Super Mario Bros Special for NEC PC-88 & Sharp X1 - Killgruz

the Lost Levels of Super Mario Brothers I'm sure you know the story of this by now back in the mid 80s Nintendo and Japan developed a sequel to the hit game Super Mario Brothers the game was very difficult and Nintendo of America didn't want to put that out here in the US the original Super Mario 2 stayed in Japan and we ended up getting our own Super Mario 2 instead it's a pretty well told story in 1993 we finally got our own taste of the Lost Levels or a remake of it anyways featured on Super Mario all-stars for the Super Nintendo but there's another Super Mario game out there that never got rereleased it actually never got released on Nintendo hardware at all yet it was an officially licensed Nintendo game a game so obscure that many consider this to be the true Lost Levels hello and welcome to kill Grasse when Nintendo released the Japanese Famicom back in 1983 Hudson soft who at the time was primarily a PC games developer ended up being Nintendo's very first third-party games developer for their new Famicom game console they released a version of loadrunner for the Famicom and that did well for them they had a good enough relationship with Nintendo but they were able to license some of Nintendo's first party games and released them on Japanese home computers of the time mainly on the NEC pc-8801 it's pretty crazy looking at this nowadays that Nintendo would allow this especially so soon after releasing their Famicom but there are different ways to look at it I mean these games were all technically inferior to their family calm counterparts they look and play worse in comparison seems like a good way for Nintendo to show up how powerful their Famicom was anyways the final Nintendo game that Hudson released on these computers was Super Mario Brothers special a bold attempt in 1986 to bring the magical Super Mario experience to the home computer SuperMario special features 32 stages like the original game but every stage here has been completely redesigned a big change with this is that it does not feature scrolling levels but instead shifts to different sections of the level when you get close to the edge in the PC 88 version the whole screen turns black and you have no time to react to what's coming up next the x1 version does this a bit better with the addition of Zelda style scrolling which gives you somewhat of a chance to react to what's coming up there are some newly added enemies here taken from previous Nintendo arcade games along with brand new power-ups that very occasionally show up these new power-ups were intentionally hidden in the game with a reference in the game's credits as sort of an extra challenge to find all of them the Hudson B block which gives you 8,000 points the hammer I guess it's called the hammer here this is straight out of Donkey Kong interesting to see this in Super Mario the wing which makes Mario temporarily fly or swim through the air looks a lot like the P wing from Super Mario 3 the clock which gives you 100 extra seconds of time and the lucky star which kills all of the enemies on screen Super Mario special had two versions one on the NEC pc-8801 on the sharp x1 system there is a rumor of a third release of this in south korea on the samsung s pc 1500 computer but as of now there's no evidence that it actually came out so let's start with the PC 88 version when you boot this up for the first time in an emulator it's almost unplayable as it is the screen is so dark with scanlines you could barely see the game runs really fast and mario has some nasty flicker and you could barely tell where you're going it's a pretty jarring experience if you're used to the normal Super Mario what to make this version more playable is on this second tab in the configure settings change this first option for the screen frequency I set this to 60 Hertz and it really helps with the flicker then check this option that ends with the F it's the third from the bottom if you're using the latest build of the m88 emulator this setting will remove the scan lines and help you see what's going on so with these two options set it's starting to get a bit more playable you can play it like this if you're able to I still think it's too fast to effectively control Mario what I did to fix this was go back into the settings and on this first tab change the clock speed the three megahertz you can dial in your perfect speed with the slider right here but for me just that three megahertz is the perfect speed and there we go a perfectly playable version of Super Mario special on PC 88 well you still need to get used to the movement in this game which is not what you'd expect when you first pick it up the controls feel heavy and sloppy and it takes a bit to get used to them a controller helps I use the free program anti microtube the controls to a gamepad you do kind of get used to the controls but with all the time I spent with this game I never actually felt like I mastered the controls the movement is not smooth like the original Super Mario so things like jumping to hit a question block or doing any kind of precision movement is very difficult frustrating even because I can almost guarantee you'll do some stupid stuff just trying to move around normally [Music] the most frustrating part are the trampolines I think I can confidently say that these are just straight-up broken they don't work I think Hudson knew this even and just said screw it because you don't actually even need to use this trampoline and either of the two spots they show up in the game and the hitboxes are another point of concern here it honestly feels like they're off it's very easy to land in front of an enemy when you're trying to jump on them it can be very frustrating I was only able to play this PCE 88 version up to world 4-4 because my disc image is corrupted and this level is messed up there's no way to pass this stage I tried all of the copies of this game I could find online and they all seemed to do this here there was a patch released on rom hacking net that was supposed to address this issue and fix the level but that didn't work for me it was still messed up after patching the game if anyone out there has a working copy of this game please copy that floppy so I ended up playing through this one on the sharp x1 instead this version looks a lot better it's got Zelda style scrolling between the sections of the level which helps you see and react to what's coming up as well as a better color palette that's easier on the eyes this is the version you should play if you want to experience this game at times like when there's a lot of enemies on screen it does have slowdown but it's completely playable the only thing you'll really need to choose from in the settings here is if you want the game to run at the original four megahertz which is kind of slow for up to 12 megahertz in my opinion eight megahertz is a sweet spot for this game that make it feel more like Nintendo Mario the music will run too fast but it's worth it [Music] the level design in this game is alright not as good as an original Nintendo design but certainly playable and I found some of what Hudson did here creative I did enjoy the levels for what they were some stages really felt dangerous and exciting and I enjoyed that about halfway through the game the difficulty gets stepped up and it's a lot of fun at times I was surprised by that I suppose we should talk about the color palette issues stuff looks weird in these games in the PC 88 version it reminds me of an early CGA DOS game it's just really limited in colors and it hurts my eyes after an extended play session I had to take two breaks on my journey to level four - four that's not typical for me I've got great eyes no glasses felt like I was gonna need glasses after this the x1 version is much better in this regard the colors are similar to the NES version but still off enough to make you feel like something's not right here Mario looks like both Ronald McDonald and a Simpsons character but luckily that's about the only thing that's really off about this all of the enemies background scenery pipes blocks are all distinguishable it's fine you know what everything is and you can see what you're doing not ideal but it's fine all of the artwork here is just like on the original Super Mario Brothers but just color it a little funny this sound is similar to again not on the same level as the original Super Mario but it comes close enough that you know what it is to give my personal opinion about this game it is a terrible Super Mario Brothers game when comparing it with the original but it is most certainly not a terrible early PC game it's pretty wonderful in that regard there was a time when Nintendo released powerful Hardware systems like the NES Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 had good hardware for the time they were released pcs of the eighties usually weren't built for games so most action or platformer games weren't all that in depth and they're simplistic if I had a game like this on my home computer back in the mid 80s I would have played the heck out of that even at the slow speed of the x1 version super mario special is very special indeed it's got some problems and it's easy to laugh at considering the game that this was based on I came into this game with a serious attitude in an open mind after the emulator tweaks I can honestly say that I had a good time with this game it was frustrating and without a doubt challenging but I was up for it I played this one several years back so I had an idea of what I was in for well as far as recommending this game to others probably not I would recommend this if you're a hardcore Mario or Nintendo fan but only if you're really good at platformers there were some rom hacks that tried to recreate this game in the original Super Mario engine but I don't think any are complete with all the new items and everything that's something to look into if you can't play the original version but yeah if you're up for a challenge this is Super Mario Brothers special an interesting and official release of Super Mario hey guys if you enjoyed this video remember to hit that like button it really helped me out also make sure you're subscribed I do lots of Mario and other obscure gaming stuff on this channel so if that sounds interesting to you it means so much if you'd subscribe thank you so much for your time today and for watching my video I've got a lot of videos coming up so I'll see you soon goodbye

Channel: gruz

Views: 178,919

Keywords: nintendo, super mario special, super mario bros special, super mario bros, super mario lost levels, super Mario bros 3, super mario all stars, famicom, history of nintendo, rare nintendo games, pc 88 games, super mario bros deluxe, punch ball mario bros, super nintendo, nes, snes, nec pc 8801, sharp x1, hudson soft, bomberman, excitebike, ice climber, balloon fight, killgruz

Id: hlRKje-OCYA

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ObsidianBlackbird666]

This game is a nightmare. Here's Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann trying to get through it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNoxHeqIwDw

He manages to beat it in the one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJXNv9v58Dk

[u/ScotTheDuck]

Commander Keen was originally a demo by Id to show how they could port SMB3 to the PC, smooth scrolling and all.

[u/BCProgramming]

"For PC"

Saying this is a bit misleading. These were for a particular type of Japanese Personal Computers, but they did not have any IBM-PC Compatibility.

[u/Selection_Possible]

I discovered this from a post by Cabel Sasser on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1361461492340559872

Apparently Hudson Soft developed an officially licensed version of Super Mario Bros. for PC back in the 1980’s. The game is mostly the same as the NES version, with a few exceptions. There are a handful of new hidden power-ups and some enemies that appeared later in the Mario series.

[u/Pwn11t]

Hudson! Kinda miss them as a dev, I liked their gamecube Bomberman games.