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.