Shigeru Miyamoto had originally wanted to give Mario a dinosaur to ride on for the game, unfortunately the hardware limitations of the NES wouldn't allow for it. He was able to finally fulfill his wish in Super Mario World (1990), which ran on the far more powerful Super NES, and named the dinosaur Yoshi.
The first video game to introduce side-scrolling to platform games.
The clouds and bushes are the exact same sprite, just in different colors.
Contrary to popular belief, this game does NOT feature Luigi's first appearance. He appeared in Mario Bros. (1983) (the arcade game) prior to this.
Was one of the first six video games to be inducted into the National Museum of Play's World Video Game Hall of Fame.