The are some modern games that are important like imo Shadow of the Collossus showed how to do epic scale battles, and Devil May Cry changing the shape of action games.

Maybe not the single most but it did basically spearhead the 100+ million people who decided to get a wii. 

OT: I mean I guess Mario Bros is super important. That's common sense right? But as for today it's kind of irrelevant. 

It probably helped Apple reconfirm there was a market for casual gamers who could enjoy games with limited but intuitive control input even in home consoles. DS's success was probably more influential to smartphone gaming though but Wii definitely proved there was a huge casual audience in the gaming market that companies could profit out of.

And now in 2015, smartphone gaming is the most profitable gaming market in just 9 years and is only getting bigger.

I was about to say it's probably the DS that did that. The Wii showed that casual gamers were willing to spend a lot of time playing games for the right price. It's not because of Wii Sports, because it was just bundled for free.

The Wii and DS are probably the most important handhelds and consoles when it comes to the biggest sect of gaming IE the casual market, because it showed they existed and wanted to play games. Another super important game for that was Farmville.

You killed more kittens with those caps lock but yea it is to me. As always those who like the game with agree and others will write paragraphs about how it is not. No one will change their mind in the end.

Love and Peace.

I'd agree with it being the most important game of all time (at least, one of them). It can be tied to the important fact of saving video games from the crash. And would video games be as big as they are today if not for that?

It also was one of the first games, iirc, to actually have a larger scope in focus. As in, the level design was so much bigger and deeper and you went on an "adventure" to save the princess. Most games up until that point were score-based (Galaga, Space Invaders, Pacman, Pong, etc.) and very one-dimensional.

So absolutely, SMB was a predecessor to thousands of amazing games that we've played since. It paved the way. But the GOAT? That's more subjective, but I'll say probably one of the top 50.

I can see why it would be considered the most important (it's definitely on that level), but the greatest? Nah. Most Mario games have surpassed it, let alone games from other franchises.

GOAT is always debatable, but it is really important especially for gaming history

Obviously

I agree with them that Super Mario Bros. is one of, if not the, greatest game. It in itself doesn't hold up as well on its own, but it is the foundation of nearly every platformer that came after it, from its siblings, to Sonic, to Banjo Kazooie and even to this day, there is not a single platformer that doesn't take something from it. Even Metroidvanias owe a debt to Super Mario Bros.

Wii Sports did amazing things with motion controls, but few games still use themes and elements from it now that the Motion craze has died down.

Madden did one thing well, it got people to pay full price for roster updates, and minor gameplay/graphical tweaks, but there were sports games both before and after that did far more for their respective genres.