario Bros. (Arcade, 1983/NES, 1986)
Tracks 5-12 from the game Super Mario Bros. (Famicom/NES, 1985)
Tracks 13-14 from the game Super Mario Bros. 2 (Famicom, 1986)
Tracks 15-23 from the game Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES, 1988)
Tracks 24-48 from the game Super Mario Bros. 3 (Famicom, 1988/NES, 1990)