On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

We’ve not done a Romhack Thursday* for a while. Found by way of a Bluesky post by bro3256, of the website Famibro, this is a brilliant romhack by jroweboy (SMBArena page) that not only puts Mario into Zelda II, but also subtly remixes the game to allow for his different moveset.

While this is a hack to Zelda II, not Super Mario Bros., Mario’s physics and jump have been faithfully recreated in the engine. Mario doesn’t have Link’s sword, and without certain spells his only means of attack is his trademark jump! But all of the enemies that Link could employ his downthrust move against Mario can stomp. This makes some enemies much easier to beat, like the Dairas in Death Mountain, but it makes Stalfos and Ironknuckles almost impossible to defeat without some aid. It takes a lot of familiarity with the original game to notice it, but a couple of enemies have been removed in order to provide a better play experience.

I’ve found it to be unusually well-balanced and implemented for a romhack, especially one with such a unique premise. The game plays a lot like if Nintendo had made it themselves. When Mario is reduced to two bars of health he loses his Super status and becomes small, just like in the SMB games. There are certain advantages to being small; a few keys require a difficult running ducking jump/slide to get when Mario’s big, but if he’s small it’s simple to collect them.

The spells have been redone to fit Mario’s abilities, and the implications of the new rules make the game seem fresh even to Zelda II obsessives like me. The Shield spell doesn’t reduce damage taken, but instead gives Mario a floating shield that acts like Link’s shield. Mario already has a great jump, so the Jump spell is replaced with a spell called Tanooki. Tanooki gives Mario his tail from SMB3; he can’t fly with it, but he can float down from jumps and, crucially, he can use it like Link’s sword if it were limited to low attacks. Unlike all of Link’s spells, Mario’s Tanooki and Fire powerups don expire when the scene changes, but instead lasts until Mario becomes small. I think there are other changes too but I haven’t gotten far enough to find them.

On top of all of that, the music has been slightly Mariofied too, and the soundtrack is really good! Here’s some footage of me playing through some early portions of the hack. (1 hour 23 minutes)

I do need to warn you of one issue though. On my first attempt at playing the game, one of the keys in the first dungeon didn’t register when I collected it, softlocking me and making it impossible to finish the Parapa Palace (the first dungeon). I suggest you save often in case something like this happens to you. It was lucky for me that it happened so early in the game, and starting over didn’t lose me much progress. There’s another place where you appear to be softlocked, in the third palace, but I managed to overcome it by getting the item out of it then setting it aside and exploring ahead, and sure enough, soon after I got an ability that let me go back and finish it.

Despite those issues I’m having a great time trying to puzzle through Zelda II’s huge challenges with this different moveset. If you’re a Zelda II fan too (I hear there are a few of your out there at least) you should check it out!

* Why, you may ask, a Romhack Thursday? It’s because I wanted to do a weekly romhack feature but there aren’t any days of the week beginning with the letter R! You may also ask, why a picture of a frog wearing sunglasses for its header image? They’re the cool frog of the swamp, they know how to edit rom files and give them to all their friends. If you look closely at the cartridge in its hand, the label may look slightly familiar if you’ve played a lot of classic arcade games….

Zelda II: The Adventure of Mario (hack of Zelda II by jroweboy)

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