Super Mario War

About

Super Mario Bros. is Nintendo's 1985 NES platform game in which Mario and Luigi travel through the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from King Koopa, collecting power-ups like the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower. Super Mario War is an open-source, SDL-based multiplayer deathmatch game built around Mario-style characters and levels, supporting up to four players locally or online across modes like Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, and Team Deathmatch. It includes a level editor (with over 1,000 community-made maps) and a newer world editor for stringing levels into SMB3-style campaigns, and uses Nintendo's own Mario artwork and sounds as a noncommercial fan tribute.

How it differs from the original

Unlike the original single-player Super Mario Bros., Super Mario War turns the same characters and setting into a competitive local/online multiplayer deathmatch game with dedicated game modes, a level editor, and experimental cross-platform network play.

Getting started

Clone the repository recursively to pull in its bundled game-asset submodule, then build it with CMake -- Linux, macOS, Windows, ARM devices, and even a browser build via Emscripten are all supported -- and run the resulting game to jump into local or online multiplayer matches.

History

The original Mario War was created by Samuele Poletto in 2002 for DOS; Florian Hufsky began this open-source rewrite in 2004, and after his death in 2009 development stalled until a new maintainer picked it up around 2014, adding cross-platform network multiplayer and, resuming again in 2026, modernizing the codebase with an SDL3 port.

Media

Additional notes

Related mod

There's also Super Cat Wars, a full graphical overhaul mod on the same engine with its own maps and world, mentioned in the project's own readme.