The enemy known as "Chained Chomp" was inspired by an experience co-director Shigeru Miyamoto had as a child. He was walking home from school one day when a dog tried to attack him, but it reached the end of its chain, just out of reach of Shigeru. In the game, the Chomps are tethered as well, but after waiting for 175 seconds, they will break free and chase the player.
Before the game was released in America, it appeared in the film The Wizard (1989). The reason was that the American release was delayed due to chip shortages, so Nintendo of America accepted an offer from Universal Studios to feature the game in a movie described as "The Karate Kid (1984) with video games" (a holiday season movie that had been green-lit because of delays in Universal's Jetsons: The Movie (1990)). This presented Nintendo with a unique opportunity to use the delay by promoting the game before it was commercially available. Much of 1989 was used to further tease the game's 1990 home release with a $25 million advertising campaign, and a limited but popular arcade release for the PlayChoice-10 system.
This was, at the time, the best-selling stand-alone video game of all time (i.e. not bundled with console hardware), selling more than 17 million copies worldwide in its initial run, and nearly 30 million copies when combined with re-releases. In Japan, it was the no.1 best-selling game for 5 months straight, while in the USA, the first batch of 250,000 copies sold out in 2 days; a month later, it had sold 700,000 copies, with a total of 8 million by 1991.
When the game was released, McDonald's had a huge promotional campaign for it. This included Mario-themed Happy Meal toys, which have long since become sought-after collectible items.
First game in which Mario can fly, and also the first Mario game featuring an overworld. Both elements have returned in most subsequent Mario games.