Hudson's Lost Mario Trilogy (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Hudson's Lost Mario Trilogy (2010)

hardcoregaming101.net

43 pointsrocky113820 comments

Wow, at first I thought these were more clones like the Korean "Super Boy" [1]. It goes to show how popular the PC-x8 computers were in Japan at the time that Nintendo would license out their principle franchise. It makes the later licensing to Philips for the CD-I make more sense in retrospect. It's worth noting that the NEC PC-88xx systems had almost 100% business uses envisioned for them and virtually no hardware support for games, but much like early Intel-PCs, ended up with a vibrant gaming community. [2] Hudson would also go on to try and compete more directly with Nintendo by partnering with NEC on the PC-Engine (known in the West as the TurboGrafx-16).

Here's some video of these 3...

1 - http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/part1/company-zemina....

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_PC-88

3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SAIVg6-lVE#t=165

4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKQd9BfKXg (features the corruption the article talks about)

5 - Here's the Sharp X1 version that features limited scrolling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ER9g4pfuw

6 - And a reverse engineered version back to the original NES! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggmsx7XQvNA

Wow, Super Mario Bros Special looks terrible. Very strong evidence that the main reason the NES was so successful was its easy to use hardware scrolling. Just one write to a memory mapped register and you were set (sort of).

> Wow, Super Mario Bros Special looks terrible. Very strong evidence that the main reason the NES was so successful[...]

The article says "Super Mario Bros. Special - PC-88, Sharp X1, Samsung SPC-1500 (1986)"

Here's the caption for the first screenshot "Super Mario Bros. Special (PC-88)"

For the second "Super Mario Bros. Special (PC-88)"

And for the third "Super Mario Bros. Special (PC-88)"

Maybe one of the reasons the NES was so popular was that games were very good?

I'm missing the significance of quoting the screenshot captions. The parent post was suggesting that the NES provided a platform that made it easy to create sidescrolling games. From the article, one of the major failures of this game is the lack of decent side-scroll.

Ah, yes, sorry.

> The big difference is that the screen doesn't scroll smoothly, but instead flicks across. Annoyingly you can see part of the next area, meaning the screen flicks across before Mario reaches the edge, totally destroying any sense of timing for precise jumps. Plus, turtle shells will bounce off of scenery even if it's on a subsequent screen, threatening to kill unsuspecting players. The fact the screen doesn't scroll can, in some cases, make this appear as if turtle shells are bouncing off open space.

I owned one of these. But, if memory serves, I think it was a DOS edition. Maybe a port? It came either on a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy, and the packaging was pretty utilitarian--black text on white, if memory serves.

At the time I figured it was just some unauthorized programmer trying to make a buck on Nintendo's back. It never occurred to me that Nintendo would license the IP.

Maybe you are thinking of the "popular" DOS fraeeware, Mario? That was indeed an unauthorized programmer just having fun. http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/mario/

Does this look familiar? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_GeVKAZT4I

encyclopaeedia

I think he might be referring to Mario Bros VGA - http://www.abandonia.com/games/880/MarioBrothersVGA

I would love to check out the Punch Ball version. The original Mario Bros. game was very fun to me. It was so simple looking yet the gameplay was great and I found myself challenging friends all the time.

I'm also a fan of the Donkey Kong games where you have to jump across platforms and use trampolines, I have to find a way to check these out!

http://emulator-zone.com/doc.php/nes/

http://emulator-zone.com/doc.php/arcade/mame.html

If you would like to read why Super Mario Bros. is brilliantly designed, check out Jeremy Parish's Anatomy of Games site: http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/

Scroll down to the bottom for the SMB entry list.

They mention Punch Ball Mario Bros and say:

> Considering their constant push for multiplayer family gaming, it's baffling Nintendo hasn't considered re-releasing this.

Considering how it was obviously integrated into SMB3 as a mini-game, it's baffling how the writer didn't mention that.

The SMB3 mini-game was based on the original Mario Bros; The author describes Punch Ball as a distinct game:

> This is almost identical to the original Mario Bros, except you can't knock enemies upside down by hitting the platform they're standing on. The only way to defeat them is by hitting the POW block or throwing the Punch Ball which Mario and Luigi carry around.

Was it based on the original Mario Bros? I'm talking about the mini game you can play when Luigi and Mario occupy the same space.

You can knock enemies out by hitting the platform they're on OR by hitting the POW block and there's no ball, but other than that, the enemies and level layout seem to be identical.

Since the level layout is identical (and I don't remember a POW block in the original SMB), it seems more like the mini-game is based on Punch Ball rather than the original Mario Bros.

it is the original arcade mario brothers game (not super mario brothers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Bros.

The original Mario Bros. is distinct from Super Mario Bros. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Bros.

Ah, thank you!

I remember buying that for our Atari 2600 as a kid and being very confused that it was different than Super Mario Bros.

That's just a remake of the classic Mario Bros.; there's no punch ball in SMB3.

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