One of the most iconic titles in video game history is celebrating its 40th anniversary today but how has Super Mario Bros. managed to stay relevant for so long?

In 1985, most adults considered video games to be, at best, a fad and at worst a malign influence on children across the world. This was back when the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 were the dominant formats in the UK, and Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was one of the best-selling games of the year. At that time, coin-op arcades were the cutting edge of video game technology and in 1985 the most advanced was Sega’s sprite-scaling pioneer Space Harrier.

Despite how ancient the technology may have been, there are many games from that period which remain perfectly playable today, in their original form. The recently re-released Gradius d

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